• ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 day ago

    I love how they don’t even suggest “Don’t connect your ‘Smart TV with AI’ to the internet at all” as a protective action. You literally never need to connect your TV to the internet, a TV is a monitor. Its job is to turn on when you turn it on, display a picture from a real device, and turn off when you turn it off.

    • hikaru755@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      That hasn’t been true for years. I’m sick of people pretending that it’s somehow “natural” for TVs to be dumb, and blaming others for wanting their devices to do more for them and be more convenient. A TV that can run apps isn’t the problem. A TV that can access the Internet isn’t the problem. Even a TV that stays connected in standby mode is not inherently a problem. The problem is surveillance capitalism and that most of the world is unwilling to legislate and enforce proper consumer protections.

      Sure, the article could’ve mentioned that not connecting your TV might(!) stop it. But framing it like this obvious and trivial solution that everyone can “just” do and saying that nobody should even want those features in the first place is just out of touch and borders on victim blaming.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      Exactly; why would I need any smart features, when my computer is already running all the apps I would ever want to use on my TV?

      You can’t play any AAA games on a smart TV alone—and nobody wants to type with a remote control, hook up an antenna, or pay for cable/satellite anymore—so if you’re going to own a TV you basically need to hook a computer up to it if you want to do anything useful with it.

      And If you’re a home theater geek, then all you need is a half decent GPU and you can still get all the fun features working like 144Hz, HDR, Dolby Vision/Atmos, etc. using a single HDMI cable. It’s never been easier.

      • Eheran@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        Why exactly do you need anything extra if the TV runs all the streaming apps etc. on it’s own…?

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          21 hours ago

          Why are you asking this? Did you forget to read the article before commenting? Do you even know what this topic is about?

          • Eheran@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 hours ago

            A PC could also come with spyware etc., that is not an inherent solution. Acting as if TVs can only be dumb is absurd, a cable in between changes nothing.

            • Psythik@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              10 hours ago

              PCs don’t come with spyware when you build them yourself. Even if you don’t feel like doing that and rather take the chance on a pre-built, the first thing you should be doing is wiping the hard drive and installing a fresh copy of your OS of choice regardless. Privacy-conscious people don’t just use whatever bloated copy of Windows comes with the machine.

              Also, I never said “TVs can only be dumb”. That’s not the issue. Again, the issue is that every smart TV is spying on you. The built-in smart features would be fine for 99% of people if they just weren’t so god damn nosy.

              And before you point out that the average person isn’t going to build a PC/wipe a hard drive, to be fair the average person doesn’t care about being spied on, therefore nothing I said applies to them.

              Hope this clears things up.

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    The 5 practical steps they listed make no sense at all.

    Did they find the TVs abusing uPnP? I don’t see why they would. Firmware updates are the trojan horses. Each one is an update to their spyware. Gamers Nexus demonstrated that the privacy controls in the settings don’t do shit. Network isolation breaks screen casting and remote control apps.