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LG TVs and monitors said to surveil users and install bloatware without asking
(www.notebookcheck.net)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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What dongle or what have you do y'all use that's privacy focused? I need to disconnect my LG TV and we have an old Chromecast but that's Google...
I have a ShieldTV plugged into mine and it has been great. You can install a new Launcher to have full control of what you see and it works great. I pretty much just use it for Jellyfin and YouTube now, but in the past have had all of the streaming services at one time or another.
I had an old laptop that I hooked in and configured it to boot into a fullscreen browser to our Emby server. Could just as easily have it boot into a browser with shortcuts to your streaming services.
We use one of these mini keyboard/touchpads to control it:
Lately, though, I just picked up a set of wireless HDMI adapters and just plug one of those into the closest laptop and play from there.
KDE Connect is also a control option
Kde connect really is amazing, its on all my devices
Weve had a similar setup for nearly 10 years and its fricken great. We built a low spec computer using old parts from our desktops, hooked it up to our tv via hdmi, and plugged in a wireless keyboard with built in trackpad to act as the remote. We get all the same AD blocking and content access as a desktop because, you know, its a desktop but in the livingroom. My personal favorite is using a second account on discord to pull up streams on the tv from the couch while joining on my phone via my primary account for voice.
I connected a raspberry pi to my TV and control it with a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo to pirate all of my shows on a greysite
The best cheap solution is a Google TV with Projectivy launcher to bypass the adware.
The best fully non-adware solution as others said seems to be a mini-pc running Linux or other cleaner environment you set up.
Yeah mini-pc is the way. Throw Linux on it and it'll last for years, trouble free
I have a Linux mini PC. There are definite pros, like controlling it via SSH from my Home Assistant, running Netflix in Firefox with adblocker... But drawbacks are no HDR, no 4k for streaming, heck, even 720p max for Hulu (and Disney, but I don't have one).
However, high sails have higher resolution too, it's just an additional step.
Linux definitely has HDR. I've been using Bazzite with Steam Big Picture mode as my TV interface for years and can use HDR just fine.
I definitely recommend piracy, but there are also ways to get streaming services to send full quality streams. I won't recommend them though, because you shouldn't have to do it in the first place for a service you're paying for. Just pirate and use a media server or something like Kodi for a nice interface for local files.
He is saying those streaming services wont allow HDR even if Linux itself is capable. Which is why he could set sail to recover that functionality.
I love projectivy and how clean it is but I have had so much trouble getting the tv to launch straight into it on 2 separate Google TVs so I just don’t use it anymore really.
Yeah, I suspect Google pushes changes to the backend OS that keep breaking it on purpose, but at least we've got it to stick on our two TVs with a lot of effort and setting changes. Least worst option considering how pricy mini-PCs are, unfortunately.