alt Hacker NewsI'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi password.
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My recent TCL TV forces you agree to Google's terms and conditions, and you aren't even provided the text of what you're agreeing to unless you connect the TV to the internet.
It felt illegal.
My 2 year old LG complained every time I turned it on that I hadn't hooked it to the internet. No way to disable it.
Now that it's connected, it shows an ad at that time, in the same way. Can't win.
I think they, or at least samsungs. will happily use open wifi if they can find it.
Source, my open test network and a neighbors tv that keeps trying to phone home with it.
Yup - my LG (~6 months old) works fine without my ever having given it a WiFi password.
This is what the article recommends by the way.
i have a vizio which I opened up and removed the WiFi module. it never complains about the internet now.
My Vizio wouldn't go past the "connect to internet" screen on first boot.
A guest logged into Wi-Fi on a Vizio of mine and there was conveniently no way to disconnect/forget it without a factory reset back to motion smoothing hell.
I have a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV. We never use anything mode of the TV. (Then again, I have zero streaming services, so perhaps I am not who this article is for.)
My LG TV is pretty dumb since the only button it has is "connect to media server" in local network.
some will yell at you with a notification until you give in and connect it.
Yeah I have a couple of recent Samsung OLEDs and they're fine without an internet connection despite reports that they wouldn't be. If I press one of the annoying streaming service buttons on the remote it'll give me a setup popup which needs to be dismissed, otherwise they work fine, albeit without any built in streaming support.
I'd read reports that Q-Symphony (audio from the TV speakers and soundbar simultaneously) wouldn't work, but it does.
I stuck an OSMC (https://osmc.tv/) box to the back of both of them so they can play stuff from my NAS. They're not the cheapest solution and I realise Kodi/XBMC on which they're based isn't everyone's jam (I grew up with XBMC on an Xbox so it is very much mine) - but they play everything, have wifi, HDMI-CEC, integrated RF remote, and work out of the box.
Model numbers if anyone cares: Samsung QE65S95C, Samsung QE77S95F. I believe S95, S90 and S85 (at least up to F) are all very similar so they should all work but ofc ymmv.