Is there a TV on the market without “Smart TV” features?
Or is there at least one where Smart mode can be turned off verifiably AND it doesn’t keep enticing you to turn it on by withholding ease of use or some convenience feature until you just give up?
Rtings maintains a list of ad-free TVs. This isn't the same as smart-free, but maybe that's what some people want:
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv (The ones with a "10" in the ad-free column.)
The often-given advice of "just don't connect it to the internet" is viable only sometimes. My TV shipped with some missing features that were enabled after a software update.
Perhaps plug it in, update the software, and then unplug it again.
I’ve kept my Samsung offline since I purchased it in 2019. I’ve kept my LG offline since I purchased it in 2016. As long as you have an AppleTV or similar connected to service your need for “smarts” it won’t be hard to leave the TV offline.
(I recommend LG over Samsung - Samsung TV has native undismissable ads from 2019 still)
TVs today are an absolute hellscape. It’s crazy that my 15 year-old samsung is superior to today’s market in every way except resolution; no network connection/random updates/ads/screenshot hashes being send, a simple and instantaneous remote, and it doesn’t take a full minute to turn on or change the input.
Nobody wants this garbage if they actually understand what is happening. The only “solution” I know is to never set up the network, and use appletv or similar set top box (which will still have unobtrusive content placement ads and likely tracking). A VLAN might work to support casting but is a administrative headache.
I’d pay primo money for a dumb samsung that just ran their 2008 firmware. LG now has TVs with cameras built in, the stuff of nightmares. Idiocracy is real.
More important to me than lack of “smart” features (as long as it is functional without using them or connecting to the internet) is responsiveness to user input. I just want a TV I can quickly turn on/off and change volume and input.
My current Vizio is extremely sluggish for some reason.
Maybe that’s correlated with smart features…
What about getting a smart TV that respects you, because you paid a premium.
I have a Sharp/NEC c651q. The Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module in it lets me watch media on the internet(newer models will accept the RPi4 CM).
It has no integration with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc.
This has been brought up several times on here. Maybe you can use the search to find those similar questions.
One of the suggestions I remember seeing is to buy a large display/monitor instead of a TV. I don't remember the specifics.
This is why large monitors are so expensive, because they aren't subsidized by the ads large TVs force upon their users for the most basic usage.
But if you can afford it, there are 40+" 4k and 8k monitors to which you can plug AppleTV/Chromecast/a small PC with a budget discrete graphics card. Or you can get a conference projector if no monitor on the market meets your size needs.
Bought a LG C1 last year, every-time I got the option to say "NO" to any agreement I said no. So far I haven't seen a single advert in the past year. The voice commands don't work. But who really wants to talk to their tv lol.
I mainly use it for Plex and my Xbox, everything works really well for those purposes, so I appreciate LG at-least giving me the option to not use all of its "smart" features.
--edit--
I am using this TV in B.C Canada.
Just don't ever give it the wifi password. Drive the TV from a PS4/PS4, xbox series X or home theatre PC. Use the youtube/netflix/amazon video/whatever client software on those platforms.
I have a thousand times more confidence that microsoft or sony will keep their operating system patched and free from zero days than some random OS on a TV. And at least they're big enough that their telemetry and data collection practices are documented.
Yes, it's true you can't get much use out of an xbox series x without an internet connection, but at least you know what you're getting yourself into in advance.
You and I suspect half the country.
During the 90s I remember there was this big fuss when Gateway 2000 was introducing the first "smart/PC" TV to the market.
Steve Jobs went on record as saying something along the lines of "Not only will it not work out, it shouldn't, because TV is the place where people head to at the end of the day to shut their brains off, not figure out even more ways to interact with tech."
It made sense then and like Steve Jobs said, the Gateway smart/PC TV turned out to be a major flop at the time despite tech mags raving about its introduction.
It would seem, unfortunately, that the approach manufacturers seem to have taken in modern times is one of "WRONG! We'll MAKE it work by shoving the approach down consumers' throats by making sure ALL TVs insist on spending over a half hour pushing buttons before people can sit down to watch something and relax."
Buy a TCL panel and never connect it to the internet. They are technically marketed as Smart TVs but there is no requirement that you connect them, and there are zero prompts or limits if you don’t. I’ve been using them for years and love them, primarily for the stupidly simple remotes and UI.
