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Smart T.V. Privacy Overview? (feddit.nl)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by czim@feddit.nl to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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)?

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[–] phughes@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was looking for information like that when I last bought a TV in February and couldn't find anything.

I punted and bought a SAMSUNG 65-Inch Class Crystal UHD 4K CU8000 Series (that's like 1/4 of the amazon title) and have not connected it to the internet at all. As far as not being connected to the network, it's… fine.

There have been no issues with it trying to lock me out of features.
I didn't try to opt-out, but my intuition tells me that's unlikely.
No camera that I know of. I think there's a microphone in the remote, but I've never used it, and since I've never connected it to the internet (and I never use the remote) I don't really worry about it.
I've not experienced any nag screens.
I have not measured the power usage directly (and would have nothing to compare it to since I'm not willing to connect it to the internet even as an experiment) but I do have it connected to a power-usage sensing outlet strip and it uses dramatically less power than my previous Samsung 42" HD LCD (with florescent backlighting.) So much so that for it to not turn off the switched outlets I had to add my AppleTV to the control outlet (and for extended dark scenes even that's not enough.)
If it's connecting to networks surreptitiously I would expect to start seeing ads or some change in behavior, which hasn't happened, so I'm going to say probably not.

As far as how good of a TV it is, (which you didn't ask, but since I'm here):
I'm not the most discerning viewer, but I think it's got a good picture. Sometimes I can see the backlight adjust itself on very dark scenes, but it's hardly a show stopper. I have an external speaker system, so really the only thing I do is turn it on and off (with the AppleTV remote). My only other gripe is that it takes a few seconds to decide to display the selected input full screen.

[–] czim@feddit.nl 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks, very helpful! I'm dubious about Samsung because of robolemmy's experiences (https://feddit.nl/post/22838850/13086582), perhaps that differs per TV.

[–] Bronzie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

I can't speak for all Samsung TVs, but I have the Q9FN65 from a few years ago and it has been offline almost since day one.
Never had any nagging at all and all the pre-installed crap could be removed.

My biggest gripe with them is the lack of Dolby Vision. Samsung wants people to use HDR10+ which is their own version, but it's not widely supported. Otherwise it's snappy and functions well.