This is too bad. I think LG is still about the best picture, when it comes to OLED televisions.

I wonder if you never hook them up to the internet, will they still show ads?

> You've not only convinced me that I should continue to stay on my older TVs, but you've also upped their resale value!

My town has periodic recycling events where they'll take old TVs off your hands if you pay them $10. Maybe before too long, they'll start paying us cash for those old dumb TVs.

Or you vould buy the new smart tvs ( for improved picture etc) only connect it to the net for the initial activation, and for the ocational sw update ( once per quarter is probably enugh) and leave all the smart features to external boxes ( make shore to disable ethernet via hdmi) .boom nice new rwvand no screensaver ads. Added bonus third partybapps thatbar probably much more freqently updated than the apos on your tv ever would be, and the possebility to chose a streaming box tfrom a company that don't p

wow, has LG swung that low... i mean it is one thing to be bad, but to be at HP level... flabbergasted.

LG was the first TV company that introduced spying-as-a-feature, with TVs reporting your usage patterns back to the mothership (that was back in 2014 IIRC). At the time I swore a mighty oath that no LG product will ever darken my doors again. I still haven't seen any reason to change this.

And, of course, Sony is still a four-letter word to me.

Stop watching the boob tube altogether.

I guess there is a market for Fire sticks, etc... even with smart TVs. The stick gets loaded down with all the crap, but you can simply switch input from HDMI and not deal with it.

You over complicating it. Get an Apple TV and ditch the LG OS and shut off wifi on it.

I wonder if Pi-hole blacklists would cover this. At this point, with all the ads thrown at us everywhere, if you don't have Pi-hole installed as your at-home DNS, then that's on you.

OTA is always better quality image/sound... there is no imperative to save bandwidth, so the signals are not compressed.

Any other transmission medium, satellite, cable, you make more money if you carry more data, so they love to compress the fsck out of your program to jam more of them on the wire.

I use OTA and even in this provincial backwater I get about 15 channels.

> In any case, this is a good reason to leave the TV air-gapped and never connect it to a network.

They are just going to stick SIM and cell modem into it. They are cheap and prices constantly going down.

It's got a tuner built in. On a large TV, they could build a very large internal antenna. It might pick up some channels. And voila, it can display ads. They won't be able to do forced firmware upgrades, though. Not without the FCC banging at their doors anyway. But I shouldn't give them any ideas

for - from

> I'm just something to be milked for $$$ all my life

Yes, yes we are -- from cradle to grave.

I was in my 40's when I figured out this was the game. That was only 15 years ago. Before that, I believed in the shiny, glossy veneer of life as it's presented to us on tv, movies, etc.

Now I see it for what it is. A machine to make money from you, from the moment you're born to the moment you leave.

People absolutely shit on boomers in this and other sites, but I'll remind all of you the first gen to be truly exploited like this was the Boomers, and it was done to then by the fine "Greatest" and "Silent" gens. What, you think it was Boomers on Boomers? Nah. They got "had" by their own parents and grandparents. Maybe not directly, but by people of those same age brackets.

I do honestly suspect it existed before, it's just that Boomers were the inflection point of tech that didn't exist prior -- radio, movies, especially TV.

I imagine in Roman times it was the same, only the advertising and such was much slower and narrower in reach.

I have an Apple TV on a 7 foot screen. I might have the screensaver up from the AppleTV if i'm doing something else.. oh, I don't know. Playing the violin. Reading something. Yes, with the projector on. My bulb, my terms.

As to being able to turn it off.. that's "now."

"Pray we don't alter the deal any further"

Must be The Garbz.. the guy always shilling for getting data raped and how unusable new technology is really acshully usable and better.

So now explain to the class how seeing more unwanted advertisements is really a better experience.

A. Doesn't matter. I bought a TV, not an in-home ad delivery service. I paid money for it, you don't get to advertise to me on it because you want more money after the sale - if you want to be an advertising-revenue supported business, than be one and stop charging me so much for the TV and then retroactively try to get even more money later by diminishing an already poor user experience.

B. I do. And many others do as well. Don't pretend that you get to speak for everyone, because it makes you look ridi

This is step one. It won't take long to spread to other areas. Test the waters kind of thing.

> I already disliked LG because of a microwave of theirs I had.. it'd pop breakers when the cooking would stop.

Breakers or ground fault interruptors? If it is blowing a breaker, there's something massively wrong, probably with the breaker, because there's just no way a microwave oven draws enough current to blow a breaker that is working properly. If it is a GFI, you might try changing it out. I've had some GFCI outlets that were excessively sensitive, and replacing them with newer GFCIs from a different manufacturer very nearly eliminated my false trip issues from a Tesla Mobile Connector, and those are notoriou

That's weird. Was your microwave on a dedicated breaker ?

I had an LG dishwasher from them. It washed OK, but the noise was way higher than its specs, as measured with my decibel meter, and heard from an adjacent room. They sent a tech, who declared it in spec. It was replaced with a Bosch, that was actually quiet.

That said, I chose LG washer and dryers based on Consumer Reports recommendations. So far, I'm very happy with them. But it's only been a couple years. I use the automation with Home Assistant.

When we bought new TV's recently, we got LG's since they were the only ones that had a power button actually on the TV. I don't know what will happen to newer models.

A camera is already included in some models, ostensibly so it autoselects who is watching. You can see where this is going... :p

Only inner party members can turn off their telescreens.

And based on past experiences, this setting will get reset to the default on every firmware update...

Even Costco will only let you return a TV within 90 days. If the firmware "upgrade" happens after that, you're SOL.

IMO, there needs to be a law about such upgrades. There should always be a process to rollback. Many firmware updates for a variety of products remove functionality. Sometimes critical functionality that was instrumental in the decision to purchase the product. I'm looking at you, Google and Chromecast audio. I used to be able to cast my Android device audio to a group of any ir my 15 CCAs.

The