Incredible. What a shit idea.
Anyways, kids, remember: never let your smart devices talk to the internet. We actually love our LG OLED - it's fantastic hardware. But it has not once, and never will, get the chance to phone home.
But what do you use instead? The onboard apps work well and having two remotes always sucked.
Thanks to HDMI-CEC you can control additional media players with your TV's remote. Sometimes it might not be perfect for things like long presses and stuff, but for basic controls it works.
That's my experience with an Nvidia Shield and a Raspberry with KODI. I wouldn't really recommend the Raspberry though.
So long as the GabeCube is at a decent price it is going to be my TV's media center. My old plan of building a new main rig and repurposing my old rig with an arc B580 upgrade went out the window for my budget when ram prices went through the roof.
A separate box with apps that work better and just use the one remote.
I only use the Nvidia Shield remote. It obviously does everything on the Shield, plus tv on/off, and volume. Then I remapped the Netflix button on it to open a little quick actions menu to select brightness/picture mode levels.
Haven't touched the lg remote since
Who’s going to step up and start creating a “dumb” version of absolutely everything? One brand dedicated to just making the thing do the thing it absolutely must do and nothing else.
Would be great but the manufacturer would be at a disadvantage because that bundled bullshit effectively subsidizes the device. So you'd have to either raise prices or accept a lower profit margin.
Due to the high barrier of entry (e.g. because of patents) it's unlikely that a privately owned company can make a big market entry, especially across countries. And a public company will be forced by the shareholders to maximize profit so either you bundle crapware or they fire you as CEO.
Of course if you look outside the TV market such devices already exist. High-quality digital signage devices can easily be had – for about three times the price of an equivalently-sized TV.
So you’d have to either raise prices or accept a lower profit margin.
Isn't that the point and the main benefit of competitive markets?
Agreed, regarding barriers to entry though. They need to be addressed.
Some premium brands like Bang & Olufsen sell TVs without adware, I think Panasonic TVs are mostly ad-free for now. Outside of that, most big brands will have "professional" or "commercial" product lines that also don't have ads. But in all cases you'll have to pay extra over the TVs subsidized by ads.
that also don't have ads.
YET!
What we need to be pushing is someone like Framework to build fixable TV’s. Plenty of companies now make PI compute style boards so give me a screen I can put my own PI compute style board in and flash my own software.
Then if JelllyFin added in the tuner side, considering it already has the basics, you’d likely get a ton of business selling custom TV’s that are more useable then the crap we have now. Look how popular the fire sticks got!
Makes me wish I had a few million to get a TV designed, make a batch but I think demand would be an issue… which begs the question, how is no-one doing it yet? 🤦♂️🙄
If you root your lg oled you can truly block automatic updates. You can also install ad free youtube with sponsorblock integrated plus a bunch of other stuff that is of varying utility depending on your use case.
In general though just don’t connect it to the internet and get a $100 box for jellyfin from china (ugoos am6b+ works great and can playback basically anything but av1 natively if you flash Coreelec, the android side can still run streaming apps if you insist or iptv apps like tv mate since iptv support in kodi/jellyfin suuuucks).
Lg has proven they don’t respect consent by silently opting you in to data collection with updates. The updates never add features or bug fixes, just ugly UI changes and shit like this. It’s almost never worth updating unless someone is specifically saying “you should update, it fixes/adds ____
In the future don’t support them but at the same time it’s the “who the fuck can you support/oh you use an iphone under capitalism” problem. Yeah you don’t need a big tv, you don’t need an oled, you can buy a far more expensive commercial display, etc. I dunno
If you root your tv...
My brother in christ.
You buy a $400-$3000 tv and eliminate big parts of the feature set (dlna, phone/laptop as remote, airplay/casting, etc) because you let their nonsense prevent you from connecting something you purchased to the internet so the vendor won’t ruin it.
Or you buy any other brand where rooting isn’t even an option and the ad penetration is often worse because they’re almost all based around amazon, androidtv, or Roku, all of which are much more developed and mature. With tricks like not allowing you to set a custom dns for Adblocking (Roku does this) or hard defining a cloudflare DNS to circumvent ad blocking dns if you set it at the router level (android does this).
If all the options are shit, make one that works
At some point we'd have to start importing TVs from the other side of the Great Chinese Firewall to avoid unwanted US tech. It's getting ridiculous.
then you get unwanted chinese tech.
