The home page of my $1700 smart TV has a full page ad about watching ads

[dickarus@lemmy.world]

A cheap computer. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.

Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it's just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it's back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don't sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.

[some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org]

People who don't have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you'd see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are "dumb" displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren't expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.

They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn't have ads. Also, fuck ads.

[chairmanmeow@programming.dev]

I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don't get any ads anywhere anymore.

[notfromhere@lemmy.ml]

What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?

[_stranger_@lemmy.world]

I have a very old 4K Toshiba TV with a built in "smart browser" that, due to me never plugging into the Internet, has a home page with news about how well Obama's doing in the polls for being a relatively unknown junior senator.

[yerbayerba@lemm.ee]

Razor blade to specific pcb traces?

[notfromhere@lemmy.ml]

Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.

[maccentric@sh.itjust.works]

Are they still making those or are they all 5+ years old (2019 was latest I could find on eBay)?

[asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev]

Which one?

[wazoobi@lemm.ee]

I'm trying to understand why this is marked as NSFW... I must be missing something?

The intrusion of ads is annoying AF, I agree. I'll have to look into that link for DNS ad-blocking, thanks!

[refalo@programming.dev]

hah, there's nowhere near enough infrastructure to handle that.

[yerbayerba@lemm.ee]

I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.

[hobovision@lemm.ee]

Google TV is the easiest to get rid of ads on. I have a Sony and a Hisense both no ads.

Look up and use the Projectivy Launcher.

You'll also want to sideload an app that forces the default launcher to Projectivy (can't recall the name) because they don't allow changing it through the stock OS. Projectivy tries to use accessibility settings to take over on its own, but it breaks some other features so I don't use them.

[captpretentious@lemmy.world]

Which only works for now. They've already gotten you to be ok with the upcharge price for the "smart" hardware. Soon they're going to require online activation for "reasons". So choosing to not connect it won't work. And they'll do regular ad connection checks and if it fails to update ads after so much time the TV will prompt an error to please correct the network.

Hate it all you want, it's going to happen.

[chairmanmeow@programming.dev]

I use Projectivy at the moment. Pretty close to stock visually, just without the ads or apps you can't hide. Enough for me to make it tolerable.

[bertramditore@lemm.ee]

Perfectly. I’ve never encountered a codec my Apple TV couldn’t play smooth as butter. Been watching a lot of AV1 anime lately, never needs to transcode. I use Infuse Player for its Dolby Vision support, because that’s the only format the native Jellyfin app has trouble with, but Infuse is also just a really solid app in general, and for me is the perfect way to consume my Jellyfin server. But the native Jellyfin app is also solid, and there are some other players which would definitely meet your needs (MrMC for example is very good, but not as polished as Infuse).

[mat@jlai.lu]

For now I have an androidTV but I guess that whent I have time, it will be HDMI only (androidTV is quite buggy on it) and after that, I will look for a dumbTV

[qaz@lemmy.world]

That's unlikely, the additional R&D cost probably won't weigh up to the costs incurred by the small minority that removes it.

[umbrella@lemmy.ml]

It doesn't need to happen if we actually do something about this hate.

[glitterbomb@lemmy.world]

Your grandma does.

I installed her TV and internet last week. She barely understands the concept of switching TV inputs, and her Roku smart TV doesn't let you rename inputs from HDMI1 to [ISP NAME] unless the thing is connected to the internet. It also defaults out of the box to show the smart TV bullshit every single time you turn it on, instead of just showing the last used input before the TV turned off. So she's completely baffled how to watch simple television channels unless I spend 10 minutes reconfiguring this garbage so it's usable.

Go visit your grandma, everyone. And reconfigure her smart TV. I'm joking but I'm not. I can only visit so many grandmas per day.