You'd be better off buying a non-smart Samsung commercial TV from eBay and getting a $20 Onn 4K TV Box from Walmart. The latter can be Degoogled and sideloaded with Stremio, Cloudstream, or your streaming app of choice to make it the ultimate privacy-respecting media center.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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So Vizio is offering dumb TVs without Walmart accounts? I am actually kind of interested.
Vizio is likely offering unusually large paperweights without Walmart accounts.
now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features
In a functioning society I think that would be criminal.
it'll still be listening and spying.
Just don't connect it to the internet 🤷♂️
Do not connect your tv to the internet. Period.
This is the way.
HTPC for life!
My blueray player broke, and my tv stopped showing me to use certain apps and I can’t figure out why. But a used PS4 cost me $85 and solved all my problems. And they left a copy of Minecraft in it, so I even have a game to play.
I'm tempted to go back to htpc lol. The tracking is so bad these days. I need to block the mac of my tv (Google tv) and just do a tiny PC or something instead.
Walmart acquired Vizio with the express purpose of of using TV's to serve ads. In fact, that is exactly what they said they were going to do.
No surprises here.
Required to use smart features? Thank you Walmart for encouraging people not to connect their TVs to the internet!
Welcome to Earth where using Smart features is Dumb.
Sounds like the trash taking itself out, no? If I don't want smart features in the first place, then I see this as an absolute win. Nobody should be connecting their TV the Internet in the first place. Always make sure to use things like android TV boxes, fire sticks ect.. over using the built in "smart" features as those TVs will be phoning home all day and serving you ads the minute you connect it to the Internet lol
My family stayed at my house and “the TV wasn’t working,” because it doesn’t have network access and I use an Nvidia Shield instead, so they connected it to the Wi-Fi and ad overlays showed up in the menus! I’m still mad about it years later.
Luckily I dodged a bullet and it didn’t brick it or anything, and the ads went away when the internet access did. I just disconnected it from the network and manually banned the MAC address in case anyone else tries it again.
the ads went away when the internet access did.
Then why are you mad?
And then banned your family from using the remote.
Just build a media pc. Those media sticks have trackers and telemetry too.
I just wish there was a way to control the PC as easy as a tv remote. I would totally do this except my wife and kids just want to hit a button on the remote instead of fiddling with keyboard or a track pad or controller of some kind
Keep an eye out for the new Steam controller. It can interact via gyro, touchpad, and traditional controller input methods.
FLIRC is your friend! It's a USB IR receiver that you can train with literally any IR remote you have. Once you set it up (and it does take a little elbow grease to train it), it just works.
I believe Kodi supports IR remote controls.
As soon as RAM isn’t more expensive than the TV.
Personally i’d rather pay more for equipment than have these assholes tracking my viewing habits. But you could throw ddr4 in it. Should be fine for a simple HTPC.
I don't get the whole ram catagories. DDR3, DDR4, DDR5. They make it seem like the higher the number, the better the ram, but I always thought ram was just a space for computers to temporarily store information until it was ready to call on it.
So from my perspective 16GB DDR3 should be the same as 16GB DDR5. But that's clearly not the case.
The biggest differences are speed and max amount of ram per module. For a htpc those shouldn't matter much. I wouldn't personally go to ddr3 unless I had some free sticks hanging out since the spec is about 20 years old now.
My first two questions when buying a tv is
How many HDMIs does it have? Where are they located?
Last question, How to disable most features?
I really only need 1 HDMI port on my TV- to connect my AV receiver to, everything else gets plugged into that receiver, it's got about 8 HDMI ports.
Right now there's 3 consoles, a pc, and a Chromecast hooked up to it, so I have ports to spare, and I haven't had to use anything on my tv since I initially set it up and set the input to HDMI 1
It's not necessarily feasible for everyone, it does take up a little more space in your entertainment center that not everyone has, but I also think it's 100% worth it to at least have a decent set of speakers hooked up to your TV if you can find the space and budget to do so.
You should suggest this as an article on the Consumer Rights Wiki
Its crazy how shitty they've gotten. I got one on black Friday probably 10 years ago and it didnt have and built in apps just casting from your phone. A few years later they updated it and suddenly it had apps and demanded you agree to their TOS and all that (possibly also download their Vizio app?). I didnt keep it for long after that (mostly because it was a budget ass TV with 4K but not HDR) and replaced it with an LG C3 AMOLED from Costco, which I couldn't be happier with. In our bedroom we have a TCL and I think that's where the sweet spot is with budget TVs
So Vizio is a donmart brand? I wish they'd make up their minds.
Nearly every electronic device sold at Walmart is a unique SKU sold nowhere else.
They have their own internal logistics and manufacturing specialist team that works with manufacturers to hit specific wholesale price targets that they demand to even consider carrying their products in store. They reduce the number of ports, features, included accessories, quality of materials, etc. to get the that specific price.
The manufacturers take a huge hit on their own profits from these... but in theory will make up for that with sheer sales quantity.
Requiring a Walmart account probably means some sort of kickback to Vizio, or other wholesale arrangement. And since these devices are usually unique SKUs that can't be sold elsewhere, they can receive differentiated software, have no risk of any sort of price matching, etc.
Are Inout sources and volume smart features? Because I don’t need smart features