As a proud member of the LGTV community (yes I'm making 2 of those kinds of jokes back to back, fight me), and an occasional reddit user, I'm both horrified by the notion of getting this update and thrilled people are still using old.reddit.com. The new layout, which isn't even new anymore, still falls very short for it I'm looking something up and it's buried in a comment thread where ctrl-f can't find it.
The management of reddit doesn't seem to use reddit at all and they seem to be unaware of the fact that a) the "new" layout just isn't that great, and b) their mobile app is terrible.
They killed third-party apps, which were way better than their garbage app and they don't seem to realize how much it annoys their users.
I believe they're full aware of all of these things, & they simply don't care because they know that millions of people will continue to use Reddit in spite of all this.
No, the subreddit has applied custom css to do that. It's the mildly infuriating subreddit. There's also an image of a hair visible on widescreen monitors, to make you think there's a hair on your display.
I only use old.reddit.com when I am forced to sulk back over there and actually log in. To just look around I just use some redlib frontend.
The numerous layers of attempted monetization schemes since 2016ish hilariously touted as "features" are sort of band-aided on top of each other on new reddit in a way that makes it the worst possible way to display the information. It's like a terrible UI challenge.
I noticed a day or two ago they quietly turned on the 'show new reddit as default' preference option, it was still possible to change default back but they won't stop pushing it.
I have poor eyesight and I don’t support this practice of linking old reddit on HN. Old website is unusable for me. I have to load the link in the native app to read it.
ctrl+F doesn’t work anyway as the comments are also buried in a “load more comments” on old reddit too. New website and app have a search comments field.
I have shitty eyesight and old is the only version that’s usable to me because text zooming works far better in the old layout. Are you using a screen reader by any chance?
Get the OLED panels from whoever makes them wholesale, spend on a beautiful enclosure / design, add just enough software to calibrate the image and switch between HDMI inputs with HDMI-CEC. Sell a premium soundbar as an add-on instead of including speakers in the base device.
I think a brand like Sonos could make a killing in this market selling a premium dumb tv to high end customers.
Look at how much markup Samsung adds to their standard LCD panel for a decent enclosure - it’s like $600-$1000 markup to get the Frame tv, which has a mid panel, JUST because the enclosure is actually nice/inoffensive.
The hitch is that it would be more expensive, making it a "premium" product and limiting the market. Smart TV pricing typically includes subsidies based on the assumed data sales from each user over the lifetime of the device.
Yes I am suggesting a premium product, there’s at least $600-$1000 more the market is willing to pay just for aesthetics based on Samsung Frame tv, which is a premium product with mid-range LCD component quality. It’s priced about $200 underneath Samsung’s top of the line OLED
I really doubt the user data for a smart tv user is all that valuable. Meta has infinitely more rich data and an entire tightly optimized ad system and is on a platform where people commonly make large purchases and makes around $10 per user per year.
We need Framework-style company making local/owner-first everything, including fridges and washing machines today. There’s no guarantee that your next coffee machine or teapot won’t come with AI talking to you.
It would not be cheap. All that ad crap represents revenue, and all those features represent sales volume for feature-conscious customers. Without volume you don’t have supplier leverage on pricing, or the ability to get onto big box store shelves, reducing volume further.
I for one would be willing to pay a premium for what GP described. I’d honestly pay twice as much for a TV with working HDMI CEC, some simple picture adjustment controls, and a really really good panel. Nothing else, please.
What I want is simply a well-made monitor with a single HDMI input and built-in speakers. Make it as flat as you want.
The rest is almost unnecessary in this day and age.
If everyone were to do this, it would open a bigger market for a well-made upgradable combo smart device and air TV tuner that the TV manufacturers could produce if they wanted to.
I’d like this as well, except I think more than one HDMI port would be useful, for something like a game console. Maybe the screen itself could have 1 to keep it simple, with an optional HDMI switch that could integrate cleanly.
I think it wouldn't be very expensive to make a TV frame platform that could have user-installable screens and a simple power/display module.
Probably wouldn't be too much more than the default cost of a TV to sell the screens, and users could select what technology they are willing to pay for, LED, QD, MiniLED, OLED, etc.
The problem comes from things like upscaling, color tuning, refresh rates and resolution handling. That would require a custom compute module, and the module would need data on the attached screen that the screen itself cannot likely provide.
If you had access to a TV manufacturer who would be willing to work with you to create this platform, you might be able to start shipping TVs for only a few million dollars, but you need the money and the connections to make it happen.