Jeff Geerling just did a video on a commercial tv that even has a pi in it. Maybe look into digital signage stuff or even a large computer monitor or projector.
There are TVs, here most are Chinese white label brands, that instead of using Android TV just have a microcontroller running Android on it. In fact I've installed Android on a Raspberry pi and the experience was literally the same. There's no smart features unless you select the input to Smart TV (which i assume is some internal HDMI interface renamed to Smart TV on the UI)
I want a dumb tv but with one smart feature: the ability to download software emulations of these terrible hdmi sticks so I don’t have to spend $35+ on each one. Imagine a tv with no ports but the ability to pull the souls of these roku, fire, google tv, apple tv and probably a microsoft one soon.
I want the tv to manage all of my bluetooth connections and hot swap to the appropriate “OS” when i reach for each bluetooth remote/controller.
This minimizes the role of the tv itself to a thin layer of sensor/peripheral management and routing the video feed to the oppropriate OS
It's one of the things that doesn't make sense anymore, like cars with manual transmission. Smarts in smart TV might cost $25 per unit, but OEMs get paid for streaming service placements on remote / home screen and a cut of revenue if users sign up. Even without streaming functionality, TV would still need some smarts to display tuner/inputs/settings UI and it's cheaper to develop Android apps than go custom route. Plus even users who don't use smart functionality much like software updates and launching Netflix directly from TV remote.
So just get a TV based on features and don't connect to WiFi if you are not interested in smart functionality. Think of all the money you are saving by buying a high volume consumer product rather than a commercial display that goes for at least twice more.
I simply have NEVER connected the TV directly to the Internet - I have HDMI from other devices I trust more connected but that's it. I don't really watch any broadcast TV - instead it's either my own tape/DVD content or internet content available from other devices.
There are enough ethical violations by Samsung to NEVER trust them when it comes to internet anything. So just omit the connection.
Basically treat any TV today as a monitor and nothing more. Never make a buying decision based on any feature that isn't specifically monitor-related (e.g. only resolution matters; no other whiz-bang features should enter into the decision).
Try this. You’ll likely pay more but your TV won’t be subsidized by ads and such.
New LG's commercial line (Hospitality) is mostly a smart TV with no apps visible (no option to launch it). They just disable apps on the cheaper version.
My non-smart LG commercial TV has an Ethernet port. As a curious person, I connected to the network. It started pinging LG servers. I was able to launch Youtube on the TV from the network. Once the app is open, I could use remote to control it.
I think my 50" Sony didn't nag me to connect it to Wifi. (I bought it to use as a computer monitor.)
I did connect it to Wifi after a few days, because sometimes I use the smart features.
One thing to consider: If you aren't looking for broadcast TV, use a computer monitor.
If Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio for GPL violations in their TVs, you will probably be able to install open source Linux distros with Kodi on any Vizio TV and soon afterwards lots of other smart TV vendors will be similar. There is nothing wrong with a smart TV, the problem is allowing the vendor operating system to remain on the device after you purchase it.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
I have this Sony TV and it can be used cleanly without any Smart features or connecting it to the Internet. I turn it on, use the "input" button on remote control to switch between different HDMI ports and that's it. Haven't been exposed to any Smart features, nags, etc. for as long as I remember.
https://www.sony.com/ng/electronics/televisions/a9g-series
I have a TCL with Roku that I was able to turn into a dumb display for my AppleTV
Turned off networking and did factory reset
The biggest annoyance was the Roku “smart” remote needing new batteries every couple of weeks
- Sceptre brand dumb TV (lower-end displays, available through Walmart)
- "Monitor" as intended for computers (usually not that large, but this is changing)
- "Commercial display" as intended for restaurants or hotels (often still have some smart features but more controllable; usually fairly expensive). Example https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-displays
- Projector
We need a circuits geek to create a website documenting “how to disable your tv’s wifi antenna.”
Name it TVLobotomy.
Sceptre sells dumb TVs. Often these are available for order through Wal-Mart's web site.
If you want this feature, NEVER use a smart TV. Especially VIZIO. (Can take screen shots of any screen tied to their network)
LG pipes all visual data back to south korea.
Philips is just incompetent...
