Other thought on the Walmart/Vizio buyout

[thewayne]

A recent post mentioned that it's also seen as an adspace thing for Walmart, they can get their ads seen on Vizio's smart screens for free if they own the product.

Kinda sneaky way to spread their advertising. Of course, if the TV isn't plugged in to the internet, them ads ain't gonna appear.

Not that I'd buy a Vizio product if they're owned by Walmart.

Comments

[thewayne]

I haven't heard of people hacking smart TVs to replace the OS like they do with DD-WRT routers, but me not having heard of it doesn't mean much.  I hope there are such projects.

[silveradept]

They do exist. It's mostly trying to port Android TV over to them, or LineageOS, more specifically, or some form of Linux, but I suspect most of the work is in writing and testing device drivers for them, and that could take quite some time to hack together. Probably easier just to grab a computer and hook that up and never use the TV function at all if you can avoid it.

[thewayne]

That's my opinion.  Just boot a linux kernel and install Plex, stream your material from a home NAS.