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

[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.

[bluelander@lemmy.ml]

I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.

Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.

[brrt@sh.itjust.works]

AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.

[buddascrayon@lemmy.world]

I haven't had a living grandmother in... I don't even know how many years at this point.

[yournamehere@lemm.ee]

cant one simple adb debloat any droid device? i mean adb list those packages, maybe even backup some and then remove the obvious ones?!

[waldschrat@lemmy.world]

Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.

[glitterbomb@lemmy.world]

I'll reiterate that I'm in a half dozen living rooms every day, and most of them are senior citizens. I've been doing this for years. They all have smart TVs, whether they use the features or not.

I'll also reiterate that they flat out will not even use a TV sometimes because they're defeated by the smart TV features that prevent them from getting over to their Comcast box. Did you even read my comment?

They get suckered by the cheap TV in middle of the aisle at Walmart or Costco and buy three. You can't even go out and buy a TV that isn't a smart TV without specifically looking for it. They don't even know to begin to look for these things.

Do you think they're still on an old CRT with a VCR hooked up via RCA? They had to go down some weird upgrade rabbit hole that they still don't fully understand because they ended up with a DVD of some classic movie, went and got a DVD player only to find out they didn't have HDMI ports so now they had to go buy some garbage TV thats subsidized by advertising companies. Again, I've seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times.

The fact of the matter is that your fix reeks of 'I got mine' energy, and it doesn't fix anything. Large swaths of people will still get these ads in their faces and these companies won't stop. Quite the opposite, they'll keep looking for more ways to fuck their customers.

[dr_vindaloo@lemmy.ml]

Like what?

[umbrella@lemmy.ml]

organize.

is a matter of pushing advertisement and privacy restrictions

[mindbleach@sh.itjust.works]

Why the fuck does your television have a home page?

Never give the TV the wifi password.

[wolflink@sh.itjust.works]

Buy a smart TV box like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. You can get full quality streaming with some ads but not nearly as bad as the software that’s built into some of these TVs.