That will be immediately boxed up and returned to the store with the phrase “Not fit for purpose”
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Mentioned on the YC thread on the same topic, manufacturers are making so much money off the data mining that they are considering embedding cellular equipment so they don’t need wifi to upload the data.
I for one look forward to torrenting a few terabytes of linux iso’s on the TV manufacturer’s dime.
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I like that idea, too, but these things are likely to be very bandwidth-limited, perhaps to sub-dialup speeds. If you’re sending only text, you can send plenty of useful data at, say, 9600 bps.
ETA: Then there’s the whole issue of whether or not these things expire. Oops, the TV is a brick after $DATE?
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My last dumb TV had a HDMI which we connected to the Dish box. For certain TV shows, the dish box would check to see if it was connected to a recording device. If the box couldnt confirm this, and our dumb TV was never able to provide the required response, then Dish Network wouldnt show the TV show. This happened frequently with certain movies and TV series finales.
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I wonder how much that modem would care about chicken wire.
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Philips still make some of them: they’re DVB/PAL/SECAM European models
They are similar to “Smart” models but without wi-fi and Ethernet.
They are a fringe equipment, like hi-fi cassette recorders, they are still sold in electronics stores, but they are in a low aisle because the demand is low.
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The last company I worked for bought a load of 60" screens for displaying metrics/system issues/etc around the office. The brand was “Concerto” which I suspect was just a brand our supplier stuck on to generic sets they sourced direct from some factory.
Each display would be driven by a Raspeberry Pi, so no need for smarts.
We switch the first one on and it demands to connect to the internet to check for an update, there was no way to bypass this. Problem was that the web address it was connecting to (a .cn one, we set up a proxy to intercept it) didn’t seem to exist anymore - so it threw an error and refused to proceed.
We sent those back for a refund pretty quickly.
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Oh, yeah. I’m sure we can all trust Google to make that mode work consistently. 
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Would that be HDCP, or is there another such clusterfuck of which I am not yet aware?
Since you’d only be able to cage around the back side of the modem, would the various layers of grids comprising the screen itself be sufficient to act as the last wall of the cage?
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Who knows. I can barely turn on the TV. I have to ask the kids to help.
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Some companies also sell what are called “hospitality” models, which are dumb TVs meant to be sold to hotels and such that will connect them to their own systems. Not sure how they compare price wise to the smart models.
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Who would have imagined that your TV would require a tin foil hat Faraday cage?
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HDMI can also carry Ethernet with an appropriate cable. I see cables specifically marked as having Ethernet support.
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I wonder which HDMI cables are best for twisting into a rabbit-ears antenna? May as well come full circle.
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How hard would it be to “lobotomize” a smart TV? Like is there a WiFi card you can just pull, or is everything on the same circuit board?
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Hope it’s not 3rd generation
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So, my strategy of only ever using second-hand TV sets as living room monitors will get me a few more years of peace.
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exactly this!!!111one
the dumb TV (aka big monitor) exists, easy to set up.
I started looking into this, but found it was easier/less time consuming to sell my current tv / shop for new dumb one. There were cords involved, popping it into debug mode, and flipping off hardware bits some how.
I think the modern “complex” IC based devices are far more reliable than anything that had relays and vacuum tubes. Sure the bottom of the barrel stuff is cheap and flimsy, but even some of that lasts so much longer than the old stuff. We don’t tend to get rid of things because they’re broken - they just get obsolete.
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The “computer monitor” is more expensive than the “television set” because a lot of people are prepared to pay more for “computer hardware” than “consumer electronics”.
Forget supply and demand, pricing is based on what you can get away with.
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