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What dongle or what have you do y'all use that's privacy focused? I need to disconnect my LG TV and we have an old Chromecast but that's Google...
I had an old laptop that I hooked in and configured it to boot into a fullscreen browser to our Emby server. Could just as easily have it boot into a browser with shortcuts to your streaming services.
We use one of these mini keyboard/touchpads to control it:
Lately, though, I just picked up a set of wireless HDMI adapters and just plug one of those into the closest laptop and play from there.
Weve had a similar setup for nearly 10 years and its fricken great. We built a low spec computer using old parts from our desktops, hooked it up to our tv via hdmi, and plugged in a wireless keyboard with built in trackpad to act as the remote. We get all the same AD blocking and content access as a desktop because, you know, its a desktop but in the livingroom. My personal favorite is using a second account on discord to pull up streams on the tv from the couch while joining on my phone via my primary account for voice.
I have a ShieldTV plugged into mine and it has been great. You can install a new Launcher to have full control of what you see and it works great. I pretty much just use it for Jellyfin and YouTube now, but in the past have had all of the streaming services at one time or another.
The best cheap solution is a Google TV with Projectivy launcher to bypass the adware.
The best fully non-adware solution as others said seems to be a mini-pc running Linux or other cleaner environment you set up.
Yeah mini-pc is the way. Throw Linux on it and it'll last for years, trouble free
I have a Linux mini PC. There are definite pros, like controlling it via SSH from my Home Assistant, running Netflix in Firefox with adblocker... But drawbacks are no HDR, no 4k for streaming, heck, even 720p max for Hulu (and Disney, but I don't have one).
However, high sails have higher resolution too, it's just an additional step.
My lg TV is late 2024. When I first got and was setting it up, asked me to connect to the internet, something about benefits, AI. I was like are you insane TV? you will NEVER have access to the internet, this is exactly why my nvidia shield is locked in a old 8.9 version and pihole block all the things.
How can a monitor install stuff on a PC? Can you do that over hdmi/dp? Does it require usb?
Either way, this stuff should be illegal or at least require a much more explicit warning than hiding it in terms of service that nobody reads. And of course everybody would do well to avoid LG out of principle from now on.
Razer mice have some crapware that auto-installs on Windows now, through windows update. Their official driver that it downloads adds the crap and Microsoft just lets it do it all.
No such hassles on Linux though.
Windows update, by default, is set to automatically download and install the malware for them when the HDMI cable is connected to the computer, within less than a minute.
My LG tv is too old for this shit. But it does not get ethernet or wifi password just in case they decide to update the firmware
It's pretty much impossible to buy a dumb TV nowadays. It's much easier to disconnect a smart TV from the internet using a firewall.
They've learned nothing in 13 years https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/lg-smart-tv-snooping-extends-to-home-networks-second-blogger-says/
On the contrary, they have learned a lot.
They've learned:
