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Phillips126 | 5 years ago

I purchased a Samsung TV about two years ago for $1,200. It was my first 4K TV and I loved it. I made the purchase around the same time I dropped my cable subscription, I just couldn't stand the advertisements anymore.

The panel was thin (with almost no bezels), the picture quality was superb and I was sold on the "Smart TV" features like having built in access to Netflix, etc. For a while it was great, then I noticed the ads showing up on the bottom left of the bottom menu. Now my TV is as slow as molasses and I hate it. Picture quality is still good, but Samsung ruined it with their software. I refuse to purchase another Samsung TV which really frustrates me because I love their panels.

I'm currently looking to disable the internet on it and use a Fire Stick, Roku, or other. Anyone have any suggestions?

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DoingIsLearning|5 years ago

Depends on how complicated you want things to be.

I recently bought a Sony TV, it's an amazing display but I have zero patience for their janky android flavoured UI.

I never setup wifi, I have 3x HDMI ports connected:

1x port for a cable set top box

1x port with a raspberry pi running OSMC

1x port with a google Chromecast

I will use the cable for local news or documentaries. For Youtube/Netflix/Spotify streaming, I will use the Chromecast dongle. I use the OSMC media center for torrents, internet radio and some live TV channels from my home country.

It sounds convoluted but I find it easier to just toogle HDMI ports and have a solution that is optimal for I want to do, rather than to try use any of the solutions out there that claim they can do everything but end up falling short.

victor9000|5 years ago

You could try using a pi-hole as your DNS server on your local network to block ads across all connected devices.

https://pi-hole.net/

lightswitch05|5 years ago

The pihole is nice, but isn’t a silver bullet. I have a roku tv, I hate it, but I think I hate it less then I would hate another smart tv like Samsung or LG. No cameras or built in microphone- although the remote does have a microphone, but I imagine it would kill the batteries quickly if it was listening when it’s not supposed to. Anyways, to add some context, the roku has ads too, the external roku devices do too. The fire sticks also have ads. I run a little hosts blocklist project [0] and recently had a interesting ticket about blocking the roku ads [1]. What it boiled down to is blocking a couple more domains and setting up your home firewall to prevent the TV from bypassing your pihole and talking directly with 8.8.8.8. Given DoH, who knows how long this option will be viable. I don’t watch TV, but my next big Entertainment purchase will probably be an Apple TV and I’ll remove the TV from the network completely. There are no open wifi connections in my area, so not too worried about it connecting to another network.

[0] https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/

[1] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/issues/230

dastx|5 years ago

Software and hardware are increasingly hardcoding DNS servers. If you do use it, block DNS requests from all clients except your pi-hole on your router.

Also, be aware that systems can still try and resolve IPs using a different mechanism (e.g. if too many people start DNS blocking) or worse hardcode IPs. Pi-hole cannot sort those out. You'll need a more advanced firewall. Something like pfsense or the like.

Phillips126|5 years ago

I actually had an old Pi laying around. Just setup pi-hole and giving it a try now. Thanks for the tip!