[discardedrefuse]

My LG had an update last week that made me re-do all the user agreements. I don't know if that has anything to do with this. As always, I opted out of most of the agreements, but (as always) there are 2 agreements I cannot opt out of and still use any apps.

So...what set-top boxes are available for privacy minded people?

[davesmylie]

I would consider not using a "smart tv" at all.

I have had an old PC running my TV for many years now - it's fast, so doesn't get bogged down rendering applications, I can play any content that I have using full resolution, and as it's just a PC, ublock origin takes care of any ads.

Depressingly I found it quite hard to replace my truly dumb, 55" Veon a few years back, so I've had to buy a TV with some smarts (a HiSense) - however, it's still just being used as a dumb tv (ie, an HDMI input).

I do have mild concerns about updates introducing some unwanted behavior despite this, so it's either not connected to the net, or, if I'm playing around with trying to manage it via HA, it's blocked from leaving the LAN at the router.

[amy214]

The main thing is to make sure it has no way to access the internet. Just USING it as a dumb TV isn't enough because these things - this TV firmware - it takes snapshots of whatever is playing (even in dumb mode) and utilizes whatever fingerprinting tech on that data - https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/your-smart-tv-watching-what-you...

[hedora]

Air gap the tv (wipe wifi settings too), then plug it into either an Apple TV or a Linux box. Everything else is a trap.

If you go the Linux route, I recommend the BeeLink SER series, but disable dynamic video card overclocking and get a Bluetooth dongle and usb extension cord to plug it into (I get lots of RF interference for BT, but not WiFi).

If you go the appletv route be sure to use an iPhone to recalibrate the colors, and also try telling it to match the refresh rate to the source material instead of attempting inverse telecine. Those two features gave me at least as big a step function in picture quality as my last TV upgrade did.

[discardedrefuse]

I appreciate the input. I'm not convinced Apple is really that much better than Google or Microsoft at collecting my data. As for Linux, I love Linux and run it on my desktop, laptop, and servers. But its not great for media. There were always issues getting DRM'd 4K content to play from streaming services. And there's a level jank, that I don't want to deal with on a TV.

I think for now I'm switching to my Xbox for media consumption. It has all the apps, works with my LG "magic remote", and Microsoft has a lot of privacy control options. I also bought a cheap oNN Google TV dongle to play with. It runs Android, so there a lots of hacking possibilities.

[hedora]

Xbox is almost certainly going to be worse than apple for privacy. (Android is worse for sure.)

The AppleTV seems to reduce the telemetry crap to “stuff the streaming platforms do in-app” (e.g. prime video can target ads based on amazon purchases made on other devices). Maybe MS does that for Xbox? They certainly do not for win11.

If you want to do better than that, then the options are either piracy, or buy shiny disks and rip them. Linux is fine for both those paths, since they both involve stripping DRM.

Arguably, the box I pointed you at is better for gaming than the xbox (thanks to steam), but it costs more. I mostly use it for gaming and the appletv for media, fwiw.

[05]

Plex + Sonarr + Radarr

oh, sorry.. I think I misread 'privacy' :)

[discardedrefuse]

You're gonna want Jellyfin for privacy. Plex is hostile.

[barbazoo]

What’s the difference between sonarr and radarr? They seem to do similar things, even sharing common text in the GH description

[pippp3]

Sonarr is for TV shows and Radarr is for movies. There are other “arrs” for other media, like music, books, subtitles, etc.

[poofsoda]

Sonarr is for TV Shows, Radarr for Movies