It’s wild just how much they’re trying to shove AI down our throats.
This comes up a lot, and I don’t necessarily get it. I have all smart TVs, and I just never, ever, EVER let them connect to wifi even ONCE for any reason. It’s not like it NEEDS it for anything.
Totally, although the thing is I bet one day tvs will come with a built in sim card, or worst yet will disable themselves until there’s an active internet connection or some other scummy method
Agreed. And that’ll be the time I’m up in arms.
I need someone to explain to me, what situation could possibly arise that would require me to use Copilot on my fucking TV?
The same reason why windows has that stupid desktop search - so that some twat with an MBA can brag about user engagement and justify his existence. Also, to hoover up user data for slop machine training.
At least you can turn that search thing off!
is it that hard just to a regular TV? i think with all the AI backlash and Smart TV fatigue that’s kinda a reasonable solution. Def won’t hurt anybody
The companies making TVs don’t want to sell simple displays, they want to expand their businesses beyond just one time sales of hardware. So they and the store fronts don’t offer the average consumer a simple display. People can still find them, but they need to be actually looking for a dumb TV and know what to look for.
everything gotta be scaling, eh. seems like a dead end.
I’ll throw my money at any TV manfucturer that just sells me a dumb OLED TV with great picture quality. Heck, even drop the speakers, I won’t be using them anyway. Just a dumb panel with plenty of input/outputs.
The LG TVs are basically that if you just ignore the LG ui. You can plug in whatever input you want and have it automatically go there on power on
I never see the LG UI. Only my nvidia shield
You’ll never get a high quality panel like you want because there’s only so many that produce the panels. And without a value add nobody makes any money.
The last time I said basically this same thing, someone recommended something…I think it was an industrial TV or something? I can’t remember!
LG’s recent software update has forcibly installed Microsoft Copilot, an AI assistant, on smart TVs without removal options, sparking widespread user backlash over privacy, bloatware, and loss of control. This highlights growing tensions in smart devices, where monetization often overrides user preferences.
Sure is ironic that the article summary is itself AI-generated.
Well LG did me a favor. Don’t buy LG tvs, Samsung appliances or HP printers.
Well, at least LG has a range of TVs turned monitors, i.e. without all that “smart” shit. So they have a usable alternative, something other vendors don’t.
Don’t buy LG anything. Everything I’ve bought from them has suckes
I’ve only ever bought LG phones, they made a couple of duds but largely they were great, they died rather than going to shit.
I need a new phone eventually though. :(
I have a freezer from them, it has worked well. Took a chance on the brand. But now it seems the display has broke after 3 years only… Hmm.
Their washing machines are good
I’ve had good luck with their mid-high end kitchen appliances and washer/dryer.
Not impressed with the TV and the AI update made the UI very slow and unresponsive. Next one will not be LG.
I have learned to never update any tv or media player, it usually becomes worse. :)
It may be possible to factory reset to the version you got from the beginning. Just have to figure out how.
We have had great luck with our LG microwave. It’s well over ten years old and the one issue we’ve had was caused by user error. Our two year old LG tv is meh. The backlighting is uneven; our much older Samsung looks much better.
Never connect your TV to your wireless and wired internet, even on initial purchase. Use a USB when updating your TV.
and why would that be any different? do they offer special usb-stick no-malware upgrade or what?
Don’t upgrade it past the day you set it up. Set it up with something like Nvidia shield or a fire stick so when it goes fucky on you, swap it with a better product. I went from a Chromecast first gen to Nvidia shield, love both products. Never connect the TV to a network where it can update and change the terms of agreement after the fact, like adding ads, adding apps, etc. avoid Roku for this as well. Changing product terms after purchase should be highly illegal.
Or just have a extra vLan for untrustable Hardware
FYI, it won’t let you delete Alexa either. I hate that fucking thing.
So glad I blocked my LG C1 from the internet ages ago. Haven’t received updates in forever, don’t care. It’s a TV, it shows pictures. I even still have it LAN enabled so it can be controlled via Home Assistant automations, it just can never leave the home network, and that’s how I like it.
