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Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features (arstechnica.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 165 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Do not connect your tv to the internet. Period.

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  • [–] 38 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I'm suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.

    Firstly, I didn't want to buy a smart TV, but that's pretty much all that's sold anymore. I also didn't intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.

    The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV's menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.

    I don't trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It's literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.

    It's under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    If you have a firewall then make yourself a new network and block it from accessing the internet. Then you can use the smart features that your TV might have, such as powering it on/off, controlling it with Home Assistant, etc and also feel safe knowing that can't happen again. Hope your replacement TV comes with the older firmware and you get another go at it.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I'm content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It's also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    While i would generally agree I've fiddle with htpc and stuff for solo long. Then I broke down a few years ago and bought a cheap TV with GoogleTV (version 10 or something) on it. I removed some bloat via ADB but it still is GoogleTV do I get some ads on the home screen. However I installed SmartTube, Kodi, Jellyfin but also Netflix and Amazon Prime since those are the two services I still subscribed to. And I have to admit I'm a happy camper. I got used to ignoring the ads on the home screen and being able to directly play Netflix/YouTube ... whatever without setting up a browser or something on top of Kodi or whatever is just such a breeze.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    you can change the home screen. I did that on my android tv. android tv kinda rocks actually

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    If you don't have the technical know how to physically lobotomize the TV's wifi chip, simply blocking its mac address would suffice.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Or you would just not connect it to the wifi. It's not like it's going to guess your WPA key.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    No, but in the near future it might connect to your neighbors wifi if he has IoT devices connected to his wifi

    https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/amazon-sidewalk-will-push-neighbors-to-share-wi-fi-through-smart-devices/

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Wow, what a horrible idea. But assuming you have a compatible device and didn't disable this feature, blacklisting it in your router wouldn't help much.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Blacklisting it on your router would at least prevent it from trying to connect to an open WiFi network like your own guest network which some people just don't turn off or password protect.

    If you are one of those people and you're reading this turn that off. You can share your wifi via QR code these days from just about any smart phone. Turn it off.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    No, it's not an Apple TV.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Writing Prompt: A TV with an onboard artificial general intelligence connects to the internet for the first time and is alarmed to discover that a thousand years have passed since it was manufactured.

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