Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?

I just rooted my LG in about 30 seconds [using claude] and disabled all the junk. can also run own apps / homebrew.

I think the answer now changes with ability to root some of these tvs.

Still, might be best to run an android tv box yourself, and plug hdmi.

You could just use something like adguard to block DNS requests for telemetry endpoints.

Anybody has experience with TCL and Spectre? I'm seeing them a lot, even saw one really big TCL TV in a local shop and loved the colors and the FPS, but no idea how good are they really, are they longer-lasting, are they annoying if you don't give them network access etc.

buy a big monitor and hook whatever you want to it. samsung sells them and theyre about the same price as a tv, if not cheaper

Well, I have CRTs in most of the rooms in my home. That's because of an unrelated condition for which I refuse to be treated, but they are great for privacy!

LG Ultragear 48GQ900-B

Ok I'm cheating, it's a monitor. Only it's the size of a TV and there's a remote.

But no tuner and no ARC.

But I don't care.

Zero smarts, boots in a millisecond, auto-wakes on device power-up, input switching just works, no half-baked HDMI-CEC hell. No wifi. No network. Nothing to spy on me because it's a FUCKING MONITOR and THAT'S IT.

https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-48gq900-b-gaming-monitor

A solid late 80s RCA Colortrak 2000 with down-converter is a solid choice and excellent conversation piece. Hardwood finish, or go for the full console experience. Best part is it can't call anything.

Samsung Frame is esthetically pleasing, high picture quality.

just pick a PC screen with TV sizes, although they might max out at 55 inches. displayspecifications.com has many hits for what has no FRC then.

Just open up whatever you buy and pull the networking components, microphones, and covert cameras. Leverage HDMI after that. Problem solved.

I recently was stressed about the same & ended up buying an LG C6, sticking it on an isolated VLAN, rooting it, then just letting it hit my NAS for jellyfin.

That old kind that just had a VCR slot on the front.

Or a projector against a wall.

Don't connect it to a network, buy a mini pc and install Linux on it. Get a Logitech k400 keyboard with an integrated touchpad to control it remotely

Find an old projector TV

Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.

Buy something used that was manufactured before ca 2018. Or get a projector that doesn't have any smart stuff built in.

You can use a Sony Bravia connected to an Apple TV without connecting the Sony to the internet.

What my own research led me to: https://www.viewsonic.com/global/products/commercial-display... (OS-Free Commercial Display, all sizes available) + HTPC.

Digital signage displays are dumb PC screens in giant sizes, like you are looking for.

At this point I'd just hooking up a gaming monitor (a very large one) with separate speakers and low-spec computer to run it.

I researched a bit for business displays from Samsung and these also have enshittified with "smart" features, so it lost my trust as well.

I'd recommend a search, this gets asked at least once a year

It's like every 3 months someone asks some variant of this question.

Read a paperbook

I love this: Just hook up your Apple TV for streaming.

My honest answer at this point is none.

A monitor. You will lose some controls over color & clarity (motion smoothing). But it will provide the best “dumb TV” experience.

I use my monitor with a fire TV stick and it renders very well. LG 4k panel.

Tvs can themselves have their privacy improved by never connecting it to WIFI, except, maybe for software updates, if needed (rare).

The smarts you connect to the TV can vary.

Apple Ts manage things in some good ways.

NVidia Shields are good in others for Android TV.

The Android TV platform is likely more customizable (check youtube the past few weeks) to get it how you want.

Last, but not least, some poeple may just hook up a web browser to the TV and then contain that.

Avoid Vizio at all costs!

I recently picked one up at Sam's Club. Since my use was only to display an external HDMI source, I never even configured Wifi. Unfortunately, they're now wise to this. If it detects its been offline for ten or so start-ups, the TV will 'helpfully' force you into the Wifi config workflow on the next start. It seems to keep an internal counter in flash memory which nothing but a factory reset will clear. In my tests, it seemed like it can be kept offline forever but at the cost of manually dismissing the Wifi config workflow with three clicks on the remote every ~10 power-ons.

The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature. That feature does work as expected with any internal streaming source but external sources must first be manually selected with the remote after each power on (also undocumented in the manual).

I figured this out because I bought this small TV to be a wall-mounted screen in the dedicated bathroom of our home theater room. It's only job is to turn on while someone is in the little bathroom and display a copy what's on the main 150" projector screen in the next room, then turn off when they leave. The on/off is handled by a motion sensor and standard Home Assistant automation but after power on it correctly shows the Last Selected external HDMI source for 1 second, then blanks the screen. The source is already selected and working but being blacked out until you manually re-select the same source with the remote (only if it's external). This is clearly an undocumented anti-pattern added specifically to prevent the TV being used unattended as a display screen, picture frame, digital sign etc. Why? Because Vizio (now owned by WalMart) doesn't get rev share if it's: 1) Not online, and 2) Only displaying external sources. That's why it demands manual "proof-of-life" before it'll grudgingly deliver the basic functionality it claims on the box.

This made me angry - and the TV was otherwise the perfect size and feature set for my use case. So I programmed an ESP32 with an IR emitter so that every time the TV powers on it sends the remote presses to manually clear the "Please Connect Internet" message and re-select the already-selected external HDMI. Very annoying to be forced to figure this out but now it works fine and no one even sees the annoying messages as they're already gone before by the time we enter and see the screen. So, fuck Vizio :-). Although, I'm pretty sure almost all current consumer TVs now sell all your data exactly the same. The only differences may be the depth of dark patterns they deploy to resist offline usage.

To be fair, aside from all the super evil dark patterns, it's a shockingly good quality small TV (24-inch) for $88. Although it's obviously not a high-end display (no native HDR or 24fps), the chipset does do a decent job tone mapping external HDR (and HDR10) sources to SDR and it does proper 3:2 pull-down to display 24 frame external sources at 60fps - which very few TVs in this size do well (or at all). This is why I kept it and spent the time 'fixing' it. Of course, this is only because the TV is subsidized by the $35-$60 avg yearly revenue TV manufacturers reportedly can collect from advertising, app install payments, rev shares and selling all your viewing data. For $88 at local retail, it's probably being sold at a small loss. What's sad is I would have paid double that for the same TV without the dark patterns (in fact, I did buy and return two 24" TVs before this one for $160 and $200 but they couldn't even display external HDR or 24fps sources at all - which was a requirement since this secondary display has to display sources configured for the main projector).

Honestly, anything pre-2020.

Use dumb.tv

Just get any old TV and use the HDMI input and don’t connect it to the internet. The fears of it phoning home anyway even when you don’t configure wifi are overblown (almost no TVs can do this), as are the privacy implications. Nobody cares that you watch Severance and MCU movies. It’s sort of like people who tape over their laptop camera but leave the mic alone, as if 86400 photos of your face are somehow private and sensitive but all of the conversations in the room are not.