I imagine you would need to go to Shenzhen, find a manufacturer, talk them into working with you, put a lot of money down upfront, and then hire programmers and UX designers and hardware designers to craft the perfect TV, design a unique TV brain module and have it manufactured, standardize the system so that other manufacturers can get in on the platform, make thousands of extra parts, and then hire a marketing team to let purchasers around the world know of the new product, pay for UL certification, standardize some sort of testing system so the panels can be calibrated to the brain...
It's a lot.
Although, now that I think about it, the calibration could be done with a set top camera system like the one used by those companies that sell RGB LED systems for TV backlighting, so if that were bundled in by default then it would do a lot to simplify the calibration and add a cool standout feature to the TV.
These TVs would be pricey to start with, like Sony Bravia pricey, so you're never going to move a lot of product. And you'll have to deal with tariffs, pushback from TV manufacturers, cheapskates, rude customers, and the risk that if you start to approach success then some other TV manufacturers with deep pockets might use their brand name power to make a competitor to blow you out of the water for a few years until your company goes bankrupt and then stop competing with you.
The only way to prevent that would be to open-source the entire platform, and even then you would be in a constant dogfight just to stay alive.
Despite all of that I say go for it. If you can deliver a 65" OLED Open Source TV with customizable inputs for under $3,000 then assuming I'm not financially worse off than I am right now then I'll buy one.
I too am irritated by their software but they do make nice hardware. I’d have their headphones if I trusted their software, the hardware is perfect IMO. Open and upgradable is not really their forte though.
I’ve used some of my friends more recent year TVs and even if they’re not networked the UX is just horrible. One Samsung model eliminated the “input” button on the remote and forces you to go through “Home” to select inputs in a tiled menu festooned with quick tips and baked in ads for Samsung stuff like SmartThings. The worst part is that if it detects an input is connected to a game console, then it moves that input to the Gaming tab, which is chock full of tiles for shit like Solitare, Samsung game store, etc. WTF.
It’s like every interaction is viewed as an opportunity to sell attention or get you to mis-click on an ad.
I would buy this in a heartbeat. I am profoundly bothered by the slop software that is on every TV these days. I keep joking that as tech invades more and more corners of our lives, we will at some point in the future be helping our parents with their couches by saying "Have you tried restarting your couch?"
Don't get me wrong, tech is great when it's a value-add, but TV tech has gotten out of control.
I don't know why my sense of ethical outrage over the cancerous spread of this worthless garbage technology doesn't extend so hard to LG in this. But I've finally just hit the wall with Microsoft. Between all the forced account sign-ins, ads, random reboots and updates that aren't for the purpose of securing the OS...I'm done.
I haven't seen this level of anti-consumer nonsense from Microsoft since the late 90s when lots of circles called them Micro$oft.
It's a shame since Satya Nadella came in and made a lot of right moves. Support for Linux, open source, etc. I could stretch myself to forgive the other stuff as some kind of wrong headed thinking about a cloud-first strategy. But in the last few years that productive pivot stopped and the company moved back into high-risk money grab steps.
My current daily driver is a Windows machine, but my last few builds around the house have all been some kind of Linux. Last year I moved my home server infrastructure over. I kept a windows VM around for a few things but it ultimately corrupted itself and was replaced by a Linux VM that's been chugging along just fine.
I think when I rebuild my home desktop sometime next year Windows gets relegated to a "run when needed" VM. I've really only kept it around for games and a few other Windows only software but those days are fast fading thanks to numerous efforts by Valve and others and a fallback VM for other stuff works fine in my experience elsewhere.
I think I don't have the same concerns about LG because the relationship with me as the consumer seems different somehow, and I simply expect less from them?
I think them sneaking in and turning on that LivePlus feature is far more nefarious. The fact they can track whatever you watch and do to serve you personalized ads is insane.
Using such a TV as a computer monitor sounds dicey. There will eventually be a data breach of the uploaded screenshots, assuming they aren't able to fingerprint entirely on device.
Our LCD TV is almost 2 decades old. If we upgrade, I can guarantee we won't be connecting it to the Internet. Also none of our smart appliances are connected to the Internet.
You won’t get a choice; they will come with a 5G connection that doesn’t ask you, doesn’t notify you, doesn’t cost you, and has no user-visible toggle. Like cars do these days. And a mesh-networking fallback so if you’re in a city and your neighbour also has one of the similar brand it will connect through their internet instead.
