I’m thinking about getting a larger television, as what I have is a bit too small for the living room. I have an inexpensive soundbar that mostly works, but doesn’t always turn on with CEC, and occasionally stops passing the video signal through and needs to be power-cycled.
Are there any TVs and soundbars out there that can integrate with Home Assistant, and don’t need a cloud connection at all? (Not even for initial setup.) I was about to buy a Sonos soundbar when they were on sale last month, but discovered that you don’t actually own Sonos devices, since setup is locked behind a cloud account and the company could change the terms of access at its whim.
I’ve read encouraging things about the Sony Bravia devices, and the manuals seem to say that you can set them up entirely locally (although some features are cloud-only). Is this still the case?
I found it a real struggle with the TV to find a non smart one, especially as the smart ones are cheaper. Best bet is to get a TV stick and never connect the TV to the internet
I have a Nvidia Shield (bought used on eBay) and works fine with my LG Smart TV, which has never touched the internet. I have a Xiami Mii TV S on another TV, which is the closest to stock android TV I found. Do not get a firestick! Both have 4k, can control TV volume through the remote, have auto turn on/off, plus the TV just goes to that channel so don’t have to touch the TV remotes ever. The Shield is faster and easier to setup but much more expensive.
You could also buy a mini PC but can be harder for certain apps and full video and sound quality (avoid if you want Netflix and other apps). I have stremio (with Real Debrid), jellyfin and TiviMate (IPTV) for all of our needs so could get away with a mini PC but considering the effort I decided not to.
Not sure about the sound bar as bought sonos years ago. It works flawlessly with the TV and runs through home assistant now (responds to Shield remote volume control or can play music through HA BUT I set it up with the original app so can’t comment on that part). It has great audio quality but agree that I would look elsewhere if looking now (although would still consider it).
I also use pihole to try to block any trackers etc.
FYI, you can run LineageOS on your Nvidia Shield. There’s a small loss of functionality, but maybe that can be minimized if you install gapps (I didn’t, and I still have sufficient functionality to warrant the inconvenience).
Largest thing for me would be Netflix, if that’s at least kept its probably another task to chalk up for me.
From memory lots of streaming services have reduced functionality when running custom roms on phones; but it’s been a hot minute since I’ve done such.
Absolutely! I guess I left out the part about what I want to do. I have an RPi4 with LibreELEC for media playback, so getting a smart TV and never connecting to the Internet is a fine plan. I want to be able to control the basics with HA, like powering it on and off, changing volume, and such. The RPi can turn on the TV that I have using CEC, but the TV doesn’t support powering itself off via CEC. And, even if it did, it’s a chore to integrate CEC with Home Assistant automations.
I have a 7 year old LG Smart TV(webos), on a vlan without internet access. Using the built in integration "LG WebOS TV” for automations. I used to use WOL for turning the TV on, but nowadays it seems like my shield works fine to turn it on over CEC.
It’s not as elegant but you could always try to use a smart plug to turn the TV on or off instead (if it turns on automatically when the plug is switched on)
It’s not as elegant but you could always try to use a smart plug to turn the TV on or off instead (if it turns on automatically when the plug is switched on)