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)?
Samsung is known to be one of the more cancerous of ad-ridden “smart” TVs
I haven’t had any issues with my Sony TV but I bought it several years ago and don’t really use it (I generally consume content on my PC with 3 monitors). It is not connected to any network.
I have a sony as well, and you can use it as dumb TV, by not agreeing to their privacy policy. If you want to connect it to wifi afterwards, it points you to the privacy policy again, so it seems like the TV follows that. But I’ve also purchased it 4 years ago, so not sure what the status is now.
So far, I’ve seen no ads. I mostly use it mostly via HDMI and sometimes for watching freely available TV via antenna.