I am actually surprised at how well our second TV (Samsung) still looks [0] after 17 years. We inherited from my sister who bought it for some ridiculous amount of cash for the time. It’s heavy and runs hot, but doesn’t look any worse than cheap TVs of the same size today.
I think you underestimate how shameless the vendors can be. I imagine in a couple of years the TVs will refuse to function unless periodically connected to the Internet to get updated ads and an updated firmware so that you can't jailbreak them...
It is interesting. Arstechnica just had an article about how to get a dumb tv, which I saw on google news. I want to believe there is a tide turning among non-hn peoples ( I tried various phrasings and neither worked in terms of exclusion ).
I just read that, too. Its interesting and somewhat depressing that the best option for the last 10+ years according to ars and this linked reddit thead, and comments in this thread all suggesting Apple TV. I hope to see a viable foss option soon.
There are options like LibreELEC (Jeff Geerling did a video on setup a year ago[0]). However, these options are rarely plug and play. It also doesn’t let people simply download and use apps from the popular streaming services. They tend to rely on pirated content or someone who is willing to rip all their own physical media for more convenient access. FOSS has always had an issue with that last 10% of the user experience, and the services to make things pleasant to use, which I think really hurts mainstream adoption.
I wonder how this went down. "Hey LG, this is the Microsofts. Just had an idea how we could give your entire customer base the middle finger, wanna hear it?"
Does this link now work for LG TVs again? I rooted mine about four years go, so no annoying AI firmware updates, but I remember there was an update to the LG webOS that prevented the exploit that allowed rootmy.tv to work.
If rootmy.tv is working again for modern LG TVs, I'll run out and buy another one.
Site shows known exploits and known vulnerable versions based on model. I don’t think there’s an exploit for anything new in box… and even if there was, it would be treated like an 0day and LG would patch. Your best bet would be to subscribe to some notification for a new film and go out and buy a new LG that week.
Just did that yesterday because it disables updates. I had stopped updating and disconnected my TV from the Internet completely in 2021 in fear that an update will bring ads, and in hope that a jailbreak will come around eventually.
As a reminder, turn off the "Live Plus" thing on your LG TV. This "option" makes your LG TV spy on you, tracking and reporting what you watch based on the image that is shown on the TV.
You need to go to Settings -> All Settings -> General -> System -> Additional Settings to make sure the "Live Plus" option is OFF.
Check it periodically, as it sometimes turns itself back on again after updates.
The enshittification of our world is beyond words.
What is legitimately the expected use case for Copilot on a TV?
TVs are for consuming video. As far as I know, Copilot doesn't generate videos yet, and it certainly won't be possible or cheap enough to generate anything on the level of TV shows or movies any time soon. So are they expecting people will sit in their living room home theater to... chat with Copilot... instead of doing it on their phone?
I genuinely can't come up with any realistic use case where it would be convenient or useful to use Copilot on a TV. It feels utterly deranged that they would put it there.
I really use to like LG products, but between your link and this, I will never buy LG again. They were added to the same list Samsung was added to years ago.
It is like these companies do not want to sell what people really want, but only want to spy on you. The way things are going, it will be back to the old crt TVs, which you can still find used if you look hard enough.
Best 2nd hand TVs seem to be Panasonic Viera at least in my experience. You still need a set top box of some kind as they don’t understand H264 channels only mpeg (at least here in Australia). I like them because the back lighting is quite diffuse compared to other brands. Those plus a google TV streamer is more than good enough without laying out piles of cash or subjecting yourself to a smart TV.
TV industry's in a pathetic state when customers reasonably consider Apple TVs to be required included costs. In other news, my new 'smart' GE oven crashes roughly once each month into unresponsiveness for several hours. Where's an Apple Oven to save the day?
But the symbol above the tile tells me you could hide it from the UI. Which is often the case with... uhm... "sponsored" and thus unremovable software on these kind of devices.
Ah! I can finally chat to my TV by writing text to it and have it hallucinate shows that don't exist, or tell me I'm right about everything. Possibly even create PR for work from my LG smart TV, my boss will be pleased.
Is there a DNS filtering list anywhere that just blocks these firmware updates? That would be the easiest way to maintain dumbification without getting into hacking the software while still allowing streaming services.
It’s well worth the $100 or whatever to do all the streaming through an AppleTV. It’s the only streaming device I’ve used that doesn’t seem to constantly try to upsell random garbage.
