Microsoft Copilot AI Comes to LG TVs, and Can't Be Deleted

It's done. The cultural significance of TV is toast. Our culture is too atomized, too personalized for shared experiences. Large TVs, centerpiece of the living room, are becoming an anachronism that date people as being from a previous era when television was still a shared cultural experience.

I refuse to connect any of my TV's to the internet but I have to wonder how long until a few different things happen:

- The TV's just connect to unsecure Wifi and collect the data anyways (I think there were reports of at least one manufacture already doing this at one point?). Or just make a deal with xfinity to use their mesh network that seems to be everywhere.

- The TV's don't work without being connected to the internet.

- The manufactures find out that the cost of adding in a cellular modem is justified by the increase in data they can collect.

I would love the idea of buying a modern TV without any of this crap shoved in, I happily use my Apple TV for everything that isnt video games.

It bothers me though when it seems like to fix an issue with HDR or something I need to update the firmware. I have wondered on occasion if this is intentional to "force" people to connect. If I have to do this I will run an ethernet cable to temporarily connect.

I disconnected our living room LG TV from the internet and got a Fire Stick 4K Max, but I hate it; 90% of the screen is advert, and you get a tiny sliver for the 5 apps it lets you see, and you have to go digging for the rest, not to mention the home-screen advertising isn't always appropriate for young children.

I hadn't considered Apple TV because I've never been an Apple user, but perhaps this is what I need.

Though I'm an Android user, all of the Android TV devices seem to be junk or ad-ridden junk.

Is Apple TV the way to go (asking other opinions).

I gave up on this. I turned off a lot of the smart features but couldn’t justify not being able to use the apps.

It’s pretty dystopian my TV spying on me for sure but they’ve already got my phone, my internet history and presumably some pretty good spy satellites

If a drone has my name on it I’m done for either way

> 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor.

A sensible rule, indeed. Next level of dystopia: cellular modems becoming so cheap that every TV, fridge and washing machine comes with one that connects it to the Internet whether you like it or not. And then when we Faraday cage those, the device refuses to function.

Laws need to keep up and ban this shit outright. It sounds exactly like something that the EU could help with.

That's not even the endgoal they are aiming at. Suppose you have a data churning loop you want to run forever. First step is to send a copy everywhere (anywhere) and in whatever shape and form to feast. Otherwise it just sits there looking at the nuclear plant next door.

I know people want "dumb" displays, but the reality is that these OLED panels offer industry-leading image quality and benefit from economies of scale, where most users want some form of built-in OS. A signage board cannot compete on price or quality. As long as TV manufacturers let me run it offline without issue, I'm fine with that.

Also fwiw, you can use apps like Infuse on the Apple TV for playing your own media files over the network. No Need for USB drives, just connect direct to the shared folder.

Sigh! These manufacturers have repeated this so many times that it is probably in their corporate subversion manual now. This is no consolation at all. They first introduce 'optional' features like this. Then they tighten the screw such that you get degraded performance if you don't use that feature. Finally they make it unavoidable. How are we missing it every time?

Haven't we seen how this evolved in the case of windows login using their 365 account? Haven't we seen how Android smartphone unlocking and custom ROM flashing got gradually more difficult over the years until we can't do that anymore?

If you rely on compromises or shortcuts out of this problem, you'll eventually find yourself without any. We need to nip this trend in the bud. Punish them with a tanked market.

You can find people who cover the content of these updates, such as Vincent from HDTVtest.

What I tend to do is leave my WiFi off and then occasionally turn it on and connect for firmware updates, then disable it afterward.

I've also found that on my LG OLED that a lot of the crapware doesn't even have an option to function if you just never accept the terms and conditions or un-accept them. The UI doesn't make it perfectly obvious that you can do this but you absolutely can.

This stuff is very much anti-consumer, but can generally be mitigated by vigilant settings-chasing and a willingness to ignore the TV interface and use a dedicated streaming box with essentially no ads like an Apple TV.

I'm pretty sure they're working on solving that problem.

Its masters sell that data to anyone who wants it.

Anyone will judge you.

Ah, so exactly like Microsoft Windows operating systems behave.

also: i think this sort of behaviour is exactly how you chill updates of any sort. it may take a while but when it is publicly salient that updates are sophies choice, and large pie slices of devices stay stock and unconnected, that will dry up that watering hole.

paranoia regarding un-updated devices will give way to paranoia regarding updates being used to screw you into something you would never consent to.

this will however give them huge amounts of information... its a loss leader for them.

All that I have available in typical stores are smart TVs. The rest is some display panels meant for commercial installations (like big ad screens, multiple, working as one), which are only available online at a premium price.

I'd love for someone to mention a single TV manufacturer who provides a good, not amazing, just good, smart TV experience.

Really wish we'd get dumb displays with these great panels :(

Because wallstreet just needs to see that AI adoption number go up. No one really cares about if it's accidental clicks, or hell just mandatory running in the background. We just need that number to go up, and next quarter it has to go up even more.

To the audience of this site, yeah. But "copilot" is Microsoft trying to brand "an agent/assistant". They use it across their entire product line; copilot is in office so you can ask for help with spreadsheet formulas and in outlook so you can ask for help with summary/triage... and it's in VSCode/GH.

Microsoft saw the way the USB people absolutely screwed up the marketing/branding around different generations and speeds and capabilities and said "I bet the same strategy will work spectacularly well for us" and thus _everything_ became copilot.

(Either Samsung dropped the ball on quality in the last 5-10 years, or I just started to pay attention, but the desire to throw this garbage in the bin is real.)

Assume there is similar for other countries, though I can't see this being of any use whatsoever.

A modern TV has a lifetime of 15 - 20 years I think. E.g. my in-laws have a Sony TV, from around 2012 - 2013. It's not 4K obviously, but the picture is beautiful, the sound perfectly fills their small living room, it's a great TV. Even considering that Sony did skimp on the compute in that TV from the start, there's no way that they could have put in hardware that would future proof it until 2030 or beyond. Nor could they reasonably charge enough to cover software updates for that long. It makes much more sense to have a replaceable external unit.

I thought this is already common wisdom for people in tech for decades to NEVER connect your TV to the internet, not even once.