I added PiHole on a RBP and it turns out up to half the rejected requests come from my various Samsung TVs. It's staggering how much traffic comes out of them. And that's in a home with two work from home adults in laptops all day.

What are other people's experiences with other brands of TV?

When I researched them a while back I came away with LG OLEDs being the best, particularly if you paired them with an Apple TV.

There are no good high-end “dumb” tv options.

> There are no good high-end “dumb” tv options.

Loewe[0] make really nice, simple, high-end TVs with great picture and sound, which really don't have intrusive 'smart' features. I use mine purely as a 'monitor' for AppleTV (and Nintendo Switch).

The problem is distribution: they're difficult to source even within Europe.

[0]https://www.loewe.tv/int

(UK here) I have had a Loewe for about two years now. I hadn't heard of them myself but came across them when buying a Linn [0] audio system - the audio shop I went to offered Loewe as one of the options for an integrated sound+vision package. My overall system uses Linn as the sound output for the TV instead of a Loewe sound bar.

The TV is fairly excellent and the hosted apps are fine and not in your face - the TV comes on directly showing its current input (e.g. in my case from a BT smart box) rather than apps or a start screen or similar. I can also immediately cast media to it by a right click from my PC.

I initially had problems with the overall system integration: I have poor wifi coverage in my house and the TV (Loewe) and sound systems (Linn) wouldn't always work reliably together until I had ethernet wired into my house. Also, and this is not a big problem for me, an Alexa can recognise the Loeve as a device but appears unable to use it for sound output. In the bin for you, Alexa.

[0] https://www.linn.co.uk/uk/

I had never heard of loewe, but after 10 minutes of searching, I still know nothing more about them - there is no pricing available, no idea where to buy them and no list of models. The one model I could find I also can't find tech specs for because the download link is broken.

Loewe was an old traditionell German Manufacture of Radio and later TVs. Here is the german Wikipediasite https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loewe_Technology

My problem is, that I essentially want a dumb TV, but with gaming features, I guess the mix of my requirements is what makes it impossible. If someone knows a dumb, 120hz, GSync and OLED TV, let me know :)

There are a couple OLED computer monitors that are just TVs with the TV parts removed and the monitor parts thrown in. For example, the Gigabyte FO48U.

I recently bought a simple TV from SwedX [0]. Pretty happy with it so far. Seems to be simple enough. No "apps", no network connectivity, simple remote and simple menus. Quite quick to turn on.

I didn't go for an extremely high-end display, but I wouldn't have done that anyway. They seem to be out of stock of a lot of their "4K" models, but they are priced at 600-1000€.

Ships from Sweden, so should be possible for a lot of Europe.

0: https://www.swedx.se/

I am glad we are moving in that direction ( as in, there are options for people, who are ok with paying more for not intrusive versions ). Sadly, no US option.

For some reason I'm unable to reply to maccard - apologies for this misplaced response

> I had never heard of loewe, but after 10 minutes of searching, I still know nothing more about them - there is no pricing available, no idea where to buy them and no list of models. The one model I could find I also can't find tech specs for because the download link is broken.

Loewe are indeed wonderful TVs totally letdown by their marketing and distribution.

FWIW their website (which I linked to above) does have model and spec information, but it's fair to say that they've fallen off the radar for most consumer-TV review sites, and even their user-base forum[0] is predominantly German-language (although any questions asked in English do receive a response).

I think the problem is that the TV-market is saturated by the major brands, and they achieve market-dominance by stealing and selling their users' data, instead of pricing their TVs realistically. Most people don't care.

[0] https://www.loewe-friends.de

Most TV makers have versions for commercial display purposes that don't include the "smart" stuff. Typically cheaper too.

Yeah I looked at those when I learned of them. They often come with serious quality (and price) trade offs if you’re able to source them at all.

If you’re looking for a generic LCD it’s probably fine, but if you’re comparing to an LG OLED you won’t find an ad free option in the commercial market. At least I couldn’t back when I tried.

Giving the TV no network access and using an Apple TV seemed to be the best option.

> If you’re looking for a generic LCD it’s probably fine, but if you’re comparing to an LG OLED you won’t find an ad free option in the commercial market. At least I couldn’t back when I tried.

https://www.lg.com/global/business/commercial-tv/lg-77EU960H...

