My lg TV is late 2024. When I first got and was setting it up, asked me to connect to the internet, something about benefits, AI. I was like are you insane TV? you will NEVER have access to the internet, this is exactly why my nvidia shield is locked in a old 8.9 version and pihole block all the things.
You should update the Shield. You’ll get security updates and the Pihole will remove ads.
After the dashboard change on my shield, I simply installed projectify as the new launcher. Now I only see what I want without ads.
My wife and I bought a TV on the internet. What brand? I have no idea but it’s the type they have in waiting rooms and restaurants. Zero internet. Zero apps. You push the button and it turns on. It’s the best fucking purchase we’ve made in the last five years.
I recently purchased a current year TCL, I don’t remember the model number but it’s the one right under their flagship.
It’s 75" and is the most beautiful tv I’ve owned. Fast, almost OLED levels of dimming, I’m in awe when watching the right content.
I’d pay an extra $500 for a version with no smart capabilities. Let me turn it on and boot into my android box, or console, or whatever.
Where’d you find it?
Look for “digital signage” displays - but beware that some of those are “smart TVs” too.
Amazon, unfortunately.
Got ours second hand from a buy nothing group. It has no apps. It doesn’t know what the internet is. It has D-SUB and RCA ports. It’s perfect
Commercial displays are like that. I have a couple that haven been decom’d from work I use. They don’t have speakers but I don’t need those anyway
i understand how smart TV can be a problem. But monitors too?
They’ll install the spyware via your hdmi / display port or what?
This was already answered multiple times when you posted this. Scroll down.
Bought a LG TV and a Monitor three years ago. Last time I will do that. Really happy about my decision not to let the TV have access to the internet.
Yep, mine has never reached the internet, it is connected but is blocked at the firewall so I can still hook home assistant up to it.
What does a home assistant do for you in regards to a monitor? A tv I can understand a bit better but even then it just seems like the tv would be secondary to your media player/device
Yeah fist time I saw an ad on my smart monitor I reset it and never connected it to my wifi again
What’s the point of a smart monitor? It’s connected to a PC. The PC is smart.
I’d love to know who wants all that extra crap
Good luck finding a brand NOT doing it by the time you’re ready for a new one.
A lot of bad ones out there, but some are worse than others. For example, I’m not going to consider a Samsung TV because of how many times they’ve done something sketchy
LG is also falling down the list with this incident
LG clearly stands for “Literal Garbage”. The DisplayPort and HDMI ports on the gaming monitor I bought a few years ago failed approximately 6 months in.
My old LG monitor (32GK850) would occasionally ‘crash’ and require powering off at the mains.
Only monitor I’ve ever had do that.
The HDR was worse than useless too, obviously you can’t do much with edge-lit VA, but the tonemapping was just plain awful.
My LG tv is too old for this shit. But it does not get ethernet or wifi password just in case they decide to update the firmware
What dongle or what have you do y’all use that’s privacy focused? I need to disconnect my LG TV and we have an old Chromecast but that’s Google…
I connected a raspberry pi to my TV and control it with a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo to pirate all of my shows on a greysite
I had an old laptop that I hooked in and configured it to boot into a fullscreen browser to our Emby server. Could just as easily have it boot into a browser with shortcuts to your streaming services.
We use one of these mini keyboard/touchpads to control it:
Lately, though, I just picked up a set of wireless HDMI adapters and just plug one of those into the closest laptop and play from there.
Weve had a similar setup for nearly 10 years and its fricken great. We built a low spec computer using old parts from our desktops, hooked it up to our tv via hdmi, and plugged in a wireless keyboard with built in trackpad to act as the remote. We get all the same AD blocking and content access as a desktop because, you know, its a desktop but in the livingroom. My personal favorite is using a second account on discord to pull up streams on the tv from the couch while joining on my phone via my primary account for voice.
Have one those keyboards too. Thing is fantastic!
KDE Connect is also a control option
Kde connect really is amazing, its on all my devices
The best cheap solution is a Google TV with Projectivy launcher to bypass the adware.
The best fully non-adware solution as others said seems to be a mini-pc running Linux or other cleaner environment you set up.
