I bought a cheap TCL TV last year. If you can, turn off the wifi (I literally just wanted the TV, not the "smart" part). I play everything either through a hard drive, laptop or my PS and that works for me. You can also change the settings to open up to the last channel instead of the landing page. I can still connect my TV to Bluetooth. When I turn it on, I see the TCL logo, but after that, nothing.
Product placement was the least annoying. I’m pretty sure we all wanted to know why the original Daredevil law office had Progresso bread crumbs in their coffee corner, so it’s not like it went unnoticed.
I bought a Philips one. Turned off WiFi cause my mom doesn't use streaming much, and to get rid of those effing "accept cookies?" pop-ups.
Every once in a while it suggests to connect to the network. 😑😑
God this shit is sad, I can't believe anyone involved (besides the few making all the money) are remotely proud to have worked on this. I get that its a trope to not accept new technology/trends but ai always makes me put on a face of disgust without trying.
I have a TCL running Google TV that I use Flauncher on - a nice little FOSS lightweight launcher that I like a lot. However, I am only able to switch inputs (for gaming etc.) when using the default launcher. Anyone found a way around this? Pretty sure its a Google/TCL hardware thing and not due to any alt launcher just not wanting to include that
Yes, I might be able to help. I changed my Onn set top box (which uses Android TV) fairly recently to use FLauncher (or Projectivity, I don't remember which one I chose in the end), but it kept defaulting back to the default launcher. So I jacked it to change what the detail launcher was. After enabling some options (
developer options, USB debugging, verify apps over USB) on my Onn box, I plugged the box into my computer and then used the adb command line tool to change the default launcher (launcherx).
I imagine you could do the same to your Android TV. As long as it has a USB port.
Hope this helps.
ETA: Here are some more detailed instructions I took when I did this:
On the ONN tv box installer flauncher and/or projectivity launcher via the Google Play store
Make sure developer options is enabled on the ONN tv box (hit okay on Android TV OS build several times)
Look up IPv4 address on the ONN TV box under Settings > System > Status
Go to the new Developer Options menu item on ONN > settings > system, and make sure:
a) Enable developer options is set to on
b) USB debugging is set to on
c) Verify apps over USB is set to on
On the ONN tv box go to Settings > System > Developer Options and make sure Select USB Configuration is set to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol)
On Windows, open a command line as administrator and go to the adb path
In the command line window on windows type:
a) adb start-server
b) adb connect [ONN ip address]
(Note: it might initially say "failed to authenticate to [ip]", that's okay, see the next step)
On the ONN tv box a pop-up window should appear asking to allow access from windows pc IP address, say OK
In the command line window on windows type: adb devices
You should see the device as active on the ip you stated and on port 5555
Next in the terminal window type the following to disable the default ONN tv default launcher and listener:
adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx
Then in the terminal window type:
adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith
On the ONN tv box click the home button. It should now either a) go to the additional launcher you installed or b) prompt you for the home app (if you installed multiple additional launchers) so select the one you want (e.g. FLauncher)
Now when you hit the home button on the ONN tv box it should always take you to the FLauncher launcher, not the default ONN launcher
Note: If you need to re-enable launcherx, you can use these commands in adb:
For those (like me) who bought a TCL tv at a stupidly cheap price on Black Friday, you have options.
buy an AppleTV (even second hand) and don’t connect the tv to the internet. You won’t see any adverts on your Home Screen and be done with all this bullshit. What’s that? What’s the point in buying a £200 TV if you need to buy a £150 accessory? I hear you, read on…
if you’re broke like me, you can disable the stock launcher with adb and install projectivy launcher. I needed to use some software called launcher manager from xdaforums to replace the stock launcher. I also used adb to uninstall the pre-installed apps I had no intention of using.
Hopefully there are enough key words in there for you to google / research what you need to get going. Good luck!
Note about the second bullet: Not all TCL TVs are Google TV, which can be switched to Protectivity - Roku TVs at this point, as far as I know, cannot disable ads if connected to the Internet.
I’m struggling heavily to find that OS to learn more about it (literally just got a google tcl tv delivered today, as my old one died last week), can you provide a link of some variety?
I was very heartened to find out that it’s just big android, so there’s likely a lot that can be done with it (but I got it to be dumb).
If this is the case for you (I have both in my house), I recommend putting your RokuTV behind a Pi Hole DNS. It will block the TV ad requests at a DNS level while letting content and video go through.
I remember when the Google launcher just worked fine. Suddenly, one update later, there's now ads for shows on services I don't even use taking up the entire top 2/3rds of the home screen. WTF google.
A somewhat cliched saying comes to my mind when reading this article.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” [1]
Hopefully, there will eventually be pushback against this techno-feudalism and oligarchy. For what it's worth this seems to always happen in history. Ruling elites (in our case oligarchs and their promoters; the media, economists, politicians) consolidate their power and start to become disconnected from reality.
As a side note, it's funny that AI-generated videos have themes of dystopia and rebellion against the system.
As soon as you stop buying pre built SmArT shit and cobble the same together from regular components. I get a smart TV experience from a dumb tv/projector and a media PC with remote access or local kb/m. In the past I had a harmony remote that made it much closer to the real experience
Stop gobbling up corporate slop and these issues stop being an issue. You just have to deal with less slick experiences, but it's worth it imo.
OTOH people who aren't in the entertainment industry will use generative AI to make original films they otherwise never would have been able to. It seems like a great tool for individual creators who aren't able to produce images by themselves. Yes, they won't hire artists to do this, but they wouldn't have anyway, and we'll get to enjoy their work, which wouldn't have existed otherwise. I don't think we should demonize a very promising technology because we don't like how some people are using it.