This is the answer. AppleTV is worth its weight in gold. Well supported and quality apps, good connectivity options, enough horsepower for hardware decoding, and Apple has a good reputation for privacy (hello no ACR).
Till yourself get hacked because the connected-to-the-internet TV is running an insecure software version. We should legal action the hell out of such practices.
I use a tablet as smart TV. As a bonus it's portable around my house. I'll look into Linux tablets when Android will get too obnoxious to bear. Are they a thing? Basically I need VLC and not much more.
Yeah I would have switched from Apple to Samsung years ago but Samsung are agregious when it comes to control and privacy I don't want to have anything from them in the house.
The Korean car brands, Hyundai and Kia also have a terrible privacy story. They really do regard their customers as the product.
I only read the reddit comments down to the point where the slanted lines became mildly infuriating and switched new reddit to continue, and there only down to the "view more comments" button, and didn't see anyone saying what Copilot actually does on the TV.
The comments seemed to all be about the nefarious things people were speculating it could be doing, how to block smart TVs from updating, etc., and that's also how the comments here are going.
A bit of research suggests that it is just another app. If you don't open it it won't be doing anything. If you open it you can use it as a virtual assistant to do things like check the weather, search streaming service for content, and that sort of thing.
Why does a TV need Microsoft Copilot? While I think AI on the whole is a long-term net positive, but I just cannot understand Microsoft's insistence on putting Copilot everywhere. Even in places where it has no business being and against the user's wishes. I cannot remember the last time a company was this tone deaf. Why isn't Satya Nadella personally getting involved already? Seriously inexcusable.
As a proud member of the LGTV community (yes I'm making 2 of those kinds of jokes back to back, fight me), and an occasional reddit user, I'm both horrified by the notion of getting this update and thrilled people are still using old.reddit.com. The new layout, which isn't even new anymore, still falls very short for it I'm looking something up and it's buried in a comment thread where ctrl-f can't find it.
The management of reddit doesn't seem to use reddit at all and they seem to be unaware of the fact that a) the "new" layout just isn't that great, and b) their mobile app is terrible.
They killed third-party apps, which were way better than their garbage app and they don't seem to realize how much it annoys their users.
I thank them for that, because forcing me back to their horrid app broke me of my habit of hanging out there.
I’ve got six digits of karma, and I’d rather walk away than suffer through its awful UI.
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They don't care about their users, they trapped people in and people aren't migrating to alternatives in droves.
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I believe they're full aware of all of these things, & they simply don't care because they know that millions of people will continue to use Reddit in spite of all this.
They are doing everything they can to increase number of users before IPO.
Redit from a text based place, became a place driven by pictures (Can we call that "instagrami-zation"?).
The thing, is that discussion is what made reddit good. Now it's mostly low quality pictures, bots and comments written by marketers.
Then AI models and google search are trained on this garbage.
I wonder if someone will finally disrupt reddit
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I disagree, I think the new layout and the app are bad for Reddit power users. But for someone brand new to Reddit today they work fine.
And that’s the point. They care about boosting their user base, not satisfying power users.
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Not all third-party readers, the for-profit ones.
Red Reader still exists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedReader/
actually, when you share a reddit link, HN automatically converts it to old.reddit
And yet we cannot have dark mode, which would be a simple CSS tweak.
But I’m thankful for the other little things.
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Am I going mad or do some of those old.reddit comments slope downhill?
No, the subreddit has applied custom css to do that. It's the mildly infuriating subreddit. There's also an image of a hair visible on widescreen monitors, to make you think there's a hair on your display.
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r/mildlyinfuriating seems to have a custom stylesheet that is deliberately mildly infuriating.
I see it too. What the heck?
I only use old.reddit.com when I am forced to sulk back over there and actually log in. To just look around I just use some redlib frontend.
The numerous layers of attempted monetization schemes since 2016ish hilariously touted as "features" are sort of band-aided on top of each other on new reddit in a way that makes it the worst possible way to display the information. It's like a terrible UI challenge.
> thrilled people are still using old.reddit.com
I noticed a day or two ago they quietly turned on the 'show new reddit as default' preference option, it was still possible to change default back but they won't stop pushing it.
This happens every few months.
You should just use a browser extension to do it since those don’t rely on an auth state anyway.
I don’t understand how anyone in Reddit thinks that new layout is better.
If old.reddit ever goes away I’ll probably stop using it entirely.
Protip: https://farside.link/redlib/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1pl...
