Options to Break Free From Smart TV Ads and Tracking
An Anonymous Coward writes:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-guide-to-dumb-tvs/
Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options.
Smart TVs can feel like a dumb choice if you're looking for privacy, reliability, and simplicity.
Today's TVs and streaming sticks are usually loaded up with advertisements and user tracking, making offline TVs seem very attractive. But ever since smart TV operating systems began making money, "dumb" TVs have been hard to find.
In response, we created this non-smart TV guide that includes much more than dumb TVs. Since non-smart TVs are so rare, this guide also breaks down additional ways to watch TV and movies online and locally without dealing with smart TVs' evolution toward software-centric features and snooping. We'll discuss a range of options suitable for various budgets, different experience levels, and different rooms in your home.
The advice from the submitted article is largely: buy yourself a dumb TV. This is good advice, but what about if you don't have one, or can't get one? If you have a TV with built-in "smarts," do you Soylentils go to extra lengths to deal with the ads and tracking? If you picked up a "smart" TV during this holiday giving time, what are your plans for it? If you picked up a "dumb" TV, from where did you acquire it? Detailed advice on your setup would be interesting to share for those wondering where to start. (E.g., does putting it behind a Pi-hole solve all problems? Can I maintain some of the convienent functions of the TV using one of the media server solutions and still avoid the ads and tracking? If I don't have spare RasPis or other hardware kicking around to repurpose, what should I look to get, particularly when RAM prices are spiking?) --Ed.
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