alt Hacker NewsFirst of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board, on mine (Samsung) it was just unplugging one cable (AI or Google it). I dislike doing stuff like that, but it was easy in my case, maybe you'll be lucky, too.
Second, never use the "apps" built into the TV.
Next, don't plug Ethernet into the TV. Plug HDMI cables into the TV.
Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
The Smart TV itself is now fine. Choose the devices you plug into it to play content. The TV just shows it.
Replies
> First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
This. Never trust software switches. See my other reply for what I suggest instead of "streaming boxes" that aren't any better than the TV firmware.
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Can you explain why you can't just not give the TV your Wi-Fi password?
Or are we worried about the case when the TV did have Wi-Fi (due to it being mandatory for some initial setup, say), but we don't trust that "Forget Network" and "Wi-Fi off" are actually honored?
Suppose the device surreptitiously reconnects to Wi-Fi in spite of being told to forget it. You may be able to block it in your router and failing that, change the access point password.
No?
HDMI has an Ethernet channel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC
Any chance the TV can phone home via that? One would have to make sure the HDMI cable physically doesn't have the Ethernet pairs, or set the trusted box to filter the traffic.
So, I have an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. I dislike how Google had to put ads on the homescreen (ads which are not suitable for my children), and I just checked: it has Android patch level Jan 2026. It is, as of today, Nov 2026. 10 months without patches. So no patch for eMudhra, no patch for Brotli, and you name it.
Other than that, I agree regarding TV, with one caveat: you might want to update the firmware right away, or at some point. The device might need to phone home for that. In order to achieve that, you can put up a temp WLAN AP with your smartphone.
With regards to my STB: I am considering cancelling all my subscription services and simply downloading everything to my NAS. This already runs Jellyfin. Then all I need is a Jellyfin client and HDMI. Perhaps a RPi 4 or RPi 5 would be suffice there.
While practical advice its just odd to me there's no major legislation or movement or activism or boycotts about this. We just accept our TV might be silently recording everything we say in our home and the fix is to not plug it into the internet.
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Why?
> Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
The thing I'd be worried about when doing this is spending $1000+ on a TV, then realizing it has some sort of pre-downloaded ads that it shows on the main screen ("sign up for your free six months of HBO Max!") or otherwise has a nag prompt that appears to tell you to connect to WiFi. I think that would be basically intolerable.