So the answer is, decline all TOS agreements, do not ever connect the TV to internet, use HDMI inout from external devices (not USB)...
---
And even still, this can't be trusted...
But the fact is, that all the externals (the Rokus, Gbits, fire, who cares) -- they are all doing the same tracking.
The benefit though is that all the externals ONLY have access (AFAIK at this point) to the stream data/account.
In the case of VIZIO, they are actually watching your literal video screen and monitoring the fingerprint of the RGB layout of the image on screen in a grid and comparing it to the DB they build and ingest against their lib... and if they dont recognize it, they can still take offline screenshots and compare those to channels they ingest for content outside of cable streams...
Basically at the end of the day, you TV is as much as a source as is anything else...
Source.
A TV is just a monitor with a TV tuner. Right now, TV tuners and smart features are almost universally found together. But if you are using an external video source (especially if it's not OTA tv in the first place, so you don't need a tuner), you can just use a monitor (or “commercial display”), instead of a “TV”.
I bought a low end RCA 4K tv from Wal-Mart at the start of the pandemic that has no smart features. It does have a USB port but doesn't appear to be able to do anything with it. There's nothing online. The on screen menus are sluggish but if you don't change settings often, that's not much of an issue.
It's expensive, but if you get an AppleTV with the new remotes you can control the power/volume from that. Get any TV you like and never set it up, switch it to an HDMI input, and put the remote in a drawer.
You could also do the same with FireTV, Chrome, or Roku, but those all have ads.
I'm really sickened after reading this thread that the basic answer here is, "no."
Some BenQ projectors, including the just-released X3000i I recently picked up, consign the "smart" portion to an Android TV HDMI+USB stick that plugs in inside the body of the projector. I just never plugged mine in and the projector works fine.
I'm in the process of looking for a good 4k TV. I'm not worried about the smart features in the TV. I plan on using an outboard device to control the TV. In my case, a Chromecast. If I don't put the smart TV on my network, it can't phone home. Of course Google knows what I watch. But if I were more paranoid, I could put a DVD player and OTA antenna on the TV and still not network it.
Because many users will hook up their smart TV, the makers of those sets get subsidized, in the same way bloatware end up on Windows laptops and non-Pixel Androids. I'll take the w re the price.
My panasonic non-android (something based on firefox-os I think) has a setting to not load related online-data when switch to a channel until explicity pushing a button to do so. That option was added in the most recent update.
However, it also has some built-in netflix/prime/youtube/... apps. And I have seen at least some network traffic that seemed realated to those, even though I never started them. Maybe just loading updates, maybe leaking data. I don't know. I didn't check since the last update though.
It's not perfect, but seems much less bad than most others.
Panasonic OLEDs are it i think. I have a FZ800 (there are more recent updates of this model) and it’s perfect. No ads anywhere. Turns on (everything ready to use) within 5 seconds, picture is amazing because OLED, has no bezel so no branding. It is technically a smart tv because it has Netflix and other downloadable apps but it works perfectly fine without internet or using any of these apps: for the features that matter it behaves like a regular non smart tv without any obnoxious interface, just plain blue text on grey boxes.
Horrifying realization -
Once maximum customer penetration from WiFi is reached (not all consumers will add TVs to the network), these companies will bake in cheap cellular transceivers and contract directly with wireless carriers without any ability to opt out. They probably won't be used for actual content - just low bandwidth spying and ads.
It's what the early kindles used (called "whispernet"). Soon a lot of products may bake little radios in to spy on us.
Consumer spy tech will start to resemble cold war techniques.
I've just started shopping for a dumb TV/monitor that's 4K, HDR, maybe 35-55 inches, built-in good-enough speakers (like my 2009 Sony Bravia TV), power switch on&off based on HDMI from PS4/PS5 (for simplicity).
It'd be nice to find genuine, well-informed reviews of dumb-TVs, and an up-to-date holistic look at the current options. (Most of what I've found so far are sketchy SEO sites, farming random Amazon Affiliate kickbacks with low-cost content.)
I happened to be in a in- construction facility being built for a F100 company and saw they were using Samsung "digital signage" TVs for the meeting rooms and lobbies. Fairly certain these TVs will never connect to the internet outside the company firewall so they must be designed for that.
