Please Never Make Me Buy a New TV ⇥ theverge.com

Chris Welch, the Verge:

This afternoon, I was updating the streaming apps on my 2020 LG CX OLED TV, something I do from time to time, but today was different. Out of nowhere, I saw (and heard) an ad for Ace Hardware start playing in the lower-left corner. It autoplayed with sound without any action on my part.

I know you can prevent this stuff by never connecting your smart TV to the internet, but it seems kind of silly that the only way to make a new TV work properly is to treat it like an old TV. You’ve spent thousands of dollars to get something that should allow you to toss your Roku or your Apple TV or whatever, but you can’t because the company that makes the TV wants to milk the money out of every pixel of that screen and every byte that passes through its network interface for the lifetime of the product.