I love projectivy and how clean it is but I have had so much trouble getting the tv to launch straight into it on 2 separate Google TVs so I just don’t use it anymore really.
I use an nvidia shield, and used the developer options to disable Google’s built in launcher (and most other google related services). That’s what it takes to keep your chosen launcher. I also used an app to remap the netflix button on that stupid toblerone they call a remote to act as a mute button, so accidentally pressing it doesn’t cause me a minute of trying to get back to my content.
Yeah, I suspect Google pushes changes to the backend OS that keep breaking it on purpose, but at least we’ve got it to stick on our two TVs with a lot of effort and setting changes. Least worst option considering how pricy mini-PCs are, unfortunately.
Yeah mini-pc is the way. Throw Linux on it and it’ll last for years, trouble free
I have a Linux mini PC. There are definite pros, like controlling it via SSH from my Home Assistant, running Netflix in Firefox with adblocker… But drawbacks are no HDR, no 4k for streaming, heck, even 720p max for Hulu (and Disney, but I don’t have one).
However, high sails have higher resolution too, it’s just an additional step.
Linux definitely has HDR. I’ve been using Bazzite with Steam Big Picture mode as my TV interface for years and can use HDR just fine.
I definitely recommend piracy, but there are also ways to get streaming services to send full quality streams. I won’t recommend them though, because you shouldn’t have to do it in the first place for a service you’re paying for. Just pirate and use a media server or something like Kodi for a nice interface for local files.
He is saying those streaming services wont allow HDR even if Linux itself is capable. Which is why he could set sail to recover that functionality.
Bought an Onn 4k TV box from Walmart when it was $20, and I followed these steps to deGoogle it: https://old.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/12rya0t/change_launcher_debloat_the_new_onn_4k_streaming/
I have a ShieldTV plugged into mine and it has been great. You can install a new Launcher to have full control of what you see and it works great. I pretty much just use it for Jellyfin and YouTube now, but in the past have had all of the streaming services at one time or another.
Our shield TV recently stopped allowing Projectivy launcher (the 3rd party one we were using) to be bound to the home button on the remote. I can launch Projectivy and switch to it, but as soon as I hit the home button it’s right back to the default launcher.
I assumed this was something nvidia (or google) did to be dicks, but it sounds like that hasn’t happened to you, so now I’m less sure.
What 3rd party launcher are you using? Maybe I should try a different one.
I think I am using the wolf launcher? I can’t check right now, but I set it up a long time ago and then forgot about it.
I haven’t had any problems with it, I have both a tube and a shield pro and the white circle button works great on both.
There might also be a button remapper that you can get if you want the Netflix button to be a mute or something.
raspi4 + libreelec
But I’d suggest OrangePi instead if you were buying new stuff.
I’ll give that a look, thank you!
They’ve learned nothing in 13 years https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/lg-smart-tv-snooping-extends-to-home-networks-second-blogger-says/
On the contrary, they have learned a lot.
They’ve learned
- Spying and snooping is very profitable
- The general member of the public is happy to press accept on any EULA and doesn’t care
- There are no consequences for bad behaviour
True. I thought they got fined over what they did in 2013, but I can’t find it with all the news of Texas suing them and other manufacturers. Even if they did get fined back then, the fines are never enough for these large corporations.
how the fuck can a monitor install software to a computer the second HDMI is plugged in.
Why is this even a feature that is possible.
The monitor doesn’t. Windows shenanigans.
It is because the LG software is in one of the Windows Update channels.
Once Windows detects the LG display the OS pulls down the LG software and installs it like any other OS update.
Essentially they are abusing something Microsoft provides to better deploy legitimate feature and security updates for firmware to push out their data mining and malware packages.
Sounds like people need to be equally angry at microsoft for not policing their platform access better.
Exactly, Microsoft is more guilty than LG because this is not the first time it happened, last time it automatically installed some Razer malware when a mouse was connected (or maybe it still installs it).
That Razer malware allowed system privileges on a restricted windows account: just plug a mouse dongle and the system is automatically exploitable
If the terms and service include conditions, then include the terms and service. I dislike the the ‘trust me, it’s there’. Show me.
