I want my smart Android TV to be dumb again

I have an old laptop with Linux Mit hooked to my TV. Firefox with some bookmarks to different streaming services, Freetube with subscriptions, sunshine/moonlight to my gaming PC and emulators to play some retro adventures with my kids. I remote controll it with KDE Connect from my phone. Works great!
I used to fiddle with Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, but the laptop is so simple and easy to set up, I don't see myself going back.

You don't even need a laptop for all of this, you can use your phone.

I stream games with it all the time.

I am still using a dumb LG TV from the before times, and love it. I fear the day that I need to replace it.

There are still dumb TVs, they just cost the same as a smart TV.

I would use a smart tv if it ran entirely on a raspberry pi compute module that I provide running only software I explicitly installed on it (like an intigrated computer only with a raspberry pi).

Just buy a computer monitor

Do you know any 55 inches computer monitor?
Monitors are starting to move in this direction. Samsung has a notorious 5k Apple Studio competitor that wants to connect to the Internet and uses the same interface as their Galaxy smartphones.

Standby. Winter is coming for monitors as well.

I have my Google TV in apps only mode. If Google can still see that I pirate literally everything I watch, and circumvent YouTube ads with it then, well, maybe it sends a message.

I just replaced the dashboard on mine.

I just don't connect my Hisense to the Internet, and let my Nvidia Shield TV do all the "Smart" stuff. 🤷‍♂️

I have a TCL ROKU TV which is way too chatty on my network. It sends every single keypress on the remote to their servers (just look into the dev console which is easy enough to see what is logged). I have an adblock dns server on my network

These are just in the last 23 minutes of the hour. As I understand, it's not always doing this if they are not blocked, but when you block them, it starts to panic!

The advantage of doing this is instead of having the ad on the right side of the home menu, I have a nice translucent adbox with nothing in it.. Also, if you look up the secret codes for Roku menus, you can also toggle the ad server they use so sometimes if some slip through, you get some in house tested ones which are sometimes funny. But that's extremely rare for us.

Our next TV will probably be a display or offline only and be a streaming box with custom firmware such as Librelec or something else when the time comes.

are there custom ROMs for TVs like there are for Android phones?

LineageOS supports Chromecast with Android TV, haven't tried it myself though.
Not on that number. I think there is lineage os for shield tv but I'm not sure about anything else
- There is and works perfectly!
Only for TV boxes as far as I can tell

I recently bought a projector that I had to trick into not connecting to Wifi by telling it that it was connected to ethernet until it gave up. It will never know the wifi password. It gets an HDMI signal, it shows the HDMI signal, that is its purpose.

If it was dumb then how would it collect your data and show you ads?

Anyway modern TVs are expensive to produce to they artificially lower the price by making money elsewhere. (Just look at the buttons on your remote)

If you want a dump TV you could look into digital signage. Spoiler: it is $$$$$

I don't know what brand the author got, but Google's own software has a setting to get rid of the Google stuff: https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en

As for the performance: TV manufacturers have used terrible SoCs ever since the first chip hit TVs. That's why you shouldn't buy TVs online without evaluating them in a store. I have a TV where all of the smart crap died of years ago and it was sluggish our of the factory. But it's not just that; even devices like Chromecast slow down over time as more features get added, higher bitrates are being decoded, and more advanced video formats start to get used.

Set up your TV in basic TV mode, don't buy bottom of the barrel TVs expecting a premium experience, and use some kind of replaceable, external device if you want smooth media playback. TVs and TV hardware are ridiculously cheap these days (just check the inflation correction on a VHS back in the day, VHS players and DVDs went for what equates to about 2000 dollars today!).

You get what you pay for. And if you're using ad driven stuff, you're getting a discount, so don't expect anything to get cheaper by kicking out all the data collection software.

The "You get what you pay for" excuse doesn't hold up. My 77-inch LG OLED cost over $3k USD. It's still full of ads and spies on me unless i neuter it.
I have a 4 year old chromecast 2 that is still going strong 🤷‍♂️

The author of the article is under the mistaken impression that bundling the "smart" features into the TV increases the price. It's actually the opposite.

By injecting ads and bloatware into the TVs, the manufacturers earn more money, by far, than the cost of the features. A dumb TV would cost more.