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/
Philips Momentum series, technically game monitors, but do come in 55 inch. Note these do not have any DVB tuner, so you’ll always need a separate mediabox to watch TV.
I have a sony bravia one. It is currently unplugged from the network and solely connected through my playstation. Admittedly i just passed the buck to sony through another device, but i’m quite happy using the ps5 (and previously ps4) as a media centre, it has netflix and all the others, plus plex, and that connects to my pi plex server + NAS drive, through which you can put on any content you like
I use a KAGIS U43IP7UHD for my XBox1X (games + Netflix) and recently had the "television license inspector" drop by.
The unit does not have any TV receiving hardware from the factory and therefore excludes me from paying a license here in Ireland.
The guy was both surprised and impressed I'd researched the topic!
If your budget permits, I recommend getting an LG OLED in your desired size and a good AV receiver. Connect your preferred streaming box (we like the AppleTV) to the receiver and use the streaming box remote to control everything.
We have this setup and the LG has never been connected to the internet and its remote went back in the box after initial calibration and setup.
I recently purchased a Sony A90J after owning a “dumb” TV for over a decade. I was pleased to see that there was a “TV only” option that did not require me to use any of the “Smart” TV features.
In fact, given I can control the TV through my Apple 4k device I never have to experience any of the televisions interface (apart from settings and inputs)
I have a Samsung TV with “smart” features but only connect it to the Internet when using a streaming app. I still use cable for TV so I don’t use builtin apps often.
Most of the time the TV is set to unconfigured WiFi so it can’t reach the Internet. I temporarily switch it to Ethernet when I need Internet connectivity.
Or is there a process to turn a "smart tv" into a dumb tv? (per brand/make/model)
Although it is only 31" and appears to be back-ordered just about everywhere, the Sony BVM-HX310 is a straight monitor with top-notch rendition. It is about $30k, however.
For about $14k, the 32" Sony PVM-X3200 is perhaps more realistic.
I think the alternative question is:
Is there a TV on the market that is easy to convert into a dumb TV?
For example; I am happy to use just Apple TV. Is there a low-risk way to cripple my TCL so all it does is allow for input via Apple TV and not run other process?
I have an LG SmartTV that I use "offline" (watch streaming services via a Playstation connected to it).
Curiously, I've connected it once to try the bundled apps (e.g. Netflix) and the Playstation ones had much better picture quality.
I wonder if any of the smart TVs out there can be easily rooted and turned into something like an RPi with an attached display.
I’m always disappointed that the average LCD display post 2010-ish couldn’t be turned into an X terminal.
The solution is to buy a large 4K monitor rather than a TV and then control the TV side of it yourself using MythTV or similar:
https://www.mythtv.org/
When I received my TV I took it out of it's box removed 12 screws on the back and unplugged the wifi module. Now I just have it connected to my old laptop running linux with a bluetooth keyboard.
https://swedx.se has Digital Sinage products without Smart features - or tuner. Add what you need only. Also comes with touch.
Commercial panels are a great option, although, can be more expensive.
Just don’t connect it to your WiFi, and instead use an Apple TV. It’s far better than any built-in UI and I like the airplay integration as well.
A few weeks ago, I bought a Sceptre (Komodo) 40-inch LED HDTV from Amazon. No smart features at all. I've been satisfied with it so far.
Yes, Sceptre. I got it from the last hn thread. I have an Apple TV hooked up, it's great. The audio is mediocre so get a sound bar.
Don't listen to these people saying to buy a monitor. Look at Sceptre TVs. They sell dumb panel TVs and they are great.
I've owned multiple generations of LG, and without setting up Internet, it works just fine without any nagging.
Soon they will ship TVs with sim cards to track those hard to reach tech worker / drug dealer market
They’re called digital displays
I ignore the smart TV software entirely and stream everything through XBox apps.
Computer monitors and projectors are still free of the nonsense.
Yes, check out Swedx signage display.
Buy smart tv an remove wifi module
Yes, it's called a monitor.
Get a nice Gaming monitor that doesn't do much other than display usually and have built in speakers usually.
Just disconnect from wifi
Yes, it's called any TV you don't give internet access.
@dang Can we create a list of reposts that get auto killed? This post and “does advertising even work?” are reposted seemingly every month.