Love being interrupted when my monitor asks me to accept user agreements

I think you'll find the price at that volume and without subsidy a bit higher than a lot of people want to pay.

It may be cheaper and even easier to just buy and somehow modify Onn/Hisense into dumb displays, though I've never explored the idea myself to know how feasible it even is.

Honestly when you see what a modern TV has inside and how it is assembled you realize that there’s not much “subsidy”.

Just don't connect the "smart" Tv to the internet. It's still a "dumb display" if you don't give it internet access. Don't give it wifi access, don't plug in an ethernet cable.

I think the hdmi standard allows for Ethernet over hdmi. That’s a sneaky way in for your tv

While its allowed by the standard, its not something that is often used. Certainly the AppleTV that I use does not even offer an option to share its network connection over Ethernet. And I’m not aware of any other box that does.

It’ll only be a matter of a few years before it has a 5G modem and doesn’t give you a choice to “just” not connect it to the internet.

If apple can’t get free data for their cellular devices theres no hope for vizio et al.

Problem is: you’d still be stuck with a Hisense TV. They got planned obsolescence built in, most of their TVs power supplies go out after only 4 years or even less.

Amazon set a precedent with Kindle 3G keyboard edition many years ago; it had free worldwide cellular access for buying books and had an experimental web browser good enough for webmail. I never thought it was free from the carriers, I assume the bill went to Amazon.

If Vizio can’t arrange that alone, they could pool together many manufacturers and devices, offer the phone companies a copy of the data, or wait until the cost drops low enough.

The data required to exfiltrate the telemetry and serve ads is vastly smaller than that used by the average iPhone.

But for now you can still rip the modem and antenna, like what I am forced to do with my car.

My understanding is Amazon paid an enormous amount for that!

What about the data for a 4g watch?

Yeah, let's keep rewarding the companies that are profiting from weaponizing consumer electronics by buying from them, instead of promoting an alternative that offers something that actually is what people want.

It's not really rewarding the company if they are subsidizing the price of the TV by selling people's information through the "smart" part of the TV, when you don't participate in the "smart" part of it. You got a cheaper TV, didn't hand over any of your info, so the company loses money on the "smart" TV.

Pretty sure you need a special cable that carries ethernet, as well as a device at the other end that supplies ethernet to HDMI, so you have to really want to let your "smart" tv to have access to the internet.

The manufacturer is not losing money on the device. Google/Amazon are paying them to get their spyware crap on the device.

> You got a cheaper TV, didn't hand over any of your info...

But you are still enabling Surveillance Capitalism. Even if you think you personal data is safe, the system still exploits the majority of the consumer market.

Nobody is being rewarded when I don't connect the subsidised "smart" TV to the internet.

There are other kinds of very cheap TVs with forced ads and tracking that require an internet connection to function at all, but those are a whole other story entierly, and we aren't talking about those here.

The manufacturer is being rewarded. You just bought a TV from them. They are making money anyway. The revenue from the data selling is just extra.

Then the TV will just display a generic error telling you to get it serviced and refuse to work.

This really irks me. Even if not connected to the internet, it still has whatever android bloat OS on it. Ageing android (or any other) are just intolerable even when they haven't completely rotted. It will fail. A family member let us borrow their second smart TV, a Samsung, and it would not function, internet or not. It would crash on turning it on, and even if it didn't crash it took six or seven minutes to get from standby to 'actually displaying HDMI 1' if it didn't crash. A quarter of the time crashed so bad on turning it on that the firmware had to be reflashed. I gave it back. Don't get me started on all the weird android alzheimers bullshit like trying to set the time (so the old fashioned EPG would work) would set the time to literally anything but what was input and did so in a totally random and unpredictable pattern meaning it couldn't just be worked around.

I was grateful to find a totally dumb 4K 48" TV that had the same firmware as the decade (at minimum) old 1080i 23" TV it was replacing. Its image quality would offend TV nerds but I will never ever own a smart TV and they don't really make actually dumb TVs any more. You could not pay me to use a decade old android or tv os device, let alone the considerably younger TV we borrowed. Absolutely not.

That's a win-win-win in my book. I get a cheap device, manufacturer sells a device, evil data collection companies don't get my data. The rest of you can connect your tv to the internet and have creeps do stuff with your data, I really don't care what you do. And really, why should anyone be worried that some company knows you watch family feud instead of the price is right.

> The rest of you can connect your TV to the internet and have creeps do stuff with your data,

Your data is still getting collected, just not through the TV.

> I really don't care what you do.

What if you were told that ad companies are still going to be able to target you just by collecting data from others like you?

What if you were told that I've worked for those ad companies, I know all the tricks they use, and I know extremely well how they target me - and I'm still not worried about buying a "smart" TV and using it while not connecting it to the internet.

> I've worked for those ad companies

Well, then I definitely don't trust your moral compass and this whole discussion is pointless.