It would have to phone home over the great firewall, which is the point
Uhh they let that sort of information in no problem. The firewall is more for random citizens not corporate servers.
But it would still phone home though? It's not like great firewall blocks all traffic, it blocks traffic the CCP doesn't like.
I know people who watch Chinese dramas on those Chinese streaming apps here in Europe. The great firewall doesn’t block everything. And it’s mostly for outgoing traffic. Like people in China can’t get on Facebook, but people outside of China can get on WeChat, though making an account outside of China is impossible.
Well LG did me a favor. Don't buy LG tvs, Samsung appliances or HP printers.
I got my mom an iPad, apparently AI is unavoidable in setup. To finish setup, you must agree to Apple AI.
They are all doing it together. I can't keep track of who owns what, perhaps "they" are all actually owned by the same megacorp.
This can be turned off after setup.
It's stupid that this is the feature they decide to force considering using an Apple account during setup is still optional.
Thank you, I didn't finish setup, I took a deep breath and turned the pad over and declared that I am done for the day. A man has to know his limitations.
I think everyone should return things when there is weird tos to use something. It costs the company as they'll have to sell the product as 'used', and it informs them that people don't actually agree, we are just coerced into it.
You can definitely turn Apple Intelligence off
Oh really? I have never had Apple Intelligence enabled on mine, it was always opt in I thought
This, this finally made me reach back my LG TV and disconnected the Ethernet cable.
It seems TV aren't even owner by the owners anymore. I don't watch TV nor game anymore but seeing the amount of ads when just turning on tvs at friends houses is wild and now with this it's doing way too much to just be a display. Whoever decides to start making dumb tvs again at mass with all the newer tech like hdr and dolby atmos in it will have a booming business but I guess no residuals after the sale no unlimited growth for investors.
I'll throw my money at any TV manfucturer that just sells me a dumb OLED TV with great picture quality. Heck, even drop the speakers, I won't be using them anyway. Just a dumb panel with plenty of input/outputs.
I need someone to explain to me, what situation could possibly arise that would require me to use Copilot on my fucking TV?
LG's recent software update has forcibly installed Microsoft Copilot, an AI assistant, on smart TVs without removal options, sparking widespread user backlash over privacy, bloatware, and loss of control. This highlights growing tensions in smart devices, where monetization often overrides user preferences.
Sure is ironic that the article summary is itself AI-generated.
FYI, it won't let you delete Alexa either. I hate that fucking thing.
Then follows a class action lawsuit because the AI exposed children to unsuitable materials and the thing is gone the next update.
Never connect your TV to your wireless and wired internet, even on initial purchase. Use a USB when updating your TV.
clankers should be segregated from society. oh and to the hexbear people: "clanker" is technically NOT a slur. seriously!
So glad I blocked my LG C1 from the internet ages ago. Haven't received updates in forever, don't care. It's a TV, it shows pictures. I even still have it LAN enabled so it can be controlled via Home Assistant automations, it just can never leave the home network, and that's how I like it.
I can't even remember how long ago I set it up to do this, I think it was when I heard rumor they'd be including ads in the UI, maybe 2023 or so.
My company received an email from Microsoft this week.
“From our data you are not selling Ai features as much as your competitors and we suggest that you start changing this or you will be left behind.”
It was a completely bullshit email. But the stupids at my company are now worried that Microsoft is tracking the features we’re selling with our computers. Like if that wasn’t the most glaring red flag “we have spent way too much money on this and we need you to prove we aren’t dumbasses” I don’t know what is.
I still will not sell Ai outside of its basic uses. And I’m backed up by the old heads in my department. Ai is not for everything.
One day, literally every Gsuite product immediately and incessantly started nagging us to use Gemini. Fortunately our tech staff quickly switched it all off. We have slowly been re-enabling features that are useful like meeting transcriptions. I just wish these corporations could have more restraint. In previous waves of improvement in tech, usage dictated investment in new products. These days, they seem to feel the need to coerce us to use their products as they insist we should. I think users are getting fatigued by this dynamic. I used to be the first to install every update and try new apps and products. These days, I'm excited when I can stop using a product, and I don't think it's just due to age. It means I can stop having to be vigilant about some company I know is searching for ways to exploit me.
This shit is why more people now have dabbled in DNS blocking and vlans. Its "your" equipment but you need to literally treat it as hostile.
And they still haven’t figured out how to stop Netflix from crashing 15 minutes into every other show I watch. First year I had it no problems. Then one day about two years ago, bam, unwatchable.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
