alt Hacker NewsThis presumes that, now or later, there won't be an on-screen message that can't be dismissed saying "Sign in to a Walmart account to enable all TV features."
There's plenty of ways they can interfere with attempts to use the TV in "dumb" mode. Heck it could refuse to show any video at all til you've signed in.
Replies
I get that they could do this in a future update, but if you never connect it to the Internet, a TV that doesn't require it today isn't going to just start. (Unless they pregamed to do it on such-and-such-a-date, but that would be a nightmare for their legal department if the rules change)
They can't do that later if you never sign in. If they do that now, you just refuse their terms, get a refund.
Pi-Hole sped up my Samsung home and menu screens tremendously. I use something like this list [0]. The growing size of the list itself is a testament to the enshittification of Smart TVs.
I wonder if the SmartTV blocklist change history and size of commits could tell a historical story of how things have evolved? I'm aware that DoH makes this approach less and less viable ... but for my existing TVs it still seems to work fine as long as I'm careful not to blindly update.
[0] https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/Smar...
Yep. I bought a Samsung TV that I never even put online. It pops up with a half-screen display that lasts for 2 minutes every time I turn it on . Never again.