They don't update the commercial line annually of course, so it's equivalent to a consumer model from a few years ago, but the panels are all the same until the 2021 models anyways.

Some pointers to model numbers / where those can be bought would be helpful, thanks!

TCL ran through my mobile hotspot data allowance (150MB) while off; i enabled the hotspot so it could get and update (the UI was jank out of the box). I use my hotspot with my console, i was using my projector in another room with the console and i got the alert about hotspot data.

I changed the hotspot password and now the TCL blinks its status light while it's turned on, to chastise me for disabling its internet.

There needs to be some regulation on this - because a boycott will never work, people don't think about boycotts or this sort of thing when they "need a TV today"; they either are shopping for a specific feature or going on price per square inch of screen or cheapest overall. These TVs blowing through 100MB/hr of internet data even while 'off' has to potential to lock people out of their internet connections, or get a large bill for overages. I only have 15GB of hotspot data, and i "need" that for the console, my fixed wireless home internet only has 150GB of data included in the plan, and even if i 'cheat' and use pdanet or something to use my cellphone without the hotspot data in the plan i only have 75GB of data there, as well.

So, in summary, smart TVs need to be regulated. And I really need to sniff that traffic while it's off because what could it possibly be doing? how much storage is on these things?

Note that some devices just keep retrying after a failed (blocked) connection, leading to massively inflated numbers in pihole.

Projectors - great.

Scepter brand tv - Walmart -not greatest quality, but at least it’s dumb.

did you mean Spectre? are they a walmart brand now? They were one of the first producers of retail LCD screens that consumers in the US could buy. I had two of them, and they were quite good compared to other offerings back then. This is the same era as 802.11b dongles. I even had one in my SUV to replace a 14" CRT that finally had enough of driving on california freeway overpasses, large amounts of magnetism would wobble the entire display on the crt.

I recently bought a 1080p spectre for my youngest kid, wall mounted it, put an indoor antenna on it and a raspberry Pi running openElec with a wifi dongle.

as far as i can tell, it's a "dumb" tv.

Yes, I meant Sceptre. I mentioned Walmart because that's the place I know of where you can buy them, I don't think Walmart owns them. Yes it's a dumb TV. But I don't think the screen quality is considered very good.

D'oh. Misread and thought you were correcting the last two letters. Sceptre, not Spectre. https://www.sceptre.com/

I've had Samsung on "boycott and complain" list, anytime someone asks me for a recommendation and samsung is an option i say "avoid samsung"; I started boycotting them after they told me to pound sand when i had an issue with my $800 4k monitor a couple months after i bought it. I had also bought a new samsung refrigerator around that time as well, and among other issues, it leaked water from the ice machine starting about 1 year after i bought it. I've had to replace the mainboard in it, as well.

So no phones, appliances, laptops, TVs, memory sticks, SD cards, and whatever else they make. Even if they magically got a better reputation for customer service, the shenanigans with the smart TVs is enough to keep the boycott up.

"I'm never buying a Samsung TV ever again, or other Samsung stuff."

I swore off buying Samsung stuff after the Galaxy S3. I eventually gave them another chance and bought one of their TVs since the reviews were great. Huge mistake. I hated that thing so much, and recently replaced it with an LG which has been fantastic.

Same. Spent an ungodly amount on the Samsung “frame”. After two RMAs because it randomly rebooted, the interface froze, etc. I’m looking for another tv that we can pretend is art when it is “off”.

Pi-hole does not solve the problem completely unfortunately; it's fairly trivial to bypass network DNS. In theory any software could manually call one of the public DNS ip's or just have a fallback hardcoded list of IPs.

Nothing solves the problem completely. Redirecting DNS at the router to a blocking DNS server goes a long way, but DNS over HTTPS is a tougher nut to crack.

I block all dns outbound on my home network. My resolver uses DNS over https to Cloudflare. I consider any DNS / udp 53 traffic outbound unauthorized or a leak that should be prevented. If I see a beacon to a particular DNS server externally, I’ll create a NAT to point to my resolver so I can manipulate the answers, if I deem it necessary.

That solves the first issue, what about the hardcoded IPs issue?

You have a clothes dryer?