We've already had TVs which only started serving ads after a few months of use. What's stopping them from selling TVs which stop working if it hasn't been able to connect to the mothership for a few weeks?

And instead of a full brick, let's just downgrade to 360p and call it an "expiration of your complementary free Enhanced Video trial".

>We've already had TVs which only started serving ads after a few months of use. What's stopping them from selling TVs which stop working if it hasn't been able to connect to the mothership for a few weeks?

Same thing that prevents your phone manufacturer from adding a firmware level backdoor that uploads all your nudes to the mothership 1 day after the warranty expires. At some point you just have to assume they're not going to screw you over.

> At some point you just have to assume they're not going to screw you over.

That'd be quite naive in my opinion.

That's not a good answer, unless you just want cable. YouTube, Netflix, etc won't work. Buying hardware is paying extra which is already a deterrent, but anyway just shifts the problem to that piece of hardware - is the stick vetted to not do any harm? Other solutions are often impractical or overly complex for non-technical people. I haven't seen any good answers to date. I guess your TV just shouldn't spy on everything you watch? Seems like a reasonable expectation.

Buy an AppleTV.

Google devices are out because they are developed by a advertising company.

The Roku CEO outright said they sell Roku devices below costs to advertise to you.

My TCL/Roku TV recently started showing popups during streams with services like YouTubeTV and PlutoTV, that basically say, "Click here to watch this same program on the Roku Network". I poked around the settings on the TV, and sure enough, there were some new "smart" settings added and enabled by default. I disabled the settings, and the popups stopped. But it's only a matter of time before something else appears.

Apple is already sending spam notifications for stupid bullshit like that F1 movie.

> is the stick vetted to not do any harm

The stick is $30 and trivially replaced. The TV is closer to $1000. Worst-case scenario I'll just hook up an HTPC or Blue-Ray player to the TV.

The $30 stick is also sold below cost and makes money from advertising. The only one that I would trust is AppleTV

Because with a stick, I can easily decide to chuck it and replace with another. Over and over again. Hard to do with a TV. Even if I had the money, disposing of one is a royal pain.

I trust Apple’s business model.

For now. They’re about to undergo a CEO change, again. Who knows what will happen in the future, particularly if the shareholders expect the perceived value provided by enshittification.

John Ternus, SVP of Hardware Engineering, is considered the front runner for CEO right now. The board wants a more product oriented CEO this time. Things could change but makes me optimistic.

Its not like they change CEOs every year - Tim Cook has been CEO since 2011.

I just connect it to a computer and watch YouTube without ads and movies without anti-piracy warnings (from a store I go to-rrent them).

How do you hook it up and how do you control it remotely?

I do the same thing. My PC is hooked up via HDMI to a receiver which goes to the TV via HDMI. I use VNC on my phone to remote control it. It works well. The phone’s touch screen functions as a mouse and you can pull up the phone’s on screen keyboard to type. My wife is extremely non technical and does fine with it. Usually we just use the browser to watch ad-blocked YouTube or unofficial sports streams.

Elecom Relacon, the only wireless input device worth owning.

We just switched to a laptops and USB-HDMI cable that always dangles near our TV. Someone wants to see F1, sports or a movie, they just plug it and watch like it's a big computer screen. If 9yo can do it, anyone can do it.

Until they start using Sidewalk/LPWAN type things automatically instead of your home WiFi.

This theoretical capability could connect to a neighbor's WIFI in an apartment or condo.

Every router shipped these days either by the cable company or separately is configured with a password by default.

And a guest wifi that is password free on by default. All it takes is a neighbor to get a new router from the ISP. I just had to turn my guest wifi off because I noticed a lot of bandwidth on it (likely coming from our neighbor who was bragging about cord cutting).

Even that WiFi is gated by having to have an account with the ISP at least it was with Comcast.

what stops Comcast and TV makers from making a deal to use it?

So now Comcast is going to make a deal that TVs can use their guest WiFi network without logging in but only to send surveillance information?

>>And a guest wifi that is password free on by default.

I've literally never seen a router with a guest wifi enabled by default, from any ISP or otherwise - is that a common thing where you live?

It was common that Comcast has a separate WiFi guest network where anyone with a Comcast account could sign in and use it.

It's anecdotal, but I live in an apartment and while most of the WIFI networks are password protected, not all are.

My Wi-Fi isn't. I live about 2 miles away from my closest neighbor, so it was an inconvenience.

The trick was finding TV's and what not that don't need an Internet connection. Vizio was the only brand I could find that still had just dumb tv flat screens, believe it or not.

I would have thought modern devices would complain about unencrypted enough that putting even the password 123456 would be less painful