[GTALUG] Can a smart TV be made dumb?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

tl;dr: yes.

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| I've been reading up about the ridiculously (to me) low prices for
| high-quality TVs these days

Yes, much cheaper than computer monitors.  But there are small things to 
beware of (as I've harped on in this list over the last five years).  But 
you didn't say you wanted to use it as a computer monitor, so I won't
repeat that stuff here.

|, and the economics of it all is quite
| fascinating. It seems that the cost of manufacturing is being well offset
| by the revenue from collecting information on a household's watching habits
| and sending it back to the manufacturer, Google and who the heck knows who
| else...

I don't think that the surveillance is a large revenue source for the TV 
manufacturers.  I think they get more for preloading apps.  Just like PCs.  
But yes, I suspect surveillance.

| It would seem, on the surface, ridiculously simply to disable the
| information gathering by refusing to connect the device to the Internet and
| simply have it do nothing besides switch between tuner and HDMI port for
| input.

You can do that.  I do.  Once in a long while, I connect the TV via
ethernet to see if there is a firmware update.  I don't use WiFi since
it is easier to control a physical wire.

| That way I can have better control of my TV's "smarts" with my own
| choice of smarts -- Shield, Chromecast, Roku, RasPlex, Android TV, Linux
| desktop or whatever. Sure some apps of those devices may also be reporting,
| but it's not all-encompassing -- Netflix sends them my Netflix watching,
| but not my OTA, YouTube. Kodi or other channel choices.

I don't know that the surveillance would be actually less, but I
suspect so.  I imagine that of those commercial devices are pretty bad
already.

Each device probably has an ID.  So if you use multiple devices, you
might reduce the federation of these data streams.  But probably not.
We (consumers) just don't know.

Another advantage: the different parts of a smart TV get obsolete at
different times.  But when one component of a smart TV gets obsolete,
there is a need to replace the whole thing (or to simply bypass it).

My monitors live longer than my PCs and that's longer than most smart
gadgets.  The smart part becomes a boat anchor.

Example: I bought a Sony BluRay player that could do exciting things like
NetFlix (when that was new in Canada).  One day, NetFlix obsoleted
that functionality.  The player also came with a bunch of other streaming
services that were pretty useless and have also probably disappeared.
Don't connect a BluRay to ethernet -- I think that the main purpose is
to update blacklists, possibly killing the ability to playback some
dodgy discs.

| I haven't bought a TV in a decade so I don't know the current landscape.
| What I have seen is that *everything* now is "smart" except for the
| lowest-end which tend not to have the best picture.  Is it possible on
| modern TVs to install without an Internet connection so they don't phone
| home? Or does keeping the TV offline disable important functions? And are
| some brands easier to "dumb down" than others?

All TVs I know about work fine without internet.  They complain at powerup
that you forgot to connect them.  You might want firmware updates
(probably not important) that come over the wire.

Many buttons on the remote become worse than useless.  If you
accidentally hit them, you get in a mode you don't want to use.
That's the case for a dumb TV too if you have no OTA service: so many
buttons lead to the (useless) tuner as a source.

On the other hand, every external device you add probably adds another
remote to juggle.

You may find that the TV has fewer HDMI ports than you need.  Using
the internal smarts could effectively free up one of those ports.

Smart TVs can come with a variety OSes.

- Roku TV
- Android TV (not the same as plain Android)
- WebOS (remember that? Palm -> HP -> LG)
- Fire TV (Amazon's fork of Android)
- Tizen (remember that? Nokia -> Linux Foundation -> Intel ->
  Samsung)
- TiVo
- Apple tvOS

There is probably a bribe paid to the manufacturer for shipping TVs
with certain OSes.  I suspect that Fire TV would come with a dowry.
But not very large since it seems to be rare.