Just had my old dumb LG TV die after 9 years of working just dandy. I lack the desire to root around for a dead capacitor so I am currently in the market for an approximate replacement to act as the display for my Linux media center in my living room. I figure this is the right crowd for finding a non-invasive TV so my Linux machine can be the brains. I trust modern Tvs less and less.
Desired features
55"
Non terrible audio
As dumb of hardware/software as reasonably achievable
If you really want a true dumb TV, you should look into the commercial TVs
Personally I just get any TV and don’t connect it to the internet. I disable any popup interfaces/home menus as much as I can on the TV so I just turn it on and it goes to HDMI1 and that is all the TV’s interface needs to do.
I also disable alot of the picture altering features as well. My LG TV has some true motion crap that just made everything a little bit off.
For the most part the handful of TVs I have tried just work.
This is what I do. My Samsung TV can be set to turn on to a specific input, and the “smart” features never get in the way; similarly, it remains permanently disconnected from my home network.
I’ve heard of them searching for open wifi networks and using them. If I had one and cared, I’d bet the wifi card was removable like in a laptop, and I’d open it up and remove it.
But I own a dumb old CCFL TV that I got for free, and I’m going to use it until I can’t any more.
I recall that the first-gen TVs with integrated Amazon Fire TV had the baseband chip directly on the mainboard like other SMPs. I also do not recall any service that would connect to open networks.
However, that’s a single datapoint from sketchy memory of something I worked on over six years ago.
I have heard of this as well. But I don’t believe I have seen any reliable source actually confirming it. I vaguely remember some posted about it on Reddit years ago saying their Samsung tv would do it. That said it is clearly a possibility that the TV could do it if programed so it is good to keep that possibility in mind. Might be worth running a few tests if your worried about it.
The good news is Open WiFi hotspots are very rare, so unless you live next to a cafe or something that provides free WiFI you don’t really have much to worry about.
I have never seen a removable WiFi card on a TV board. They are always integrated directly on the main board itself along with the CPU RAM and other components. Just look up TV Main board on ebay and see if you can find any WiFi cards on the photos.
I did exactly this with my Sony BRAVIA Eavesdropper Pro ™.
I despise both the privacy violations and the “soap opera effect.”