502 error
I have poor eyesight and I don’t support this practice of linking old reddit on HN. Old website is unusable for me. I have to load the link in the native app to read it.
ctrl+F doesn’t work anyway as the comments are also buried in a “load more comments” on old reddit too. New website and app have a search comments field.
While true some are hidden, old shows a *lot* more and most of my searches for obscure issues don't yield more viral posts
I have shitty eyesight and old is the only version that’s usable to me because text zooming works far better in the old layout. Are you using a screen reader by any chance?
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> Old website is unusable for me.
New website is unusable for me.
Assuming the issue with old reddit is font & element size, does zooming in with Ctrl+ not solve the problem?
I agree. I joined reddit when the "new" design was launched - I could never made sense of the old design. Way too cluttered and unreadable.
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We need a Framework-style company making TVs.
Get the OLED panels from whoever makes them wholesale, spend on a beautiful enclosure / design, add just enough software to calibrate the image and switch between HDMI inputs with HDMI-CEC. Sell a premium soundbar as an add-on instead of including speakers in the base device.
I think a brand like Sonos could make a killing in this market selling a premium dumb tv to high end customers.
Look at how much markup Samsung adds to their standard LCD panel for a decent enclosure - it’s like $600-$1000 markup to get the Frame tv, which has a mid panel, JUST because the enclosure is actually nice/inoffensive.
The hitch is that it would be more expensive, making it a "premium" product and limiting the market. Smart TV pricing typically includes subsidies based on the assumed data sales from each user over the lifetime of the device.
Yes I am suggesting a premium product, there’s at least $600-$1000 more the market is willing to pay just for aesthetics based on Samsung Frame tv, which is a premium product with mid-range LCD component quality. It’s priced about $200 underneath Samsung’s top of the line OLED
I really doubt the user data for a smart tv user is all that valuable. Meta has infinitely more rich data and an entire tightly optimized ad system and is on a platform where people commonly make large purchases and makes around $10 per user per year.
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How much are my eyeballs worth over the lifetime of a TV?
In the race to the bottom, ads will outcompete others by pushing price lower. But how much lower?
We need Framework-style company making local/owner-first everything, including fridges and washing machines today. There’s no guarantee that your next coffee machine or teapot won’t come with AI talking to you.
It would not be cheap. All that ad crap represents revenue, and all those features represent sales volume for feature-conscious customers. Without volume you don’t have supplier leverage on pricing, or the ability to get onto big box store shelves, reducing volume further.
I for one would be willing to pay a premium for what GP described. I’d honestly pay twice as much for a TV with working HDMI CEC, some simple picture adjustment controls, and a really really good panel. Nothing else, please.
What I want is simply a well-made monitor with a single HDMI input and built-in speakers. Make it as flat as you want.
The rest is almost unnecessary in this day and age.
If everyone were to do this, it would open a bigger market for a well-made upgradable combo smart device and air TV tuner that the TV manufacturers could produce if they wanted to.
I’d like this as well, except I think more than one HDMI port would be useful, for something like a game console. Maybe the screen itself could have 1 to keep it simple, with an optional HDMI switch that could integrate cleanly.
I think it wouldn't be very expensive to make a TV frame platform that could have user-installable screens and a simple power/display module.
Probably wouldn't be too much more than the default cost of a TV to sell the screens, and users could select what technology they are willing to pay for, LED, QD, MiniLED, OLED, etc.
The problem comes from things like upscaling, color tuning, refresh rates and resolution handling. That would require a custom compute module, and the module would need data on the attached screen that the screen itself cannot likely provide.
If you had access to a TV manufacturer who would be willing to work with you to create this platform, you might be able to start shipping TVs for only a few million dollars, but you need the money and the connections to make it happen.
I imagine you would need to go to Shenzhen, find a manufacturer, talk them into working with you, put a lot of money down upfront, and then hire programmers and UX designers and hardware designers to craft the perfect TV, design a unique TV brain module and have it manufactured, standardize the system so that other manufacturers can get in on the platform, make thousands of extra parts, and then hire a marketing team to let purchasers around the world know of the new product, pay for UL certification, standardize some sort of testing system so the panels can be calibrated to the brain...
It's a lot.
Although, now that I think about it, the calibration could be done with a set top camera system like the one used by those companies that sell RGB LED systems for TV backlighting, so if that were bundled in by default then it would do a lot to simplify the calibration and add a cool standout feature to the TV.
