People like you help to make the internet a better place — which matters a lot to me, because one of my most desperately held beliefs is that it is possible to take the hopefulness of the early internet and combine it with the wisdom of the last few decades to produce a more robust kind of hope

I fear the day these fucks figure out DOH or something. Not sure there's any way to suppress or intercept that, short of just blocking all external traffic to the TV.

attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings.

Streaming box / stream app makers have been working around local DNS for a long time. Sometimes of course they're assholes that want to do shitty things and do this to make interdiction harder. But sometimes there are legitimate reasons. Ones I remember... users who don't really understand what they're doing can be overly aggressive with blocking and block things that are necessary for a particular service (causing support problems). Sometimes the ISPs DNS servers have shit performance, and using a well known commercial provider like cloudflare or google can improve performance at scale. It's not always evil.

They’re not alone, either. I had to downgrade my Visio just to use the features that it shipped with. I’m sure this is illegal, but no one cares unless you’re rich.

Was gonna say, LG does the same thing.

So far my only TV that hasn't forced things in an absurd way has been my Sony... Guess what Sony just did? (Sold their Bravia TV line to TCL...)

This is the cyberpunk future that the 80s kids were so hyped for.

Get 'em while that last:

“In a major industry shift announced in early 2026, Sony is entering a strategic partnership where TCL will take a 51% stake in its home entertainment division, including Bravia TVs, with a new joint venture expected to be fully operational by April 2027”

It’s the end of an era for the Sony Bravia.

That's great, but people who don't already own one shouldn't support this garbage company.

The list is getting pretty big.

I can imagine future TVs refusing to work without an always-on internet connection.

My first 4K TV was a Samsung. The last update broke eARC making the Samsung home theater in a box thing I had much more inconvenient.

My 2nd (free in a raffle) Samsung 4K TV connected to my WiFi without a password when a guest in the house casted a video to it despite on setup refusing to consent to any web things due to privacy concerns. Kinda interesting and concerning.