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I have a “smart” TV. It wouldn’t let me get past setup until I put it on wifi, so I spun up a hotspot, then immediately killed it and just plugged in a micro PC running Linux to the HDMI port.
Occasionally, I’ll sit on the remote and a pop up happens saying I’ll need to connect to the Internet for <feature> to work, but that’s about it.
If you watch the video, (oh boy was it long but informative) it likely is still spying on you rampantly and using neighbors as hotspot points to send the data.
Unlike smartphones, they are plugged in so they can just run speech to text (and the TVs that the op had could hear 20m away in other rooms with the mic array) forever. If you sell the TV or something and it ever connects to the internet again, it will likely dump all of that plaintext data corresponding to your physical location.
Smart TV’s are terrifying. I’m still rocking an old 2008 flat screen that can’t handle 1080p…
I have a “smart” TV. It wouldn’t let me get past setup until I put it on wifi, so I spun up a hotspot, then immediately killed it and just plugged in a micro PC running Linux to the HDMI port.
Occasionally, I’ll sit on the remote and a pop up happens saying I’ll need to connect to the Internet for <feature> to work, but that’s about it.
If you watch the video, (oh boy was it long but informative) it likely is still spying on you rampantly and using neighbors as hotspot points to send the data.
Unlike smartphones, they are plugged in so they can just run speech to text (and the TVs that the op had could hear 20m away in other rooms with the mic array) forever. If you sell the TV or something and it ever connects to the internet again, it will likely dump all of that plaintext data corresponding to your physical location.
i only got rid of my 20in CRT television about two-and-a-half years ago.
2011 TV here, it thankfully is 1080p capable, and I’m clinging onto it for dear life. If anything in it fails, I’ll definitely be attempting a repair.
I picked up a second hand circa 2011 nearly smart TV. It’s sony 65" 1080x1920 plenty of inputs. Was a high end device of it’s day.
Cost me $100.
Unfortunately we will run out of old devices like this at some point.