I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
I recently took my brand new stupid fucking tv off the grid. I use Apple TV so not a big deal with the ads and shit but the damn thing forced an update mid movie, reset, and black screened. Couldn’t get it back on and went to bed, figured I’d deal with it in the morning. Luckily it worked the next day after that no more internet for you.
If you think that’s bad, my Denon receiver had to update itself which for some reason fails 100% of the time when using wifi so I had to find the longest ethernet cable I have to connect into the back (or disconnect 20+ wires from the back to move it closer to the network switch) so that it could finish downloading the firmware and complete the update before it would start working again.
cant one simple adb debloat any droid device? i mean adb list those packages, maybe even backup some and then remove the obvious ones?!
Not if they’re baked into the system. Although that may get into GPL violations, I forget. God knows a device can come with locked firmware though.
i dont know what you mean by baked in really. all services are packages i guess and a quick google search says stuff like that at least exist at some point, e.g.https://github.com/tutyamxx/androidtv-debloat-script
i wish op the best of luck to escape telemetry hell.
Adb is just an interface between computer and phone, the packages it lists may not be every system component, you can add anything in at kernel level, or also just not list it in that interface.
no. smart tvs are not phones.
Don’t ever connect a “smart” tv to the internet. Period.
is this about the stupid football thing?
Yeah I guess the superbowl is soon, there’s another row of football ads one or two rows up. I’ll remind myself that I paid for the TV, the electricity to run it, and the bandwidth to connect it, yet I’m still shown full screen ads first thing when I turn my TV on. And I don’t even watch football. And I can’t disable it.
Corporate America and gargle my balls
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it’s just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it’s back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don’t sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.
Plenty of 4k with HDR on Real Debrid. Or even better quality and bitrate ripped from BRs, in the open waters.
Buy a smart TV box like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. You can get full quality streaming with some ads but not nearly as bad as the software that’s built into some of these TVs.
I know, I was just letting people know that this guys solution comes with downsides.
HDMI 2.1 can support 4k. Find a ship that doesn’t sink. Voila. No ads. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No HDR? Better than a single second of an ad.
What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?
Razor blade to specific pcb traces?
Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.
I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.
That’s unlikely, the additional R&D cost probably won’t weigh up to the costs incurred by the small minority that removes it.
Don’t buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the “tech world” for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway…
To be fair, the super bowl ads are seen as part of the entertainment by many people and the companies generally do go out of their way to make the funniest or cutest ads of the year. Any other time I would fully agree with you.
This is insane.
USA really is a cyberpunk dystopia.
Yeah. Yeah it is. I was in Times Square recently and had the thought that this was the glitzy permanent neon lighting to go with all the other stuff.
I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don’t get any ads anywhere anymore.
Which one?
I use Projectivy at the moment. Pretty close to stock visually, just without the ads or apps you can’t hide. Enough for me to make it tolerable.
Thanks.
We have not owned a TV since the 00s and have no intention of buying one any time soon, but I had a look at the FUTO website you linked and it’s interesting read (even for the non-expert I’m).
Thx for sharing :)
Sorry, I’m confused. You should easily be able to block these home screen ads ads with pihole or router dns blocking. I know because I do it with my smart tvs. Are you saying that that isn’t working?
I figure the ads are just cached from earlier. I took this picture a few hours after I finished setting up my pfBlockerNG feeds and changing my DNS to AdGuard’s public one.
If nothing else, this ad certainly reaffirmed my decision to update our network.
I would recommend hard power cycling the TV and re-evaluating. For example, on both my TCL Roku and LG WebOS TVs, home screen ads are completely eliminated with pihole dns blocking. Additionally, I got rid of home screen ads on my Nvidia shield and other devices.
Make sure that you’re blocking the right domains.
Edit: before anyone says “but why even connect the TV to the Internet at all?” - the reason is because you’re likely to get the best HDR quality (especially Dolby Vision) from the TV’s native streaming apps. Dolby vision is an absolute fucking disaster on external devices and barely works at all on Windows (if at all.)
Disable all internet functionality, set the time to the 1990s to prevent many timers from going off, attach the tv to another device that doesn’t have ads via your cable of choice. But why was your smart tv 1700? Did it have some special features?
Probably 4k oled
Have you ever looked at OLED TV prices? This is absolutely a normal price.
Not disagreeing, but at some point this won’t be enough. Assuming companies aren’t already, “offline” devices will get shipped with the ability to utilize unsecured networks and/or other devices. Better hope any neighbors are privacy conscious too.*
(they’re not)
I’ve been recommending physically snipping radios, but that can cause issues if you don’t understand what you’re doing. Any chance you know whether it’s possible to simply delete drivers and backups on modern smart tvs? Mine is ancient, so I have no clue what they’re doing to y’all, nowadays.
Personally, I don’t have the energy to go to such lengths. My “good enough” has been using AdGaud Home as a network-wide DNS blocker and connect my smart TV to it. It’s been great so far.
Plus, I get the bonus of seeing how much gets blocked.
Yo dawg! I heard you like ads. So we put ads in your ads
Get a cheap computer and connect the tv to it; get a mouse and bluetooth keyboard or an air mouse if your want to; install kodi perhaps, or just have your bare desktop. Problem solved
Disconnect the tv to wifi too.
There are some cheap Bluetooth TV remotes so if you want to take some time out of your day, there’s a few Linux distros that ship with similar GUI to some TV’s.
I mean… Historically I find the superbowl ads (and the halftime show) more entertaining than the actual game, but damn that is shitty.
I’d honestly return it as faulty. Preloaded adware shouldn’t be acceptable.
Congratulations! So, how does the TV work with the adblocker set up?
It’s absolutely no different! The TV is doing something weird to get around it, or these ads are just cached from earlier. I’m not sure yet. Good news is that the ad blockers definitely works, we’re getting 96/100 on https://adblock-tester.com/
Check for HTTPS traffic as well as the regular let 53. They could be doing DNS over HTTPS to get around the block, or a static IP for a nameserver.
DNS calls are definitely cached. You’ll have to wait a few days until your TV refreshes DNS entries.
what brand is it? just to know what to avoid
Hisense. Name and shame baby
Google TV is the easiest to get rid of ads on. I have a Sony and a Hisense both no ads.
Look up and use the Projectivy Launcher.
You’ll also want to sideload an app that forces the default launcher to Projectivy (can’t recall the name) because they don’t allow changing it through the stock OS. Projectivy tries to use accessibility settings to take over on its own, but it breaks some other features so I don’t use them.
