This is the exact reason I didn't buy a Samsung smart TV 2 weeks ago. My wife reminded me about ads, so I looked into using Pihole. It wasn't guaranteed to work, so I went with a brand that won't run ads on a TV I paid for. That is a big pet peeve of mine. I hate ads, and refuse to watch them if I pay. I don't pay for the privilege of viewing ads.

I made the mistake of buying a Samsung TV a few years ago. I created this guide[0] which gained some traction.

Also, I'm pretty sure they do upload something recognisable because one time (2-3 years ago) I accidentally pressed the 'social' button on the remote while I was watching premier league football on Sky Sports (via a separate satellite box) and the TV started showing me relevant tweets about the match.

I'm definitely not buying a 'Smart TV' next time.

[0] https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...

>How do I know that the Samsung DNS servers are being blocked?

Would have to know all of the domains that the TV connects through, that they're in one of pihole's blocklists, and the TV actually respects the DNS setting entirely and doesn't have any hard coded IP addresses

>What prevents Samsung from registering new meaningless-sounding DNS names and continually pushing out TV software updates peddling “Security and bugfix” release notes?

Nothing.

The real solution is to not connect any smart devices (especially stuff like TVs) to the internet as most are inherently untrustworthy.

Maybe a whitelisting system on a firewall would be more appropriate than a blacklisting system on something like pihole.

Just block all traffic from the TV at router level or don’t give it the WiFi password in the first place

Forget the Pi-hole, just don’t connect your TV to the internet. I have yet to see a smart-tv which work well enough and fast enough to be of any use anyway.