I have an LG TV that has never been exposed to the internet and it’s amazing.
This is it. Skip all the setup screens and just use it
That won’t save you. It’ll still install the driver if its hooked to Windows.
So, I don’t get this; if you let it install the drivers and then uninstall the drivers and use it, will it just keep reinstalling the drivers with each next connection?
Apart from the obviously superior solution of switching to Linux, would someone need to connect while fully offline to prevent it from installing drivers and just watch predownloaded stuff (or play games offline) or what?
By default? Maybe.
But there are both global and granular Windows policies to tweak this. I disabled the device driver specifically, as I do like plug-and-play for other devices.
It will install the drivers… through HDMI? I don’t think so.
No, I just mean windows update will pull an LG “driver” and install it to your system automatically when it detects the display.
I went through the nonsense of putting the LG tv and some other stuff on a separate network that has no internet access but I can still connect to them. It’s annoying that’s needed.
My LG TV is just so old it isn’t allowed to connect anymore lol. I just keep my old gaming laptop connected and it’s a far better experience then any modern smart TV with all the image smoothing junk.
Same! I jailbroke mine and can watch YouTube and Twitch ad-free, and it’s got Jellyfin on the homebrew channel, so I can access my server off my TV :)
That’s awesome. Mine is 42" and I’m using it as my monitor for my desktop. I had no idea you could jailbreak TVs now, what a time to be alive. I recently picked up a Raspberry Pi 5 and I’m planning on using it to replace my stupid Chromecast on my living room TV. As long as the Pi can stream from my Jellyfin server and watch YouTube then that’s all I need.
There’s a website called rootmy.tv that can help you find or execute roots right off the TV’s web browser. When I bought the TV, I hadn’t connected it to the Internet a single time, so it still had the stock firmware. I could just type in the URL and click a single button - that’s it. Depending on the firmware, model and brand, this could look different for you. Also I’m not sure if this only works for LG TVs - might have to do some research to find a suitable method for yours.
That also sounds very practical. I’d love to get into Pis sometime, but the RAM fiasco is making them quite expensive for my current budget, sadly.
Omg you can jailbreak smart TVs now? HELL yeah
Check out rootmy.tv to jailbreak your LG smart TV. Depending on the model and firmware, there could be additional steps you need to take, but in my case, since I still had the stock firmware installed, it was just a single slide of a button on the TV’s web browser.
I had to put malicious mp3 files on a USB for my newer C2, but my older C8 was rooted in the browser
malicious mp3 files on a USB
LOL, this is hilarious, while simultaneously infuriating that the owners of hardware are required to install a Trojan Horse to uninstall the malicious software installed by the manufacturer.
So are there downsides to rooting? Like do the apps no longer work or is there functionality limited?
I’m running pinhole on my network currently so I think most if not all of the bad LG behavior is restricted and I use a Shield for most things, but I’m still tempted to root it anyway. Just want to know the downsides, if any, before I update my family’s TV
on my 5+ year old TVs that didn’t work. you need a developer account, an app, and a few commands over SSH
Thanks so much for the rootmy.tv recommendation, exactly what I need but didn’t know to look for!
That phone was the coolest thing, it’s such a shame how it died. I’ve still got mine lol, I can get it to boot and play that one flight sim game you could buy on the app store.
That’s too bad because the monitors themselves are pretty good.
Lol, “monitor” app, because it monitors users.
Im sorry. Im drunk.
How can a monitor install stuff on a PC? Can you do that over hdmi/dp? Does it require usb?
Either way, this stuff should be illegal or at least require a much more explicit warning than hiding it in terms of service that nobody reads. And of course everybody would do well to avoid LG out of principle from now on.
Saw the video by Gamers Nexus and basically Windows auto installs an LG Driver utility that has ads.
Razer mice have some crapware that auto-installs on Windows now, through windows update. Their official driver that it downloads adds the crap and Microsoft just lets it do it all.
No such hassles on Linux though.
Windows update, by default, is set to automatically download and install the malware for them when the HDMI cable is connected to the computer, within less than a minute.
Time to add LG to the list of computer display OEMs I will avoid like the plague on principle.
