Instead of ‘splurging’ on a dumb tv bc they’re more expensive now thanks to the data sompanies sell off of smart tvs I was considering getting a smart tv and dumbing it down. Is the way to do this never connecting it to the internet? And is that the only way?
manufacturer may very well integrate add and update endpoints so that it’s rather hard to distinguish. For example, say Samsung decides to serve adds and updates. Doing so through https://serives.samsung.com/{ads,updares} they leave you with 0 handle on what’s going on, since the only thing your routers and proxies can see is “samsung.com” and differentiator is “hidden” after that. So TLDR; is: you either allow internet access or you do not, there’s no “a little bit”
Good point! There would be “temporarily” though, which might work for updates. Of course, then it might just serve you the same ads forever that it pulls along with its update.
If you’re using it as a dumb TV, unless it shipped some critical firmware issue that prevents core functions from working (like HDMI input, switching inputs, etc) there shouldn’t ever be a reason to update it out of the box.
I’ve used smart TV’s for 10+ years now and figured this out of the awful experience from the first one. Never had any issues with the ones I’ve never connected to the Internet.
Newer TVs are getting even worse. If you don’t connect them to the internet and don’t agree to their TOS, you get a less useful tv. They purposely give you the worst experience they can without drawing adverse attention from regulators.
I am about to set up a pi-hole in my network. Would that help with this scenario?
It depends. Using OPs scenario, if all data, ads and updates, are served from data.samsung.com, then the pi hole can’t help. But if ads are served from ads.samsung.com and updates from updates.samsung.com, then you can blacklist the ads while still receiving the updates.
My experience with a Vizio is that the pi is blocking a lot of the “phoning home” connections, but the ads seem to be integrated with the software that allows me to use apps, so I still see them when I use the TV’s apps. More and more though, I’m using the HDMI port with my HTPC.
Generally, no. Manufacturers just bake in a DNS server setting and it will only fail over if it can’t get to it.
not at all
This is certainly possible from a technical perspective, but it’s unlikely that it would happen in reality. Consumer product companies are invariably going to want to outsource ads to a third party, not host them from their own systems. It’s also going to be a pretty small percentage of customers that would bother to do this, and they are probably not the ones that are likely to make purchases based on ads anyways.