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Vote with your wallet. Don't buy these internet devices.

All it takes is for a visiting family member or friend who wants to watch Netflix while you're in another room/asleep/etc to click okay.



That’s what my in-laws did. “For some reason you hadn’t connected your smart TV to the internet; instead of using your Apple TV, we gave TCL your WiFi password. Aren’t you proud we figured it out on our own?”


Better be sure and block the TV from wifi then.


Easier said than done. It’s increasingly difficult to find a “dumb” TV these days. Almost all have smart functionality.

(and besides, most TVs have other ways of watching Netflix that ought to be more convenient for a visitor. A $30 Roku stick is all you need)



In the US, you can get a 55 inch dumb 4K TV for less than half the price.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD...


Is there any difference in display quality between a monitor and a TV with roughly the same specs?


I really doubt it. My 2015 Sony bravia has a similar 4K VA panel that I'm largely happy with. I absolutely hate that TV for reasons besides it's panel. And I regret blowing £850 on it.

You're not going to find IPS or OLED panels on those large form factor monitors for a sensible price, so do consider that.

Also keep an eye open for NEC digital signage displays on eBay, they're quite common coming from liquidated businesses. I bought a few of them for the office on the cheap and they're solid as long as you avoid the really old plasma models.


Traditionally, a computer monitor would be superior in quality since they are used at a closer distance where things like dead pixels are much more noticeable, in contrast to a TV that's mainly used for video at a longer distance.

With LCD monitors being available in sizes as large as TVs and with the same resolutions, I suspect there won't be much difference but perhaps panels intended for TVs may still have more allowable defects.


Sceptre makes 4K dumb TVs (Walmart).

You can also find other brand 4K dumb TVs on Amazon.

A guest might not see it plugged in and not know to try all the HDMI inputs before selecting the easy, built-in option on the TV.


Wow. I hadn't thought of this vulnerability. Time to set up MAC address blacklists on my router.


If you're going to that sort of length, maybe just filter DNS requests from the TV to whitelist Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, etc. but block everything else. A custom router might go one step further and only whitelist outbound traffic to IP addresses that were previously resolved through DNS.


Are Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Youtube etc. IP addresses stable enough to be whitelisted, er, allowlisted without frequent updates?




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