These TVs would be pricey to start with, like Sony Bravia pricey, so you're never going to move a lot of product. And you'll have to deal with tariffs, pushback from TV manufacturers, cheapskates, rude customers, and the risk that if you start to approach success then some other TV manufacturers with deep pockets might use their brand name power to make a competitor to blow you out of the water for a few years until your company goes bankrupt and then stop competing with you.
The only way to prevent that would be to open-source the entire platform, and even then you would be in a constant dogfight just to stay alive.
Despite all of that I say go for it. If you can deliver a 65" OLED Open Source TV with customizable inputs for under $3,000 then assuming I'm not financially worse off than I am right now then I'll buy one.
Sonos is a software company with a history of pushing bad updates. But Framework sounds great.
I too am irritated by their software but they do make nice hardware. I’d have their headphones if I trusted their software, the hardware is perfect IMO. Open and upgradable is not really their forte though.
Wouldn't not connecting it online and using a google tv box fix this issue ?
I’ve used some of my friends more recent year TVs and even if they’re not networked the UX is just horrible. One Samsung model eliminated the “input” button on the remote and forces you to go through “Home” to select inputs in a tiled menu festooned with quick tips and baked in ads for Samsung stuff like SmartThings. The worst part is that if it detects an input is connected to a game console, then it moves that input to the Gaming tab, which is chock full of tiles for shit like Solitare, Samsung game store, etc. WTF.
It’s like every interaction is viewed as an opportunity to sell attention or get you to mis-click on an ad.
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FWIW I do this with a TCL Roku TV and it’s fine. Not great, I still see the Roku interface for ~2secs on startup but otherwise it’s out of my way.
We need regulators that look after interests of tax payers and not after who pays for regulator's yachts.
Well I’m not sure if you can regulate having good design and user experience. Certainly the ability to roll back updates and enforcing privacy though.
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Can't you already just get an HDMI monitor, speakers & a raspberry pi?
if you know a vendor making great 55”-75” OLED 160hz+ 4K monitors let me know!
>and switch between HDMI inputs with HDMI-CEC.
And please include DisplayPort inputs.
I would buy this in a heartbeat. I am profoundly bothered by the slop software that is on every TV these days. I keep joking that as tech invades more and more corners of our lives, we will at some point in the future be helping our parents with their couches by saying "Have you tried restarting your couch?"
Don't get me wrong, tech is great when it's a value-add, but TV tech has gotten out of control.
Maybe framework will pivot given RAM prices these days
These are domain block rules I got from a previous HN thread about LG shenanigans. No idea if it is still up to date.
I don't know why my sense of ethical outrage over the cancerous spread of this worthless garbage technology doesn't extend so hard to LG in this. But I've finally just hit the wall with Microsoft. Between all the forced account sign-ins, ads, random reboots and updates that aren't for the purpose of securing the OS...I'm done.
I haven't seen this level of anti-consumer nonsense from Microsoft since the late 90s when lots of circles called them Micro$oft.
It's a shame since Satya Nadella came in and made a lot of right moves. Support for Linux, open source, etc. I could stretch myself to forgive the other stuff as some kind of wrong headed thinking about a cloud-first strategy. But in the last few years that productive pivot stopped and the company moved back into high-risk money grab steps.
My current daily driver is a Windows machine, but my last few builds around the house have all been some kind of Linux. Last year I moved my home server infrastructure over. I kept a windows VM around for a few things but it ultimately corrupted itself and was replaced by a Linux VM that's been chugging along just fine.
I think when I rebuild my home desktop sometime next year Windows gets relegated to a "run when needed" VM. I've really only kept it around for games and a few other Windows only software but those days are fast fading thanks to numerous efforts by Valve and others and a fallback VM for other stuff works fine in my experience elsewhere.
I think I don't have the same concerns about LG because the relationship with me as the consumer seems different somehow, and I simply expect less from them?
I think them sneaking in and turning on that LivePlus feature is far more nefarious. The fact they can track whatever you watch and do to serve you personalized ads is insane.
This is matching the levels of surveillance in north Korea. They also have software that takes pictures of your screen every few seconds.
It does this for HDMI inputs as well, BTW.
Using such a TV as a computer monitor sounds dicey. There will eventually be a data breach of the uploaded screenshots, assuming they aren't able to fingerprint entirely on device.
Until somebody releases a dumb TV, you just can't connect your tv to the Internet.
Our LCD TV is almost 2 decades old. If we upgrade, I can guarantee we won't be connecting it to the Internet. Also none of our smart appliances are connected to the Internet.
