Our TV is a 3-year-old Samsung that tried pretty hard to get us to let it on the network. We let it, for a little while, to get cool active wallpaper features, but eventually did a reset and disabled it. We've never used the built-in clients at all; we drive it from the home media receiver, so its ultimate source is the AppleTV, the BluRay player, or the cable box.
I don't think it's tried to get online on its own; it still shows outdated movies for streaming on its startup menu, and I assume those would update if it had newer data.
I expect this TV to last a while, but realistically I guess I'll probably have to buy one or two more. I'm 52; it's only my 5th TV in about 30 years of having one (and I guess we're mildly odd in that we only have one TV at a time).
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I'm kinda surprised at which of my TVs was the longest-lived:
1. I bought a 27" tube TV in 1991 for a few hundred bucks. Still a student.
2. When it developed financially terminal issues, I bought a MUCH NICER 27" tube tv in 1996 for about a thousand. Picture was amazing. Flat TVs didn't really exist yet.
3. I won a big drawing at work in 2000, and used the proceeds to replace #2 with a 55" rear-projection MONOLITH of a Mitsubishi (about $3300), which was great because I'd moved and the 27" was too small for the new room.
4. Only 8 years later that Mitsubishi developed the Convergence Problem of Doom. Fixing it wasn't a good move, plus hang-on-wall TVs were available. We got a 47" Vizio LCD for about $1400.
5. A really good Black Friday deal in 2019 convinced us to upgrade to the 65" Samsung I mentioned above.
My understanding is that #1 was repaired and used for another year or two by a FOAF before dying the true death.
#2 I gave to my old roommate, who used it until like SIX YEARS AGO, no kidding. It was a fancy enthusiast TV (RCA's upmarket line), so I guess that tracks. Even then it was still working fine at nearly 20 years old; it just didn't have the connectors, capabilities, or the dimensions to be that guy's living room TV anymore.
#4 is, I think, still being used by a friend of our housekeeper, at 14 years.
I don't think it's tried to get online on its own; it still shows outdated movies for streaming on its startup menu, and I assume those would update if it had newer data.
I expect this TV to last a while, but realistically I guess I'll probably have to buy one or two more. I'm 52; it's only my 5th TV in about 30 years of having one (and I guess we're mildly odd in that we only have one TV at a time).
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I'm kinda surprised at which of my TVs was the longest-lived:
1. I bought a 27" tube TV in 1991 for a few hundred bucks. Still a student.
2. When it developed financially terminal issues, I bought a MUCH NICER 27" tube tv in 1996 for about a thousand. Picture was amazing. Flat TVs didn't really exist yet.
3. I won a big drawing at work in 2000, and used the proceeds to replace #2 with a 55" rear-projection MONOLITH of a Mitsubishi (about $3300), which was great because I'd moved and the 27" was too small for the new room.
4. Only 8 years later that Mitsubishi developed the Convergence Problem of Doom. Fixing it wasn't a good move, plus hang-on-wall TVs were available. We got a 47" Vizio LCD for about $1400.
5. A really good Black Friday deal in 2019 convinced us to upgrade to the 65" Samsung I mentioned above.
My understanding is that #1 was repaired and used for another year or two by a FOAF before dying the true death.
#2 I gave to my old roommate, who used it until like SIX YEARS AGO, no kidding. It was a fancy enthusiast TV (RCA's upmarket line), so I guess that tracks. Even then it was still working fine at nearly 20 years old; it just didn't have the connectors, capabilities, or the dimensions to be that guy's living room TV anymore.
#4 is, I think, still being used by a friend of our housekeeper, at 14 years.