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Comment by stephen_g

3 days ago

Makes me more and more glad that I never let my TV on any network and only use it as a display for Apple TV, the Blu-Ray player, and playing media from USB drives...

28 comments

stephen_g

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hapticmonkey  3 days ago

My LG TV has been offline for the past 2 years (since I got it). I'm so much happier using the Apple TV.

I know people want "dumb" displays, but the reality is that these OLED panels offer industry-leading image quality and benefit from economies of scale, where most users want some form of built-in OS. A signage board cannot compete on price or quality. As long as TV manufacturers let me run it offline without issue, I'm fine with that.

Also fwiw, you can use apps like Infuse on the Apple TV for playing your own media files over the network. No Need for USB drives, just connect direct to the shared folder.

  • bakugo  3 days ago

    > As long as TV manufacturers let me run it offline without issue, I'm fine with that.

    I suspect that this won't be the case for much longer. Once you've stuffed the TV with all the ads and data harvesting you can, the logical next step is to ensure it doesn't work at all unless those ads are being watched and that data is being harvested.

  • drnick1  3 days ago

    > I'm so much happier using the Apple TV.

    Then it is Apple that is harvesting your data. They may or may not display ads (I don't have an AppleTV to check), but they are certainly logging your interactions and possibly selling that data with third parties. That is on top of all the data Apple already has on people using iPhones, and the reason why I will never use anything other than a free/libre ROM like Graphene or Lineage.

    • hapticmonkey  3 days ago

      > Then it is Apple that is harvesting your data.

      They quite literally have settings to disable that. There are no ads in the operating system.

      https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/tv/atvb66239fa1/tvos

      I'm sure some conspiratorial thinking would lead people to the conclusion that Apple are secretly tracking and selling data. There is no evidence to suggest this is happening.

      It's probably the next best thing to setting up your own linux home theater PC. But that comes with trade-offs with UX and DRM blocking 4K streaming apps and lack of Dolby Vision playback.

      3 replies →

  • user_7832  3 days ago

    > signage board cannot compete on price or quality.

    Those aren't the only two options. There are commerical TVs (eg in hotels) that are very close to standard TVs, but with a minimal interface.

  • AnonHP  3 days ago

    > but the reality is that these OLED panels offer industry-leading image quality

    Except in scenes with fire (like a campfire) or where some spots may have high brightness compared to the surroundings. The LG OLED TVs I’ve seen all go blank in such scenes. The TVs I’ve seen that have LCD panels don’t have this issue. It seems like the only way to disable it (after turning off power saving and a few other things) is to buy and use a service remote to turn off ASBL. From my online reading, it seems like doing this may void the warranty and probably have negative effects on the life of the panel.

    • brokenmachine  3 days ago

      I have an LG OLED and have never seen it go blank on any scene.

      It just looks great all the time. Especially on scenes like you describe with a dark scene with bright highlights. Campfire scenes look great, space scenes look great. That's what OLED is best at.

      If you're talking about ABL, I've only noticed the dimming on ads or powerpoint lectures that have fully white backgrounds, and I've been thankful for it at those times because I find all-white backgrounds too bright to watch anyway.

dangus  3 days ago

I will point out, there are sometimes some really legitimate firmware updates that actually enhance or correct shortcomings on the TVs, especially for cinephiles on high-end units and for recently-released models that have firmware that needs work.

You can find people who cover the content of these updates, such as Vincent from HDTVtest.

What I tend to do is leave my WiFi off and then occasionally turn it on and connect for firmware updates, then disable it afterward.

I've also found that on my LG OLED that a lot of the crapware doesn't even have an option to function if you just never accept the terms and conditions or un-accept them. The UI doesn't make it perfectly obvious that you can do this but you absolutely can.

This stuff is very much anti-consumer, but can generally be mitigated by vigilant settings-chasing and a willingness to ignore the TV interface and use a dedicated streaming box with essentially no ads like an Apple TV.

tuetuopay  3 days ago

Same happy boat here. Mine has never seen the light of network access. I just don’t trust these things at all.

  • Macha  3 days ago

    I left a relative house sitting, specifically told them to use the Xbox if they need Netflix etc, and of course they connected the TV to the wifi and just hit accept on everything. Luckily it was still new enough that LG hadn’t put out a patch to cram it full of ads yet.

    After that I blocked the MAC address at my router.

goku12  3 days ago

> Makes me more and more glad that I never let my TV on any network..

Sigh! These manufacturers have repeated this so many times that it is probably in their corporate subversion manual now. This is no consolation at all. They first introduce 'optional' features like this. Then they tighten the screw such that you get degraded performance if you don't use that feature. Finally they make it unavoidable. How are we missing it every time?

Haven't we seen how this evolved in the case of windows login using their 365 account? Haven't we seen how Android smartphone unlocking and custom ROM flashing got gradually more difficult over the years until we can't do that anymore?

If you rely on compromises or shortcuts out of this problem, you'll eventually find yourself without any. We need to nip this trend in the bud. Punish them with a tanked market.