Not an issue I’ve seen with LG at least. Their OS is bad for the reasons I mentioned (apart from perfectly good standard “dumb” TV controls), but the hardware is great.

A TV just bricking basic functionality because it’s not on the internet would probably be grounds for a class action lawsuit here.

You can use pretty much any smart TV dumbly. The most obvious way to do so is to just not connect it to the internet, but if you want it on the network for certain things (like home automation), just don’t agree to the bullshit when you first power it on, create a login, or enable any of the ad-tracking junk disguised as features like “live TV plus” (which is often hidden across multiple menus). The Home Screen for it will forever look like a generic menu begging you to configure your TV, but if you have other stuff plugged into it you’ll hardly ever have to see it.

To really be sure you can use a raspberry pi running a pi-hole server to see if it’s phoning home at all. My LG does nothing online except when I have it pull an update in the rare instance that one comes out with an improvement I care about.

Using a digital signage screen is an interesting suggestion that comes up often, but if you’re a home theater junkie you might have trouble finding one of those at the same level of quality as the best smart TVs at a comparable price. There’s always a trade off to find between what you’re looking for, what you’re willing to deal with, and what you can work around.

As gross as the business is, I do appreciate all the people who blindly agree to all the data mining, privacy violating agreements on their shiny new TVs because they’re a lot of the reason why I can get a 77 inch OLED for so cheap. Manufacturers like LG, Sony and Samsung make some great hardware but their software is worse than Bonzi Buddy.

But yeah, I disable every bit of “smart” and AI functionality (replace it with an Apple TV or something that isn’t loaded with ads and constantly phoning home) and set the location to Albania (which also has the benefit of fully blocking some other “features” from even appearing as an option.

I HAVE broken discs in similar sets (Mr. Robot, Planet of the Apes) taking them out of those awful cases, and also had them arrived scratched up. Definitely check them closely when they arrive so you don’t realize (like I have) when you get to disc six a month later and realize it won’t play past 40 minutes. So many cheap box sets now have the same horrible packaging that ruins the discs.

When possible with those kinds of cases, I just rip out the horrible center disc holders, put the discs in sleeves and then put those in the case.

I know we hate Reddit here but this site is just taken from and rephrasing this post, which is more informative (which at least they were nice enough to link to): https://www.reddit.com/r/blackberry/comments/1jmalqp/a_startup_is_bringing_back_an_updated_blackberry/

(There’s also a pretty damn good chance this is total BS - the poster says he “used AI to cover up their actual design”).

Really liked the first game for the first few hours, then it turned into grind in which constant challenge-free repetition of levels to build your army was more important than the creative rhythm/strategy combat that made it unique. A lot of handheld games from that time did that (The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core, and Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, to name a few) - they’d have excellent core gameplay but would absolutely be loaded with tedious filler with the idea that you’d do that stuff on your daily train commute or whatever.