Just don't connect them to the internet, now you have a TV that's cheaper than it should be because they expect to show you ads, but they can't

Won’t be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn’t your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G, cars have started doing that, Tesla trains AI on all owner driving data, VW new electric (ID3?) will be their first with a mandatory perma HQ connection, IIRC.

Kindle with 3G was great, free internet globally. Never once showed me an ad, and most Kindles didn't have it.

When that day comes buy a monitor, or hack the firmware.

You can always break off the aerial.

Cell phone connections don't need to use aerials anymore. The antennas in smartphones are often planar arrays or square-ish fractal antennas. From the outside they literally look like little boxes or squares. The casual mechanic might have a hard time distinguishing them from a chip.

> Won’t be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn’t your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G

How do these things work? Do they have a contract with a phone service operator in each country in the world for unlimited data, or what?

The device company usually has a bulk data contract with a large telecom. It isn't unusual for IoT device companies to end up as minor telecom providers themselves, buying bandwidth in bulk and reselling it to consumers.

I don't think you can buy a kindle with a cellphone radio anymore, and the ones that had them cost extra.

My Sony would pop up a nag screen in the middle of a movie or show to remind me that it wasn't connected to the internet. Eventually, I caved and connected it.

This is an option until they require internet.

Also the other side is that these cheap TVs are slow as hell. My Vizio has a 15 second startup time before it responds to commands, while it's "Smart"Cast stuff does what it does. This is before it responds to other commands, ex volume. And this is at each session, not cold boot only.

This remains true for now, but expect the ubiquity of things like Amazon Sidewalk, Helium network, and embedded cellular modules in devices to make it hard to avoid a device that phones home.

What you are looking for are generally sold as "large format displays". Basically tvs for commercial purposes that do not have any of that crap. Most projector manufacturers, even the consumer ones, have also been good about avoiding "smart" features.

They cost inordinately more than what profit they are getting from ads & spying, and are often missing things like multiple HDMI inputs. It's not a real solution, but a bad workaround.

And more of these displays are getting these kinds of smart features added, anyway. It's going to become increasingly difficult to get a dumb panel at all.

Dell sells a 55” conference room monitor at a decent price. That - or something like it - will be my next “TV”

Best Buy still sells a dumb TV. Sadly the Insignia N10 only goes as far as 43" and 1080p. I bought a set of the 32" model for my brothers.

Annoyingly, it STILL takes a few seconds to start up.

My living room TV is a 39" Panasonic from 7 years ago. It's dumb as a brick.. but I almost never watch TV so this is fine!

It'd be nice if you could buy a brand new 55" OLED or whatever and not have to deal with smart TV software. I guess there's the gigabyte, LG, and alienware monitors.

My TV is from 2012 and I'm not all that worried about it failing. Modern TVs don't draw much power, nothing inside them gets very hot, no moving parts, etc. I would be surprised if I don't get ten more years out of it.

Look into the cheap Sceptre displays. They make non-smart panels with decent resolution and performance, so long as you have external speakers and use the optical audio output instead of the output from their garbage DAC.