Dull Men's Club

I knew a guy years back that would pop open any device with an internet or GPS connection and physically disable it. He was telling us about it at work one day. Most of our coworkers told him it was paranoid overkill. I bet that dude is laughing his ass off right now.

How dare you slightly modify a thing you own!

My “smart” tvs all get a firewall rule to ban their MAC address from the outside world

This is Plan B when you already have an LG product.

Plan A is to not buy LG anything, ever.

PS: Just out of curiosity and based on other people pointing out here and in another post of mine how hard is to get a non-smart TV, I looked around and here is the largest non-smart consumer TV I could find (which is 1080p and 40" from what looks like a Spanish manufacturer, for €209 with VAT), here is a non-smart 65" 4K Samsung hospitality display ($1023 in the US) and here is what looks like the same spec consumer TV from Samsung ($379.99 in the US).

So, sorry, it is in fact possible to not just avoid LG products (which itself would be easy, just buy any other brand out there) but even smart TVs altogether, just either pay more (over 2x as more judging by that Samsung TV) or settle for smaller 1080p TVs from smaller TV makers.

wE oWn ThE gLAsS

Lobotimize your smart TVs!

I use my old PS4 to connect to my local media server all behind a pi hole

BRB, going to whisper sweet nothings to my dumb Sceptre.

does it have bluetooth? once I read about those trying to connect to your neighbors appliances through bluetooth and use their networks

Not sure about the older LG models, but in the newer ones, the wifi and bluetooth or on the same board. Cutting off the module means the remote stops working.

Personally, I've isolated and blocked the network, factory reset the TV, and set it up to power off when not in use. It only gets content from an ancient AppleTV box.

I paid and own the glass. They can go screw themselves.

Mine is blocked at the router. It has LAN access just in case it can scan for networks and so I can control it via any APIs with home assistant is I need, but no traffic from it can leave my home network, it gets dropped at the router. It’s been that way for years, I didn’t trust TV manufacturers long before this debacle.

Wonder if my trusty LG TV from 2014 is up to no good. They didn't offer any operating system updates for about 10 years now. And I hope the old spy servers from 12 years ago are decommissioned by now?!