I agree with you, very little information was provided but I presume this is just Tuya or some similar OEM brand and maybe you can install a local control and cut the cloud part of the equation.

At the moment it is pure speculation on my part, but I am sure there are plenty of smart folks out there who would love to tinker with it and maybe find a way to install some custom firmware to cut the stalkware.

They sell tons of stuff that isn't food.

Clothes and work & running gear(even Aldi merch once a year), budget electronics and appliances (their toaster ovens are very often used for DIY solder reflow ovens), garden tools and supplies like slug pellets and shears, and even lower quality tools that work fine for ocassional light use.

Lidl, a grocery store, even has a tool brand called parkside. It even rivals other brands in quality nowadays.

Seemingly, yes.

Oh man if we get rtsp support that would be the best. I could finally swap out my inlaws wyze doorbell. Wyze are working with ICE btw.

I want HomeKit compatibility. OR something hackable that requires no cloud connection. These companies are not our friends and have betrayed our trust at every step.

It costs US$22.50 compared to US$100 for the Ring (that requires a US$10/month subscription). It's going to have some compromises and calling it e-waste for that is weird as hell. 480p is also pawfectly good-enough for the use case as well. Like, when I was growing up 480i was pawfectly cromulent, and most terrestrial broadcast channels are still only 576p50 (on DVB) encoded as MPEG-2. Your doorbell doesn't need to be 2K or 4K, and that's just going to use more drive space for no reason.

480p?!? So like the original Apple QuickTake from 1994? I mean where did they even find that component to use?

So interesting rabbit hole: Aldi was originally 1 company but split between two brothers into Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud (Aldi North and Aldi South) in the 1960s in Germany. The two companies share the same Aldi name, and work somewhat together but are separate and have their own territories. They are owned by the families of the original owners, and they do not compete directly against each other.

Aldi Sud covers southern Germany, eastern and southern Europe, the UK, Ireland, Australia and the USA. In the UK Aldi has got a reputation as a good employer, a discount supermarket that offers quality, and is the fastest growing supermarket. All the competitors now do "price matches" to Aldi to try and keep up. Aldi in the USA, Ireland and Australia are seemingly run very similar to the Aldi in the UK and of course in it's base in Germany.

Meanwhile, Aldi Nord covers northern Germany, the Benelux countries, France, Spain and Portugal amongst others. It seems Aldi does not have as good a reputation in some of these countries? I can see stuff about aldi being dirty, with poor products and poor customer service. Not sure how true that is, but that is definitely not Aldi's reputation in the UK where I live. Clean, good quality and happy staff is my experience.

So when you see Aldi in the anglosphere part of the internet, it's all about Aldi Sud. Also total random aside but the 2 companies do compete in the US: Aldi Sud runs Aldi, while Aldi Nord sort-of-owns Trader Joe's (it's a "sister company" owned by the owners of Aldi Nord).

EDIT: Also in the UK, Aldi and Lidl are very similar in quality and style. Although Lidl does more fresh baked goods, and I personally prefer it but Aldi is nearer for me so I shop there.

In California Aldi stores are clean and orderly. Product selection is limited but they offer healthy staples at great prices. Non-food items are hit or miss but interesting to check out.

Reolink?

The best subscription free option in the US is Eufy. Home Assistant integration is through HACS and is hacky, but it works and doorbell video is stored locally.

I understand the sentiment but it's 17 quid. And it's 480p. And the storage is - from what I understand - not included because it uses an SD card. They're making money on the hardware.

Oh, I'm sure it'll find you first.