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)?
I get what you’re saying. What I’m running into is that there is little information on what happens if you ‘dont connect it to the internet at all’. I would happily do that, but as another comment notes, some devices keep whining until you do connect them, while others don’t. I can also easily set up a separate ‘fake’ network to black-hole all the communication attempts of the TV, but I have no idea whether that would stop the nagging – or the attempts for it to connect to public WiFi access points.
It would be really cool if people experimenting with this kind of thing could pool their findings, that’s all.