Dumb-ifying TVs?

[Ellie_Taglietelle]

Does anyone have experience with Smart TVs and making them less... terrible?

We have a smart TV but have grown increasingly dissatisfied with it. It's a samsung QLED and I'd love it if I could swap out the firmware and keep the TV itself (because my partner is not willing to sell) or at least do something about the terrible UI that tries to upsell obscure TV channels

We don't watch TV, We use it for youtube and as a monitor for a legally obtained media PC.

Let me know if you know anything !!1

[Crazyroostereye]

It very Unlikely that there is a custom Firmware to flash, you could disconnect it from the Wi-Fi and set the default Output to the Media Box. Preventing the UI to pop up too much? But further than that I doubt it. There is maybe a way of taking out the Processor without interfering with the Display, but I wouldn't even know where to start there.

[Pearlple]

I don't know much about Samsung TVs in general, mine isn't Samsung and I just set the default output to one of the HDMIs with a local media server attached.

But overall there are some smart home devices that I haven't found (or haven't had the time for) good DIY replacements for. I just put them in a group on my Pi-Hole (local DNS server/sinkhole), and set them up so that only whitelisted services I am actively using can be reached. There are alternatives to Pi-Hole (e.g. Technitium and Adguard) some of which don't require extra hardware and can be set up on your router itself.
For Smart TV specifically, if you don't want to fiddle with whitelists, I can recommend curated blocklists like: The Block List Project - Smart TV List

[SergioEduP]

I've lost count of how many times I've wanted to throw my Samsung "smart" TV's off of the roof of my house, Samsung's TizenOS is absolute garbage and even after disabling/uninstalling apps and functionality they end up popping back up like "hey we are still here, how about you give us a try again". It's a shame because the TVs themselves are quite good, it's just the garbage OS that makes the whole experience a nightmare, I have not had the chance to spend much time with other smart TVs so I can't talk for all of them, but next time I need to buy a TV I'll just buy a computer monitor instead, there are plenty of big monitors now and most don't come with any smart crap.

[Crazyroostereye]

but next time I need to buy a TV I'll just buy a computer monitor instead, there are plenty of big monitors now and most don't come with any smart crap.

There are TV Companys that do sell Good Dumb TVs, just they are always a bit more expensive because of Price.

Another thing I found is a Reddit thread about how you can call the Manufacture and just ask.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/c ... t_options/
Maybe telling them a Bullshit story about Equipment it interferes with.

[MikeGs]

I think it's Sony's Bravia lineup that you can dumbify during initial setup. It needs to be a Google TV compatible model.

As far as I know, if you reject license agreements, at some point, the setup is going to ask you if you want to setup your TV as a "Basic TV", disabling all smart features. The TV is still going to give you options to setup Google TV in some menus, but you can simply ignore it.