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I want my smart Android TV to be dumb again (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 2 months ago by GreenEngineering3475 to c/google

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Smart TVs are all well and good, but when ad-focused update lobotomized my new-ish Android TV, we hit a problem.

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[+] givesomefucks -12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Other than that, my requirements were pretty simple: no fancy hardware for gaming or video upscaling, and I don’t watch enough TV to justify expensive OLED, so a 4K LCD with some HDR capabilities would suit.

Dude bought a 4k TV while trying to get as little upscaling as possible and is upset it's laggy?

Most media is still 1080, and a 4k TV is going to upscale it...

Buying one without paying attention to upscaling ability, means you're going to get a TV with low processing power, and all the menus will be laggy for the same reason.

He could have saved a lot of money buying a 1080 tv, got the same picture, and have more responsive TV because it's not always struggle to upscale to 4k

But he didn't know what he was doing and now he wants to blame everyone but himself.

But if anyone wants to make a smart TV dumb again, just plug a source into it and use that and it's the exact same as a dumb tv.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

To your last point, I think it still snapshots ever 10 seconds or so and hash what it has and send a it. I was trying to find the other post on this which described it and failed.

I did find this article, which makes a SmartTV look like a surveillance machine, even with the HDMI input used.

Fielding: Smart TVs gather an enormous amount of data about their usage and their immediate environment (including other devices connected to them, such as speakers, consoles and media storage), which is sent back to the manufacturer. Some of this data is used to troubleshoot and improve the device’s software or media services, but much of it is also used to profile the TV’s users—their viewing habits can be used to make inferences about their politics, professional and economic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic identity, social activity, purchasing potential, values and beliefs, all of which helps advertising networks know who to target with what.

...

Lewis:* *While the concern is apparent, there currently isn’t a concrete example of a TV manufacturer snooping on its users. In 2015, Samsung landed in hot water regarding an unfortunately worded statement on monitoring living room conversations, stumbling into a communications crisis. Samsung acted quickly, cleaning up and re-wording the statement. However, the immediate outcry was a solid indication of fears around public monitoring. Any proven example of Orwellian-esque monitoring would prove catastrophic for the manufacturer involved.

Kelso: A few years ago, according to the FBI, app developers Vizio, LG, and Samsung were caught snooping on viewers. The FTC had to step in and stop them. Also, the CIA and MI5 were able to access information on smart TVs and listen in on private conversations using the camera and microphones on these devices.

Fielding: Surveillance functions and equipment are built in to almost all smart devices and marketed as “features” to make the user’s life easier. Audio recordings generated from the TV listening for its “wake word” are sent back to manufacturers so they can train their speech recognition algorithms. That’s a deliberate design choice, but it can mean that people’s private conversations are revealed to the manufacturer's employees as a result.

[–] givesomefucks 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And you can get around all of that by not giving the TV a direct internet connection...

Without that, it can gather everything it wants, it just can't send it anywhere.

Because you'd be using the source, there's no benefit to connecting the TV to internet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

True. And that's worth doing.

The IT guy in me wonders if they are devious enough to start using Ethernet over HDMI for other internet connected devices. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

[–] Alk 0 points 2 months ago

Most new movies are in 4k and I'd say half of all new shows are in 4k. What are you talking about?