52
votes
Hisense TVs show ads during normal operation
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- Title
- Hisense TVs force owners to watch intrusive ads when switching inputs, visiting the home screen, or even changing channels - practice infuriates consumers, brand denies wrongdoing
- Published
- Mar 11 2026
So how long until it becomes commonplace for tech enthusiasts to start jailbreaking their TVs and flashing an open source OS onto them? (If it isn't already.)
I own an LG TV and already block all of their domains via my router (I would jailbreak it too if I could!) Once they have my money for the TV, I am unconvinced that they have any incentive to push anything to it which doesn't enshittify it.
You need only look at the remote control which has 6 large unreprogrammable buttons for 'services' to know what sort of people are running these companies.
How do you find the URLs? Just network tracing?
Yeah, that's the comprehensive way to do it. There are pre-made lists floating around too, but I find they don't necessarily block everything.
Another option is just to block everything and whitelist the stuff you do use. I ended up just doing this and whitelisting YouTube.
I assume that will directly relate to how long SmartTube keeps working.
How do use smart tube on your TV? I am asking because my Samsung TVs don't have the app on their store. I can use it via firetv but considering it's an android device I am worried about the developer registration that will become mandatory on September...
I doubt it's in any store on any tv. You need to download "Downloader" which is basically just a web browser. It lets you grab Smarttube from the GitHub repository. I am also concerned that it will stop working when that change occurs although if I already have it downloaded I hope that doesn't matter.
If the ads come from internet amd are not built-in, I'm ready for them. I have Raspberry Pi woth Kodi connected to the TV and the TV itself is just big monitor with built-in speakers at this moment.
They truly enshittify everything these days.
...that seems like the simplest fix: just don't connect the television to your local network and run an external media box instead, which will likely perform better anyway...
At least it works predictably and every time the same no matter what TV it is connected to. I also have the situation in my hands doing that.
I have yet to find an ad-ridden TV in Brazil. They are not completely adfree, but the ads are usually rare, unintrusive and easy to avoid. Both Samsung and LG are a little pushy about using their apps but other than that Brazilian TVs seem to be better than most on that front. I'm not sure if that is the result of some law we have. I don't even buy expensive TVs, just the most affordable models. They are and were all connected to the WIFI and I used several streaming apps on them. On the other hand, they are essentially made of spit and very thin paper, won't last very long and repair is usually more expensive than buying a new one.
I just got a new TV and just didn't connect it to the internet, but I am sure some day they will make it impossible to even start your TV in offline mode.
Yeah, some of the TVs actively scan for wifi networks that they could use and connect automatically. Plus there have been ideas about TVs coming with pre-installed sim cards (just like cars are now) as the means to circumvent the attempts to keep them offline.
I have seen this claimed for years but never proven. It seems to be based on a Sony (iirc) patent for putting SIM cards in TVs that was never built, and one post on the Samsung forums several years ago that given it has never been replicated, seems likely at this stage a house mate just connected the TV to the WiFi previously.
There is an enormous difference between me paying my ISP or network for the privilege of having my own devices that I purchased with my own money use my network to serve me ads on behalf of the manufacturer of said device and the manufacturer of said device paying their ISP with their own money for the privilege of serving me ads. In the first case, they only pay a marginal fee to ship the data; I pay to receive. In the second case, they pay to ship and they pay to recieve. Now, a few packets of compressed text is cheap, so its no thing for your washing machine and refrigerator to spy on you and send home little messages about what they learn. But streaming video? It would be difficult to purchase sufficient bandwidth at scale from wireless providers at affordable costs to make the ad revenue profitable.
I think.
(I hope.)
They would rely on your network to stream video and just use the SIM for telemetry.
I really wish I could just use my Google TV on my Hisense TV. I had move from an older LG to this 2023 model Hisense, not connecting it to the Internet. Plugged in my Google TV. And no matter I did, I could not resolve really terrible laggy picture, it was very clear in sports games. I tried so many settings, and multiple Chromecasts and Google TV sticks, all of them had this issue. I switched to the Google TV built in, everything was solved. But the built in Google TV is no where as fast as even the legacy versions I have.
That's what I worry about. I can't see why it wouldn't be possible to ship it with a bunch of pre-programmed ads, although perhaps that really would motivate people to hack the OS and delete files or something.
I've heard that some TVs are programmed to search out open wifi connections and connect to those, if they can.And I wouldn't be too surprised if it became good value (for the manufacturer) to stick in a sim card (esim, whatever) to completely obviate the need for the user to connect it up.Edited to delete that sentence, which after having done more reading, I'm not convinced is not plausible, but fake, news.
I keep seeing the claim that TVs are searching for open wifis, but haven't actually seen any substantial evidence for it, and I somehow doubt it is a viable option these days. I haven't encountered an unsecured wifi in ages, outside places like malls or airports. A sim card would add a subscription fee for all their TVs, which I doubt would be worth it to combat the very few percent that go out of their way to not connect their TV to the internet, as most normal users would just do it for the smart tv functionality. An always online requirement seems like the easier approach for tv manufacturers if they want to go that route.
