Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?
- ID
- 41918
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Nov 2026, 3:35 AM
- Fetched
- 02 Nov 2026, 5:06 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50328896
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 02 Nov 2026, 5:07 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
An Ask HN thread (351 points, 492 comments) asking for a 60–80" 4K/60Hz TV that respects privacy, with the poster planning to use Apple TV as the only source. The top answer recommends LG OLED (e.g. a 77" LG C6) but only after rooting webOS with the tv.slada.sk guide plus Glasshouse to strip telemetry, and warns LG closed the rootable vulnerability in firmware released after 2026-10-10 (e.g. 43.21.84), so newer units can't be rooted; Dev Mode does far less than root. Other commenters stress never connecting the TV to WiFi before rooting, and one notes that if you bought an unrootable set already on your network, the only safe move is changing the WiFi password.
Why it matters
If you're specifying or buying a display — for an office, a demo kiosk, or a home setup — the concrete decision is firmware-version-dependent: check the shipped webOS build before purchase, because anything after 2026-10-10 (like 43.21.84) is not rootable and the 'buy now, strip telemetry later' plan silently expires. It's also a reminder that rooting tooling is community-maintained and version-fragile, not a supported feature you can rely on for a client deployment.
Discussion angle
Would you ship or buy hardware whose only privacy escape hatch is an exploit with a published expiry date — and what does that say about the expectations users bring to devices your own product ships?