I’m that weird guy who prefers the cooked taste of UHT pasteurized milk.

GULF OF MEXICO

Not that I’ve been able to find. I rarely notice but when I do it’s quite frustrating.

I’m using a Shield TV Pro with the default launcher disabled, replaced with FLauncher, and the netflix and voice search buttons disabled via button mapper.

I’m 1000% happy with it and absolutely would not go back to an actual HTPC.

Oh, I also uninstalled youtube and replaced it with SmartTube Beta

Thank you! I’ll give that a go!

My firewall is closed, nothing is forwarded. This is all on my LAN only. I just don’t want the non-https ports available at all, even on the LAN.

Nothing is accessible outside my network. The proxy is local only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_dome

“So you want deviled ham, ma’am?”

Those people who complain that it’s all Linux all the time are feeling pretty foolish right now, aren’t they?

The Samsung tries to “identify” what’s on an hdmi input before it will connect. It seems to call out to the internet to do that because it takes forever to fail and show you the display anyway when it’s not connected to the internet. Even when it is connected, it takes a stupidly long time to switch to a new input. I super hate it and will never buy another samsung tv.

I guess the lg needs to boot tizen before it works, because I see the logo briefly but then it goes directly to the last used input with no other bullshit, so it’s fine with me.

I love how literally nobody is answering your actual question.

I agree that this is problematic and we need TV reviews to include at least some of the information you cite.

If it helps, I have an LG smart TV. It complains if you don’t let it access the internet at setup, but if you connect it once and let it do its initial patching, you can decline all agreements and not get nagged until it tries to update again. To keep it from further updates, you can disconnect it from wifi and it doesn’t seem to try to reconnect. I can’t speak to public wifi because there aren’t any open access points near my TV.

In contrast, I have a samsung TV that loses its mind if it can’t connect to the internet and becomes basically useless for all the nagging.

I have an iphone 12 mini and it’s working fine. A couple of times, after an update, I’ve had to manually restart the phone to get rid of mysterious power drain. Other than that, zero problems for me.

I’m with you. If there weren’t health and social complications, I’d be wishing for full-blown alopecia.

I’m super lazy. I started losing my hair at age 14 and it was pretty much all over by 30. I didn’t give in and start shaving the fringes until 40-something

My solution to the problem was to preemptively lose all my hair in my thirties but yours probably works too.

You can debloat an NVIDIA shield android tv box, replace the default launcher, then install whatever else you want. It’s probably not perfect but it’s pretty darn good. That’s what I use and it can be updated without losing any of my customization.

Kingdom

It depends a LOT on where you are. In the USA, Canada, and (I think) Mexico, such a thing is not possible, at least in any way that the services you mentioned will care.

It might be possible in places where phone numbers don’t have a fixed length, like (again, I think) Germany.