Does anyone got any television recommendations for dumb tv's or other words none smart tv's? Or even a tv that is smart but the software is open sourced making it privacy friendly?
You think consoles don’t track you? Also they are extremely wasteful when it comes to power consumption. Better just get a tiny streaming stick or a smart tv.
Dumb TVs have gotten hard to find these days. Your options are to either avoid connecting the tv to the internet, or to get digital signage display (but they are pricier).
I asked this question a year ago, and was advised to buy a TV and never connect it to my network. That worked fine for me... But, one person told me they bought a TV that would not function until it was connected to their network to run "updates" so he took it back to the store and got a replacement. The replacement did the same thing so he took that back too. (I think he eventually got one that just "worked" out of the box without requiring an update just to work.
Have you looked at big-ass computer monitors? They probably have a lot of things you don't want, but I've yet to see a smart one. Maybe a cheap one would fit the bill?
Depending on the type, they might be optimised for documents rather than multimedia. Look for a monitor that is intended for gamers/graphics designers. That way you get the color depth you'd also want for movies, I guess.
You can buy commercial signage displays like this one from Samsung which have modern display features. These are made to run 16 hours/day every day so the electronics are actually better than most consumer displays.
These don't have all the crapware of consumer smart TVs, but they also aren't subsidized by all the data gathering and ad pushing stuff so they cost more than smart TVs of the same size.
I got a xiaomi smart tv, opened it up and disconnected the wifi&bluetooth chip.
Making it a really annoying dumb smart tv, then just connected a laptop with Arch
I don’t think there’s anything you can reasonably do today to stop the privacy invasiveness. They can always use an Amazon Sidewalk-ish communication method. You’d have to faraday cage the damn thing.