You won’t get a choice; they will come with a 5G connection that doesn’t ask you, doesn’t notify you, doesn’t cost you, and has no user-visible toggle. Like cars do these days. And a mesh-networking fallback so if you’re in a city and your neighbour also has one of the similar brand it will connect through their internet instead.
I am actually surprised at how well our second TV (Samsung) still looks [0] after 17 years. We inherited from my sister who bought it for some ridiculous amount of cash for the time. It’s heavy and runs hot, but doesn’t look any worse than cheap TVs of the same size today.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/samsung-touches-lcds...
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I think you underestimate how shameless the vendors can be. I imagine in a couple of years the TVs will refuse to function unless periodically connected to the Internet to get updated ads and an updated firmware so that you can't jailbreak them...
They don’t need your internet for a connection
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We need a "Right to Be Left Alone" law.
Every home is required to have a telescreen.
At least we still have the right to not buy a TV... (for now?)
Yeah, as someone with two of these I would never let them connect to the internet. It’s chock full of ads.
I do connect them to a jailed LAN so I can control them over the network.
Doesn't matter when the neighbor has a smart TV as well, tethering all the bad stuff to yours, whether you like it or not.
Copilot usage must be abhorrent when you are pushing it into TVs and making it non-removable application.
It is interesting. Arstechnica just had an article about how to get a dumb tv, which I saw on google news. I want to believe there is a tide turning among non-hn peoples ( I tried various phrasings and neither worked in terms of exclusion ).
I just read that, too. Its interesting and somewhat depressing that the best option for the last 10+ years according to ars and this linked reddit thead, and comments in this thread all suggesting Apple TV. I hope to see a viable foss option soon.
There are options like LibreELEC (Jeff Geerling did a video on setup a year ago[0]). However, these options are rarely plug and play. It also doesn’t let people simply download and use apps from the popular streaming services. They tend to rely on pirated content or someone who is willing to rip all their own physical media for more convenient access. FOSS has always had an issue with that last 10% of the user experience, and the services to make things pleasant to use, which I think really hurts mainstream adoption.
[0] https://youtu.be/3hFas54xFtg
I wonder how this went down. "Hey LG, this is the Microsofts. Just had an idea how we could give your entire customer base the middle finger, wanna hear it?"
LG must have had some real FOMO watching Samsung piss on all over their fridge customers?
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If supported, rooting is easy. https://cani.rootmy.tv/
Does this link now work for LG TVs again? I rooted mine about four years go, so no annoying AI firmware updates, but I remember there was an update to the LG webOS that prevented the exploit that allowed rootmy.tv to work.
If rootmy.tv is working again for modern LG TVs, I'll run out and buy another one.
Site shows known exploits and known vulnerable versions based on model. I don’t think there’s an exploit for anything new in box… and even if there was, it would be treated like an 0day and LG would patch. Your best bet would be to subscribe to some notification for a new film and go out and buy a new LG that week.
Just did that yesterday because it disables updates. I had stopped updating and disconnected my TV from the Internet completely in 2021 in fear that an update will bring ads, and in hope that a jailbreak will come around eventually.
Was that an LG?
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As a reminder, turn off the "Live Plus" thing on your LG TV. This "option" makes your LG TV spy on you, tracking and reporting what you watch based on the image that is shown on the TV.
You need to go to Settings -> All Settings -> General -> System -> Additional Settings to make sure the "Live Plus" option is OFF.
Check it periodically, as it sometimes turns itself back on again after updates.
The enshittification of our world is beyond words.
Thanks for the menu tree, just turned it off on our LG G5 (the flagship model) where it had defaulted to on. Gross.
What is legitimately the expected use case for Copilot on a TV?
TVs are for consuming video. As far as I know, Copilot doesn't generate videos yet, and it certainly won't be possible or cheap enough to generate anything on the level of TV shows or movies any time soon. So are they expecting people will sit in their living room home theater to... chat with Copilot... instead of doing it on their phone?
I genuinely can't come up with any realistic use case where it would be convenient or useful to use Copilot on a TV. It feels utterly deranged that they would put it there.
One user mentions that LG also enabled content-aware data mining: https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1plldqo/...
I really use to like LG products, but between your link and this, I will never buy LG again. They were added to the same list Samsung was added to years ago.
It is like these companies do not want to sell what people really want, but only want to spy on you. The way things are going, it will be back to the old crt TVs, which you can still find used if you look hard enough.
