Remix.run Logo
▲ ruslan 4 hours ago

Recently I've had to deal with this same problem - get a new TV for living room. Personally, I do not watch TV at all, but kids want to see cartoons when having their breakfast. I spent a week reading forums and came to conclusion that best solution would be to buy a "dumb TV" and connect it to a PC I trust, but it appears there are no dump TVs in my rage of 55" and larger. So, I bought "Google TV" based TCL.

When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)

PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.

▲joshspankit 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is not even a viable option these days: secondary processors, the potential for a backchannel to some installed app on a device in the home (this has not made headlines, but it’s possible), tying an account to the device proactively.. The TV industry really ran to collect “their” data

▲sanex 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Don't give them ideas

▲tom_alexander 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.

While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.

▲dreamcompiler 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Better to replace the wifi antenna with a dummy load.

▲gcr an hour ago | parent [-]

OP means that some WiFi antennae are soldered to the motherboard and cannot be easily removed.

When building my PC, I got a PCI WiFi card but it turns out there was also a direct WiFi network interface built into the motherboard somehow

▲zamalek an hour ago | parent [-]

They would be traces with pretty obvious patterns and easy to cut.

But I don't the GP comment was talking about that; I have also used WiFi without an antenna (PCB or otherwise), and it was also slow for me.

A dummy load is probably the best idea: an impedance mismatch would obliterate any chance of anything working (including Bluetooth fwiw).

▲dreamcompiler an hour ago | parent [-]

The point of a dummy load is to match the impedance so that all the radiative energy gets turned into heat and the transmitter is none the wiser.

▲zamalek an hour ago | parent [-]

Wouldn't reflections be worse (genuinely asking)?

▲samenew 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

[dead]

▲stogot 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You didn’t explain your point. How does a tv connect to WiFi without a WiFI antena

▲koyote an hour ago | parent [-]

You don't need an antenna. You can think of an antenna as simply being a signal booster.

That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).

▲rightnutwingjob 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The last TV I bought was a Kogan, and at first power up, or after a factory reset, it let you select where you wanted it to be a dumb screen with inputs only, or run the Google TV OS.

Did the TCL not have this option?

▲apublicfrog 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This'll be something only relevant to Australians, but it's amusing to see you reply to Ruslan to tell him about your Kogan!

▲ruslan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Kogan TVs are produced by Kogan.com, an Australian company founded by Ruslan Kogan in 2006.

That's not me for sure. :) But what I'm sure about it that their TVs are made either by Haier or TCL.

▲ray_kay777 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hah! The odds of that feel extraordinarily small. This Australian is amused, at least.

▲VonGuard 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is somewhat an option. I have this TV too and when you set it up, you can choose to have it be a dumb tv, and even avoid Google TV if you want. In the US.

▲ruslan 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Mine did not have that option. There was some "demo" mode though, but it was useless.

▲OptionOfT 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IIRC if I do this on my Bravia I also lose the image enhancements.

▲lmm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You mean you turn off slopping up your image? The kind of person who wants a dumb TV probably wants any "enhancements" off too.

▲mrandish an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This kind of trade-off is often a dark pattern used when forced to offer a feature by regulators or by competitors offering it. The evil trick is complying with the regs or being able to advertise the feature but making it so unattractive users won't activate it, enabling the manufacturer to still earn that sweet $35-$60 / yr from advertising, app install payments, rev share and selling your viewing data.

> the image enhancements.

Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.

In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).

With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.

Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.

▲ryandrake an hour ago | parent [-]

> Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative

Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.

The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.

▲mmooss an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1) Would you consider publishing which apps you removed? (A wiki on making smart devices dumb - cars, TVs, refrigerators, tractors ... - would be useful, though I'm not suggesting you make and manage it yourself.)

2) Why bother removing the apps if it has no network connection? Defense in depth is sensible to me, but maybe there's something else I'm missing ...

3) Why not buy a large desktop computer monitor, or are those no longer 'dumb' either?

▲koddd an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What a crazy world we live in.

Ppl worry so much about privacy, but are fine having kids watch TV when they eat breakfast.

▲asdfsa32 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What do you mean? Obviously consuming too much media, or consuming anything too much of it is not good, but how does that negate concerns about inadvertently inviting for-profit corporations to your breakfast and every intimate conversation at home?

▲leoooodias an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Those are completely unrelated concerns.