I’m considering buying a new TV. There’s plenty of posts about trying to find dumb TVs, comments like ‘just don’t connect it to the internet/network’.
What surprises me is that there isn’t a good overview of (popular) TVs or brands with basic information, answering for each TV:
- Can you use it as a basic TV by choosing not to enable smart features during setup?
- Can you opt out by just not accepting a bunch of agreements?
- Does it have a camera and/or microphone? Where in the device are these? Is there a physical disable switch for microphone?
- Does it nag when not connected to any network?
- Does it have higher than normal power usage when not able to phone home?
- Has it been discovered to connect to public WiFi networks? Does it have the (theoretical) ability to connect to 5G mobile networks?
And similar.
There are extensive lists with a lot of detail about VPN services but nothing like that for TVs. Am I ignorant of a good source, or does this just not exist (yet)?
The Samsung tries to “identify” what’s on an hdmi input before it will connect. It seems to call out to the internet to do that because it takes forever to fail and show you the display anyway when it’s not connected to the internet. Even when it is connected, it takes a stupidly long time to switch to a new input. I super hate it and will never buy another samsung tv.
I guess the lg needs to boot tizen before it works, because I see the logo briefly but then it goes directly to the last used input with no other bullshit, so it’s fine with me.