Best 2nd hand TVs seem to be Panasonic Viera at least in my experience. You still need a set top box of some kind as they don’t understand H264 channels only mpeg (at least here in Australia). I like them because the back lighting is quite diffuse compared to other brands. Those plus a google TV streamer is more than good enough without laying out piles of cash or subjecting yourself to a smart TV.
ACR has been going on for at least a decade now. It's the reason TVs are so cheap now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition
Awful software, I use an Apple TV or firestick to replace it
AppleTV makes sense, but Amazon's garbage is just as bad.
I switched to Apple TV after having tried the firestick indeed
TV industry's in a pathetic state when customers reasonably consider Apple TVs to be required included costs. In other news, my new 'smart' GE oven crashes roughly once each month into unresponsiveness for several hours. Where's an Apple Oven to save the day?
Thinking about how my television was only ever on the internet for 5 minutes in 2016. It must think the world is tiny.
But the symbol above the tile tells me you could hide it from the UI. Which is often the case with... uhm... "sponsored" and thus unremovable software on these kind of devices.
Ah! I can finally chat to my TV by writing text to it and have it hallucinate shows that don't exist, or tell me I'm right about everything. Possibly even create PR for work from my LG smart TV, my boss will be pleased.
Just like I wanted!
Is there a DNS filtering list anywhere that just blocks these firmware updates? That would be the easiest way to maintain dumbification without getting into hacking the software while still allowing streaming services.
It’s well worth the $100 or whatever to do all the streaming through an AppleTV. It’s the only streaming device I’ve used that doesn’t seem to constantly try to upsell random garbage.
This is the answer. AppleTV is worth its weight in gold. Well supported and quality apps, good connectivity options, enough horsepower for hardware decoding, and Apple has a good reputation for privacy (hello no ACR).
Till yourself get hacked because the connected-to-the-internet TV is running an insecure software version. We should legal action the hell out of such practices.
I use a tablet as smart TV. As a bonus it's portable around my house. I'll look into Linux tablets when Android will get too obnoxious to bear. Are they a thing? Basically I need VLC and not much more.
When it comes to technology Korean brands are really the worst. I'd never buy anything from Samsung or LG, not even a bread toaster.
Yeah I would have switched from Apple to Samsung years ago but Samsung are agregious when it comes to control and privacy I don't want to have anything from them in the house.
The Korean car brands, Hyundai and Kia also have a terrible privacy story. They really do regard their customers as the product.
My decision to never allow lg devices to connect to the internet never felt smarter than today.
That's how you outsmart your smart TV.
Just don't connect your tv to the internet. Get an Apple TV or an Nvidia Shield.
In general you should turn off software updates
So...?
I only read the reddit comments down to the point where the slanted lines became mildly infuriating and switched new reddit to continue, and there only down to the "view more comments" button, and didn't see anyone saying what Copilot actually does on the TV.
The comments seemed to all be about the nefarious things people were speculating it could be doing, how to block smart TVs from updating, etc., and that's also how the comments here are going.
A bit of research suggests that it is just another app. If you don't open it it won't be doing anything. If you open it you can use it as a virtual assistant to do things like check the weather, search streaming service for content, and that sort of thing.
Is there any indication it does more?
Why does a TV need Microsoft Copilot? While I think AI on the whole is a long-term net positive, but I just cannot understand Microsoft's insistence on putting Copilot everywhere. Even in places where it has no business being and against the user's wishes. I cannot remember the last time a company was this tone deaf. Why isn't Satya Nadella personally getting involved already? Seriously inexcusable.
Why anyone would allow their TV to connect to the internet is beyond me.
Now I know why my wife needed the account login information this morning.
Oh, ffs. I’ve got one of those. This bubble cannot burst soon enough.
Yet again regulators are caught lacking. This is so predictable and yet not illegal. I guess they just wait for bribes to come in.
This is beyond tiresome.
Who the fuck still watches content on an effing TV in 2025?
All the people who weren't raised on a phone or tablet shoved in front of them since they were a toddler...
How else would you watch things with other people at home? Are you going to huddle around your desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.?
I only watch films on a 6" phone display as God intended
Me. It seems like the best kind of display for a game console.
Everyone except weird nerds. 97% of US households have a TV, usually a smart one they watch streaming apps through nowadays.
Fewer even own a desktop or laptop computer. Using one as a media center is comparably fringe.
I'm not giving up my CRT.
Probably half the planet