My TCL starts to bootloop if it goes more than a month without connecting to the internet so it can download screensaver ads. The warranty people force me into the support gauntlet. The support gauntlet's first demand: connect it to the internet.

This is disgusting. Ads are ruining everything.

And if you think it stops here, I've got bad news. This is only going to get worse without strict regulation.

Hold up. What if you don't have internet? Are they legitimately prepared to say "well, in this case your TV is not gonna work"?

Yes. I lived on a farm for a couple years recently and you had to extensively research any tech you bought even if logic said there’s no reason that particular tech should need internet. The TV we took with us no longer worked (Samsung) so we had to buy a Sony (and have never looked back), among other things.

Also, software. Half the software on our computers stopped working despite not being internet related.

It was incredibly frustrating and really soured me on the direction tech is headed.

soon, not having internet will be like not having a phone, and wanting a tv that works without internet will be like using a computer without internet.

in any case, i'd get any claim that the tv works without internet in writing. then it becomes a warranty issue if the tv stops working

Yes and they’re legitimately paid to ignore the fact that internet access is a base need for everyone and should be cheaply available.

You should try running it through a pihole. Even better, maybe you can manage to MITM it and replace the ads with something funny.

Some devices bypass the Pihole, and while you can catch them at the firewall, it’s a tedious game.

So what we need is a jailbreak and custom firmware?

Very very much so.

how is it possible to bypass? if it is the only thing available then it is impossible to use an alternative

They use their own DNS rather than PiHole’s.

If they use own DNS then maybe it can be disabled by IP rule in firewall?

If they can't get to their preferred DNS servers directly then they use DNS-over-HTTPS which you can't block.

Piholes just replace DNS results, so a device using hard coded DNS servers allows it to bypass that. This leads to people redirecting all port 53 traffic to the Pihole, which leads to devices/apps doing DNS over HTTPS, at which point it’s game over unless you can get your self-signed cert onto the device.

but surely these devices are set up to use DHCP and receive home users' DNS servers? giving them static IPs would not work. I suppose it depends on a) if these devices are somehow set up to receive just an IP address over DHCP and use their own hardcoded DNS servers and b) whether the home DHCP server / router would honour this and not enforce its own DNS servers along with the IP address

They’ll be using DHCP, but even when not doing anything nefarious you’re better off using known DNS servers when deploying appliances on random networks because consumer ISPs have a habit of ignoring TTLs and redirecting DNS results when you’re reaching bandwidth quotas and the like.

then the DHCP can assign PiHole as the DNS resolver, and if the requested domain isn't in its block list then it will be forwarded to google, cloudflare, etc.

i. e. the ads on smart devices can be blocked

Edit: Didn't know TCL is a brand, not available in my part of the world... - What brand is your TV?

TCL is a big Chinese company, they even have their own tv streaming service golive tv.

TCL is the brand. (I hadn't heard of it either)

I see that around in supermarkets here. Cheap garbage from you-know-where.

He already said - TCL.

How does it know the time? Can't you set it to 1971?