When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)
PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.
When building my PC, I got a PCI WiFi card but it turns out there was also a direct WiFi network interface built into the motherboard somehow
That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).
As an example - if you have a motherboard on your computer that supports wifi and comes with a port/plug for an antenna, you could remove that antenna and still receive a signal (IDK about sending) but it would suffer more signal loss due to the lack of antenna.
All that is just a guess of course. People more knowledgeable than me could explain/clarify.
Exactly the same way their PC did; re-read what they said.
I am not the person you asked the question of, but here is the answer;
Smart TVs have a built-in "WiFi-Chip" on the motherboard and its antenna hidden in the TV frame itself, exactly like the antennas in a Smartphone. The different radios on a Smart TV viz. OTA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Satellite, Zigbee etc. all operate at different frequency ranges and hence need their own antennas. Many of these antennas are either a) etched on the motherboard b) hidden within the plastic back frame or c) directly taped to it.
Axiom of RF Wireless - There can be no transmission/reception without an antenna either external or internal.
PS: Since RF Wireless is everywhere today and most people do not have much of an idea of this technology, i very highly recommend the book The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless by Carl Weisman for study. Expressly written for a non-technical audience, it explains everything simply and beautifully. It really gave me the invaluable overview and the grounding i needed to understand this important science/technology.
Did the TCL not have this option?
That's not me for sure. :) But what I'm sure about it that their TVs are made either by Haier or TCL.
F--- Google, but at least the kids know those menus are bullshit, and do not have the wifi password at any rate.
Also, we're probably already to the point where I could just put it on a firewalled network, and have a [chinese open weight] LLM pop the factory android, get root, and reprogram the remote buttons to no-ops.
Or, I could open the remote up, physically cut out the spam buttons, then 3d print an alternative top-half of the shell without holes for them.
So many options, so much enshitification.
We bought it because it has crazy high brightness (it is in a bright room with direct sunlight hitting the panel while we are watching it), and while it can beat back the sun, it cannot do so by just turning all the zones on 100% because it would melt or something.
So, if all the image slopping were turned off, the contrast ratio would drop 100x, and the TV wouldn't really be fit for purpose.
(For when the sun is not actively trying to kill the panel, I have a de-slop shortcut setup. That also has the backlight enhance stuff turned on -- as low as possible -- to get true black on the LCD. It works OK. OLED is not quite there yet for this corner case.)
> the image enhancements.
Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.
In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).
With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.
Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.
Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.
The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.
2) Why bother removing the apps if it has no network connection? Defense in depth is sensible to me, but maybe there's something else I'm missing ...
3) Why not buy a large desktop computer monitor, or are those no longer 'dumb' either?
1) All the google data gathering crap, and all the "give permission to garbage preload to turn on the microphone" bullshit (and look for a physical mic switch; ours has that. Also, turn off notifications, because, do you want notifications telling you the wifi does not work? If you have an android phone, do this on your phone first.
2) Less crap = less backlog of surveillance data if you ever accidentally need to put it online. Also, see (1).
3) You can't get a nice 55"-100" desktop monitor for < $2K.
I'm sure it won't be long before these bastards embed a cell phone modem deeply into the device :(
Ppl worry so much about privacy, but are fine having kids watch TV when they eat breakfast.