I am of the same opinion on the "searching for unsecured WiFi" bit but I disagree on the sim card thing.
Companies can pick up bulk sim cards with low data limits for next to nothing. Any display you see in convenience stores or grocery stores that can change has a sim in it somewhere.
I still think it would require a bigger shift towards consumers deliberately not connecting their smart tv to the internet. Right now it seems like a somewhat niche thing to do for privacy minded people, and installing sim cards in every tv to catch the minor percent of users that don't connect their tv, is probably not there where the cost benefit is there. Though of course that might change.
I have no idea how the economics of this work, but as far as I know all modern cars (at least in my part of the world) are equipped with always-on cell connections. My understanding is that these are phoning home constantly with location and other data, to sell to brokers and/or insurance companies, and probably hand over to law enforcement whenever asked. Of course that’s also how OnStar-type services, remote start features, remote immobilizers, etc. are deployed. I might have details about this wrong, it’s a privacy nightmare that almost no one talks (or even knows) much about.
No one is paying subscriptions for that connectivity. They might be paying for services that run on them but the basic connectivity is paid by the automakers. Who can presumably pull the plug at any time when it becomes unprofitable for them. I seem to remember seeing headlines fairly recently about an older generation of cell-equipped cars that used a deprecated protocol that carriers were shutting off, leaving all those vehicles disconnected.
Anyway, if it makes economic sense for automakers to foot the bill, because the return is great enough to cover their costs… then surely TV manufacturers, who have been using ad revenue to subsidize their cheap products (usually sold at a loss or break-even with manufacturing costs) for years, could make it work too.
Difference is for cars it is the only way to become connected - so it make sense to do for all their cars, for TVs it will only catch those small % of customers that deliberately go out of their way to not connect the tv to wifi. Adding simcards to all their TVs for that reason is not really comparable to car manufacturers.
Fair point, I can't remember where I came across it, and having done some more searching right now, I agree it's more rumor than fact. Fair spot. I'm also a bit relieved, because that really did make me feel like all my DNS-level blocking, not connecting to wifi etc etc etc was a bit pointless, but perhaps it isn't.
FWIW, NextDNS is an easy to setup line of defence for this kind of enshitification. It also works on the iPhone, I have no ads anywhere except the YouTube app (for which I use an Albania tunnel so I get no ads)
+1 for NextDNS. I loved the Pi-hole when I had it set up, but I prefer NextDNS because I can use it anywhere/everywhere easily, not just on my own network. I have the app on my phone so I can block ads at the network level while using cellular data or public wifi too. Great for reducing data use on cell data (especially since my plan has a small amount of data for budget and "i never use it" reasons).
I have it configured on my router and also as a custom DNS over HTTPS URL in my browser settings
Huh, why does an Albania tunnel prevent ads?
idk. There are no YT ads in Albania.
This is why I got myself a Sceptre dumb TV. It warms my heart seeing its on-screen display sometimes flash 12:00 Jan 1, 1980 in the corner. It's dumb enough that it still relies on me to set the time since it has no wifi hardware. It's just a pure HDMI display device. (Is the display quality as great as some? No, but it gets the job done.)
This is the way.
I also have a dumb TV (because it's old :P) and an Apple TV box connected to it. Whenever the box is getting enshittified I can replace it.
I really wish we had more companies making high quality dumb TVs. The “smart” part should come from an additional device you plug into the TV. Not the TV itself!
Another reason to never connect your TV to the internet under any circumstances.
I just want a high quality panel with inputs and a remote. I am willing to pay what it would cost to make plus a reasonable margin but apparently that is not getting made anymore. Just smart tvs.
Alternatives are rare with various dowsides. Commercial panels are primarily a b2b product with different requirements that is priced appropriately, computer monitors have a different use case and only few dumb tv models are being made.
If you never connect most smart TVs to the internet, they're effectively dumb TVs once you plug something into an input. With HDMI-CEC, I see the TV's operating system once a year at most. This is the best of both worlds: the TV is subsidized and it functions exactly as a dumb TV would have otherwise.
Samsung insists on putting a big banner at the bottom of my screen (which gets turned on because the signal from the kodi media player starts coming in) saying that I should "finish setting up my new TV" or some such guff. I suppose it's a silver lining that the Kodi system take a minute or so to fully turn on, so by the time I'm actually wanting to play a movie, the banner has disappeared, but it's annoying that they still try and badger users into doing it.
Edit to add: I wanted remote control on my phone rather than using their little remote, but rather than connecting it to the internet to change channel from my phone or whatever, I just got a little IR blaster and cloned the signals from the remote. I will go to great lengths to never give this thing a glimpse of the outside world, haha.
Yeah I'm sure TV manufacturers will eventually come get us all.. I don't have experience with Samsung TVs, but are you turning on your Kodi box with CEC or is it TV on and then boot up Kodi? Just curious.
Yes, the CEC brings it in and gets everything going when the Raspberry Pi starts up (it's running libreelec).