Useful Info On Dumbing Down Your TCL Roku TV

pearsaltchocolatebar , 2 months ago

This is a good reason to never buy a TLC TV.

anonymouse OP , 2 months ago

This is more for people like me who already have one and still need to use it as a monitor, but want to make sure that Roku never collects another bit of data from us.

ArtVandelay , 2 months ago

Thank you, I am in this group. Two 65" TCL TV's and I would love to de Roku them in light of recent events.

hark , 2 months ago

I would say that having an option to turn that garbage off is actually a point in its favor. They're very cheap TVs and if you don't have to enable the roku spying option then that's a plus in my book.

db2 , 2 months ago

What's the point of turning everything you're plugging in on first? It looks like you get an input selection screen regardless.

catloaf , 2 months ago

It probably lets you hide inputs you're not using.

Gormadt , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

The TCL TV I use for my PC monitor has a setting to always boot into an input

I do that and never see the smart features, shit I've never even connected it to the Internet

I just use it as a 42 in. 4k monitor

Edit: I should mention that depending on viewing distance the PPI of a monitor can be quite low before it starts having a noticeable degregation on the viewing experience. At my sitting distance of roughly 30in from the monitor a PPI of 105 (basically what a 42in 4k screen has) is fine as even at that distance individual pixels aren't visible. (45in at 4k is where you start being able to resolve them with 20/20 vision (we get about 1 arc minute of res from our eyes which some ugly math tells us that at a viewing distance of 30in we could determine details at about 100ppi (0.01 inches) in size))

Edit 2 For the really curiously nerdy:

Here's a little chart for max screen sizes for various seating distances based on PPI. The numbers are rounded (and start with a rounded number) and all of them have a FOV around 66 degrees.

Personally I wouldn't go for the max size on any of these and I'd go for a bit lower. Cheaper, dead pixels are harder to see, you may change your viewing distance based on comfort, minimizing screen door effect, etc, etc.

https://files.catbox.moe/y2l664.JPG

delcake , 2 months ago

Solely to let the TV's auto configuration and discovery pick it up and customize the inputs automatically. But you're right, it's not actually necessary to power everything on.

misspacific , 2 months ago

this rules, thank you!!

would a factory reset destroy any driver/codec updates, or are those a firmware based changes that wouldn't be overwritten?

anonymouse OP , 2 months ago

From this link:

"A factory reset returns the TV to its original, out-of-the-box state. Performing a factory reset will remove all stored personal data relating to your settings, network connections, Roku data, and menu preferences."

misspacific , 2 months ago

hmm, this is sort of helpful.