Your smart TV is watching you. Well, not “watching” exactly, but keeping track of what you watch and selling that data to other companies. They also do it in reverse, showing you ads based on what you’ve viewed elsewhere. This is because you can search for something on Amazon, and then see your ads on your TV, phone and other websites.
While this tracking is an unfortunate part of the modern Internet, there are ways you can reduce it when it comes to your TV. They are there are no good dumb consumer TVs again; everything the best TVs “smart” TVs, but you can make any smart TV dumber.
Before I dive in, it’s important to understand that no manufacturer wants you to do this. Many manufacturers make huge amounts of money by selling ad placements and your data, sometimes more than the profit on the TV itself. They don’t want you to cut their products for that reason, and the simple truth is that most people search connected TV. As far as producers and most people are concerned, TV doesn’t “work” when it’s offline. Fortunately, you have some options.
Remove or disconnect (easier said than done)
The easiest way to make your TV dumber is to take it online. There’s more to it than just pulling an Ethernet cable or revoking Wi-Fi privileges, though. If your TV has been connected to the Internet so far, it will probably start giving you notifications and warnings that it can’t connect. This may be an easily removable bug, it may be when you turn on the TV or it may be annoyingly forced to reconnect to Wi-Fi — it will depend on the model and brand.
You may need to fully lobotomize your TV by giving it a factory reset. This option will be buried deep in the settings. Before doing this, write down or take pictures of your picture settings, as they will also disappear. If you have a TV that uses the Google or Android interface, check out the Basic TV section below. If the TV restarts in its original mode and you proceed to the initial setup, it just tells you that you don’t have internet, skip that section entirely.
It’s worth considering that you’ll lose more than just annoying ads and access to built-in streaming apps. You probably won’t be able to stream from your phone to the TV, get firmware updates and definitely won’t be able to use any voice/AI assistants. You will be, in effect, a monitor for whatever you connect to via HDMI. More on that soon, but any features beyond that will probably not work. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably thinking, “Great!” but I want to make sure we are all on the same page.
Look again: Why I Tell People To Stop Hunting For Dumb TVs
Lack of firmware updates may not be a big problem. Many of these updates are security patches (which won’t matter if you’re offline anyway) or to improve the performance or stability of various apps (which you don’t use anymore). You can also check if your TV manufacturer allows you to download the firmware to a USB drive, which, when connected to the TV, can be used to update itself.
If you’re particularly tech-savvy, there are also options you can do to block things on your router, like Pi-hole, or even earlier, like NextDNS. While not an expensive option, it does require some setup and technical knowledge, so it’s beyond the scope of what I can go into here. However, if you want more granular control over what’s happening on your home network, including your TV, these options are worth checking out.
Basic mobility
Along the same lines as restoring your TV to its new, out-of-the-box state, we switch it to basic TV mode. Many new models use Google or Android as their operating system, including those that appear TCL, Sony, Hisense again others. If you have already set up the TV, you cannot switch it to “mute” mode without resetting it from the beginning. As I said above, during the setup process, just select the basic TV instead of logging into your Google account. It will bring you to a simplified version of the Google TV interface, where you will be able to access settings, inputs and more. It shouldn’t have asked you to connect to the internet at all, and hopefully it never will.
You can read a little more information on Google’s page on the topic. You can switch to it being a smart TV at any time.
Disable certain features (muted but not naked)
If the above is too much, go into your TV settings and disable any tracking features. What your TV manufacturer calls these features varies, and they are often cleverly named to hide their true purpose. “Personalized recommendations” sounds harmless enough, but ask yourself, how do they collect information to personalize anything? “Automatic Content Recognition” may seem like an image quality feature, but it’s tracking what you’re watching and selling that data. “Use information from TV input” may seem like it turns on the HDMI input, but no, it tracks what you’re watching from external sources.
While some companies are better than others at this, they all do it to some degree. Search for your TV brand and “disable tracking” for a list of what you can turn off. Note that this is not as effective as disconnecting your TV from the Internet completely, but it will keep most of the TV’s smart functions intact. A future firmware update may re-enable any of these settings or add others; it is impossible to say.
Now what?
You have made your TV as mute as possible. So what do you do about it? Skipping streaming altogether is a sensible, if expensive, option. The sad fact is that cable and satellite are becoming cheaper options compared to subscribing to several streaming services, especially when watching sports.
Otherwise, you can still buy 4K Blu-ray playersand they are inexpensive. Also, certain versions of major gaming consoles have 4K Blu-ray players installed. Obviously for copy protection reasons, all of these options will probably need to be connected to the Internet again, at least occasionally. Yes, there always is.
You can switch to free, broadcast over the air. That certainly won’t reduce the number of ads you see, but at least they’ll be normal, random noise. Most likely it will be an ad for some prescription drug you’ve never heard of and can’t figure out what it does (if you live in the US, anyway).
It is noteworthy that multiple projectors it can be used without an internet connection, although that may require rearranging the room where your TV sits. At the very least, you’ll want heavy curtains.
How about getting a streaming box or dongle? well…
The problem is with streaming devices
If you, like most people, still want to stream shows and movies despite having a dumb TV, you have a small problem. Many devices offer streaming apps and track everything, some even more than TVs do. The services themselves track, too, naturally, but you probably expected that.
There are several options to reduce tracking. The first is that — and as an Android guy, this pains me to say — Apple TV it generally tracks less than other options, especially Roku. No streaming device option is perfect when it comes to data privacy, but the Apple TV is the closest while still maintaining user-friendliness for the whole family.
If you don’t want to go the Apple TV route, check your preferred streaming device to see which tracking features you can turn off. Search for the device you’re using and “privacy settings” or “disable tracking.” Just like your TV, there are probably many settings you can turn off, and they can be creatively designed.
In addition to covering audio and visual technology, Geoff conducts photo tours of cool museums and sites around the world, including nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, medieval castles, the famous 10,000 mile cruise and more.
Also, check out his books Budget Travel For Dummies as well as a best-selling sci-fi novel about submarines the size of a city. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.
