this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.

Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven't already.

Wiki link

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Don’t ever connect a “smart” tv to the internet. Period.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Yo dawg! I heard you like ads. So we put ads in your ads

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Congratulations! So, how does the TV work with the adblocker set up?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

is this about the stupid football thing?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Yeah I guess the superbowl is soon, there's another row of football ads one or two rows up. I'll remind myself that I paid for the TV, the electricity to run it, and the bandwidth to connect it, yet I'm still shown full screen ads first thing when I turn my TV on. And I don't even watch football. And I can't disable it.

Corporate America and gargle my balls

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That is absolute cancer.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Get a cheap computer and connect the tv to it; get a mouse and bluetooth keyboard or an air mouse if your want to; install kodi perhaps, or just have your bare desktop. Problem solved

Disconnect the tv to wifi too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

There are some cheap Bluetooth TV remotes so if you want to take some time out of your day, there's a few Linux distros that ship with similar GUI to some TV's.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

meta-ad-ception

Ads within an ad, about about ads.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I recently took my brand new stupid fucking tv off the grid. I use Apple TV so not a big deal with the ads and shit but the damn thing forced an update mid movie, reset, and black screened. Couldn’t get it back on and went to bed, figured I’d deal with it in the morning. Luckily it worked the next day after that no more internet for you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you think that's bad, my Denon receiver had to update itself which for some reason fails 100% of the time when using wifi so I had to find the longest ethernet cable I have to connect into the back (or disconnect 20+ wires from the back to move it closer to the network switch) so that it could finish downloading the firmware and complete the update before it would start working again.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I mean... Historically I find the superbowl ads (and the halftime show) more entertaining than the actual game, but damn that is shitty.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Oh, and if anyone knows why pfBlockerNG might fail to update some DNSBL AND IPv4 feeds during cron events, I'd be forever grateful. I'm getting tired of my router crashing every hour.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

We have not owned a TV since the 00s and have no intention of buying one any time soon, but I had a look at the FUTO website you linked and it's interesting read (even for the non-expert I'm).

Thx for sharing :)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Sorry, I'm confused. You should easily be able to block these home screen ads ads with pihole or router dns blocking. I know because I do it with my smart tvs. Are you saying that that isn't working?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I figure the ads are just cached from earlier. I took this picture a few hours after I finished setting up my pfBlockerNG feeds and changing my DNS to AdGuard's public one.

If nothing else, this ad certainly reaffirmed my decision to update our network.

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