The best solution is to decouple them; get the cheapest TV you can with the video quality/size you want, then attach your own device to stream content. I use a modified Fire Stick due to price, mostly with Stremio/Torrentio/Debrid, but there are lots of options.

that works until they start connecting to wifi networks that are open, or to which they somehow got to know the credentials
- This, or show an annoying popup over the screen saying it can't connect to network and wifi needs to be configured
- Fake news, as far as I can tell. Lots of claims this is happening, but nobody has brought receipts. Considering how easy it would be to catch, and how likely illegal it is to connect to and use networks without permission, this is definitely an urban legend.

Projectivy launcher, problem ~~solved~~ adequately duct taped.

Stop connecting your TVs directly to the internet, I don't care what OS it's running. The trend is clear with TV manufacturers, and if your current TV OS doesn't yet inject ads into your streaming box's HDMI stream, why risk it updating? Because that's coming soon enough, and I imagine what it does, an update requiring your TV to have internet connection won't be far behind.

This still needs lots of improvement I think. Accidentally removed an app from favourites and now it's nowhere to be found?

I love the look and feel, but it's far from the perfect launcher.
Wait for the popups insisting you connect and upgrade before you can use the TV
Projectivy is great. Some bugs here and there, but overall I love the much simpler UI and that I can actually keep my "continue watching" row at the top.
Yeah a alternative launcher is the way to go, I use FL launcher but it's similar. And what I like about android on the TV is that you at least get access to the system via adb and can turn off some things like the default launcher.

Don't connect them to the internet. Problem solved.

Google TV and others require it
- ??? I got a Sharp Android TV this year and it just works without connecting
Nah. Not good enough for me. I thought I would just do that but the thing still has to boot android in order to show you the HDMI input. So it has to constantly suck power like a vampire in order to keep a SoC running, and if it loses power, it has to boot the system again.

I got a cheap TCL and it smells like burning plastic, even when its "off". I suspect it's because of that SoC constantly running.

Next time I'm buying a computer monitor instead of a smart-but-not-connected TV.

These smart tvs just suck. All these integrated systems. Much better off having a seperate device like Roku or Chromecast.

You seem to be under the impression that Roku and Chromecast don't do the exact same things.

There is no good solution because connecting a Pi or something is not as good as modern TVs without an AV1 decoder and it also doesn't have a good remote interface as far as I know.
- I went down the Pi 4B with Kodi path. It wasn't very reliable. It was just sometimes when I went to watch something, it just was broken. And I had to go through troubleshooting instead of watching whatever I had turned it on for.
  
  I ended up with an Amazon firestick. Even using Kodi (and smarttube) on that works faster and more reliably.
  
  But then I have the Amazon firestick nosing around in everything I do lol. But I did disconnect my TV from the internet....

Is there a consensus that Sony tvs are better due to android TV on them?

Mine is fine. But I don't really have experience with any other smart TVs.

I've installed Projectivy launcher since Google mandated 50% of your home screen being an ad, though.
No I specifically bought a Sony for my parents for ease of use and it is one of the worst purchases I have ever made.

I picked this specific model after looking for 3 months.

No where in any of the documentation or reviews did it say by plugging in a HDD I can only record a channel if I'm watching it and not record one channel while watching another which is a total deal breaker.

Also it has developed a fault where it basically shits its self every couple of weeks and the picture pixelates. It needs to be unplugged for a week and plugged back in. I've tried a new power pack but it doesn't really help. The only other thing I could do is get a new main board but can't source one with 6 months of searching eBay.

Do yourself a favour and buy a cheap LG panel and stick a streaming stick in it and never connect it to the internet.
- by plugging in a HDD I can only record a channel if I'm watching it and not record one channel while watching another
  
  That actually makes sense if we're talking DVB-[C, S or T] channels received through an internal hardware tuner. A tuner can only tune in on one frequency at once. To record one channel while watching another, it would need to have two internal tuners, which isn't very common and, I'd say, not something to expect unless specifically advertised.
  
  Also it has developed a fault where it basically shits its self every couple of weeks and the picture pixelates. It needs to be unplugged for a week and plugged back in.
  
  Warranty?
I do appreciat the fact that sony TVs have native android, the TV menues are also more intuative IMO

Though regardless of the TVs OS, its best to not plug a TV directly into the internet. If you can afford it, get a dedicated android box, fire stick, or any other smart dongle you can afford.

TVs, your kitchen fridge, or even cars now seem to be a privacy nightmare. Updates also dont happen often enough or the manufacture chooses to drop support leaving consumers home networks at risk.
- Wouldn't the android box, fire stick connecting the internet be doing the same thing that you don't want your smart TV to be doing?
  
  I always always thought getting one of those was to either circumvent the TV OS limitation (Example LG webOS) or to improve user experience on entry level smart TV or older smart TV.