There's hope for privacy yet
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I got a Sharp Android smart tv last year when my 2006 Samsung died and it works great without internet access. Cheapest one there was.
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Just an FYI that the Smart cancer has already began infecting computer monitors. It won’t be long until there are no more dumb monitors.
Samsung and LG make smart computer monitors. There are probably many others.
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Hit up thrift stores they always have a pile in decent shape. Just test them at an outlet
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Many smart TVs still give you popups telling you to connect to the internet or they simply refuse work without connection. There's not a very good way to tell if any smart TV you get will do this ahead of time without looking over reviews, and even then many people just connect their TVs anyway so it might not show up there either.
I'd prefer to just have a display that works as a display from the start and not have to worry about it.
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are you sure the wife's tv doesn't try 8.8.8.8 or another public DNS server, or perhaps DoH after failing to resolve domains through the pihole?
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Must be a good store if you stay there half the year
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"subsidized" – TVs sold perfectly well before they were flooded with ads. Ads and selling user data just mean more money for CEOs. Always more, MORE, MOOORE PROFIT!
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There are tutorials on how to block secondary DNS servers when using Pihole. (The one I followed is in German but you can probably use your translator of choice.)
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Yeah. It's locked down at the firewall level.
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Well that just made my day a little worse
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I asked the man how come and he said “Well, dumb TVs are hard to get and they sell almost immediately. So they’re worth more than the smart ones.”
He's wrong. They're cheaper because the manufacturer makes money off selling advertisements.
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I suspect the vast majority of people are buying dumb TVs because android TV sucks, not for privacy reasons. I'm willing to bet most go home and plug their Chromecast or FireTV stick right in.
So as long as android TV sucks, its good news for us.
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That's a nice thought. Thank you for sharing
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I've always wanted to ask a billionaire how much was enough, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't understand the question. Enough? What's that?
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Ask the sales rep if it works without internet, and if they're wrong, demand a refund.
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I dunno that's entirely accurate - we have a Sony Bravia android TV (working on moving away from default OS but that's another story) that is perfectly usable with Stremio and Jellyfin and doesn't have massive invasive ads. One of my parents has a dumb TV with a Chromecast and it was nothing but a PITA to use by comparison.
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Not all android TVs are bad, but I think a lot of the cheap ones are pretty bad. Mine is horribly laggy, and will occasionally refuse to turn on unless I powercycle it.
Which Chromecast do your parents have? The ones pre-Google TV are pretty brainless to use, but I hate the new google TV ones as well.
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Until they realise they don't need to make it cheaper because people will buy it anyway because they love all the bells and whistles.
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My Sony Bravia had an update that made it horribly laggy. After screwing around a bit I found out that closing apps made it run faster. Somehow they broke the suspension system with the update and it keeps running out of RAM is what I'm assuming happened.
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Mines always been bad, but I use a Chromecast all the time anyway, so it doesn't matter. I'd be livid if I had bought it, but it was free