I can’t even remember how long ago I set it up to do this, I think it was when I heard rumor they’d be including ads in the UI, maybe 2023 or so.
So it talks to your media box exclusively and your media box summons the streaming services?
I’ve got a Home Assistant server hooked into homekit with voice (via an Apple HomePod). I can say something like “turn on home theater” and it will turn on the receiver, TV, and Apple TV, and will set the receiver to the Apple TV’s input.
Then, other automations. Like, I’ve got a Lytmi Fantasy 3 Pro light strip behind my TV, and when I launch video (via streaming, plex, whatever) on the Apple TV, it will automatically turn off the living room lights except for the color strip. Then if I stop or pause the video, it will turn them back on. Stuff like that.
Only drawback is the TV doesn’t do wake on LAN unless you use the ethernet connection. If you want it wireless, you gotta use CEC instead, but that’s not too big a deal.
That’s interesting - I have a C1 (2021). Where or how do you block these updates and have it connected to your local network?
It’s blocked at my router. I’ve had two routers the past few years, an ASUS AX5700 (RT-AX86u) and a NETGEAR AXE7800 (RAXE300). Both allow for blocking a device from internet without blocking LAN access. So you give it an IP on your network, and then just block it from internet. I use the Netgear currently and have the ASUS as a backup device.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve read that some TVs will scan and seek to connect to open networks if it’s not connected at all, so I figure that way it’s totally blocked, and I still have access to its APIs for Home Assistant and Homekit use.
You’d need to set up a firewall rule on your router to block that device from accessing the internet. If you’ve got a fancy enough router you could set up a VLAN and second SSID for all your IoT things and only whitelist connections and devices you want to allow. That can get a little tricky to set up though
clankers should be segregated from society. oh and to the hexbear people: “clanker” is technically NOT a slur. seriously!
what?
You said something about clankers in your post. It reminded me of something they’d refer to battle droids as in star wars the clone wars. That is Captain Rex, one of the main characters
“clankers” is a term that’s being used for ai bots in a pseudo-negative way, i think
Must be an extension from the Star Wars root. The “clankers” in the show were stupid too.
And they still haven’t figured out how to stop Netflix from crashing 15 minutes into every other show I watch. First year I had it no problems. Then one day about two years ago, bam, unwatchable.
This is worse than anything Microsoft has done, I hope it leads to their decay as a company.
I hate when companies do nonsense like this.
This shit is why more people now have dabbled in DNS blocking and vlans. Its “your” equipment but you need to literally treat it as hostile.
Easy way to never get this. Don’t connect the tv to internet. Literally get an Apple TV or fire stick or something else as a media player.
For the love of Mithras do not get a fucking firestick. The amount of data collection and phone home requests those things do is actually insane. Not to mention they’re locked down hard now, you can’t even change launchers. You’ll be back at square one with a TV spewing ads at you without consent, and you can’t do shit.
if you get one of those you end up in the same place with more steps… you need to hook up a pc (any format), preferably running Linux, so you have full control
Yeah it used to be a pc on Windows was enough, but now even that’s corrupted to hell
Amd streamers dont give hd on desktop devices.
So if we go this route we need to bring our sea legs.
So they don’t waste my bandwidth on badly compressed, huge source video that I can’t see the difference on anyway?
Sounds like win/win to me.
I assumed we are all fellow waterdogs
The controversy centers on a Reddit post in the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, where a user lamented the unexpected addition of Copilot following an automatic update. The post, which garnered thousands of upvotes and comments, describes the AI tool appearing as a non-deletable app on the TV’s interface.
“Widespread backlash” 🙄
I thought “Widespread backlash” was the position Microsoft wants all its customers in ✋️🍑🤚
AI generated summary for sure
Honestly, though this is the definition of “widespread backlash” when it comes to red pilled garbage. So I’ll take it.
