On: Ask HN: Is there a TV on the market without “Smart...

[gnicholas]

If I faced this dilemma, I’d just turn on my phone’s hotspot, give the credentials to the TV, then turn off the hotspot after it’s updated.

[somehnacct3757 → gnicholas]

It's not so much the connection that's the problem.

You might have to agree to a ToS when you first connect to internet. Who knows what privacy you give away signing that.

The update might be a trojan horse containing both the bugfix you need and a new mandatory streaming service tile on the home screen.

[gnicholas → somehnacct3757]

As a practical matter, I'm not especially concerned about ToS updates since my TVs are never online. The only way to exfiltrate data is to log it all and then upload as a chunk when I next do an update, or to log into a public wifi network and send data that way. But the former is not likely, and if they can do the latter I'm already defeated.

I also don't care about tiles on the home screen, because I literally never see the home screen. I always have a device plugged in (and have never connected a TV to the internet for software or other updates, thankfully).