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?
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I bought an LG commercial display, which was roughly double the cost of an equivalent LG TV.
It’s awesome, it has 2x HDMI inputs and no smart features at all. It is supposed to go in video walls (big arrays of tiled TVs) so don’t need all that AI stuff.
Control is via RS232, so I soldered a connector onto an ESP-32 and installed ESPHome on it to control power, volume and screen.
A soundbar isn’t quite right for me, but again I would recommend something with RS232 and use an ESP-32 (if you like hacking) or a commercial rs232 to ethernet adapter (like this) if you don’t.
How’d you manage to snag one of those displays? LG won’t give me an actual price.
Just search the model#, amazon and others will pop up.
Why didn’t I ever think about RS232 control with an ESP32 device? Great idea!
There’s also this cool Zigbee IR blaster device that can learn the IR codes and then fire them out from HA if you don’t have the stomach for ESPHome.
My setup is fully offline and works quite well:
I have a LG G4 which I connected to my non-internet access point. Home assistant accesses the API locally and the TV cannot reach internet. I only use the API to check if the TV is on but I can change the source, volume and launch apps.
I use a Vero V as media center, this one is connected to the main access point but I trust it and I need it to access my NAS.
My soundbar is offline but has CEC and eARC.
The Vero turns the TV on and off with CEC, then the TV turns the soundbar on and off with CEC and the sources of both are setup everytime.
So the LG TV can get connected to the local network without an app or cloud account? Perfect! I guess HA integration for a soundbar would be a nice-to-have-feature, but not critical. It would be nice to have Music Assistant connect to it directly for music playback, but as long as it turns on and off via CEC, I can continue to play music through Kodi/LibreELEC.
Yep! But you have to prevent it from reaching the internet one way or another.
As for music, that’s what I do but I think it’s a shame to turn on the TV just to listen to music on the soundbar, so most of the time I just connect to it in bluetooth with my phone, even though it’s not lossless that way.
Sonos is not so bad and in any case they have kept the legacy apps for devices not updated and they still run with homeassistant ( I have a Sonos amp that have at least 18 years 😅 ), I have a soundbar, it sounds very good and is integrated with homeassistant without problems, for example in the evening I have an automation that sets the audio to hear more speech and less sound to disturb less, and compatible with music assistant without hassle, I installed its app only for the first configuration.
I was about to get in the car and go buy the Sonos soundbar, but I checked the manual first. The network setup itself is done through an app that connects via BLE, and to use the app, you first have to create a Sonos account. That’s a ‘no’ from me. I may be unreasonable, but I don’t want to share my personal data and be gate-kept by a company, just to use hardware that I ostensibly own and is sitting in my living room. It’s too bad, because from what I read, the sound quality is excellent.
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.
I found it a real struggle with the TV to find a non smart one, especially as the smart ones are cheaper.
They’re cheaper because the cost is subsidized by the extensive data collection.
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)
TV with analog audio out and a “dumb” sound system with analog in.
If OP wants surround, Atmos, etc., this isn’t gonna work. Analog outputs can’t handle ambisonics, and TVs don’t have discrete 6 channel outputs. If you want 2.1, 5.1, Atmos, MPEG-H or whatever, you’ll need a digital output to your sink device (AVR/soundbar, etc.). Digital doesn’t mean internet connected. And there’s no real benefit to forcing an analog output from your TV. It’s DAC probably isn’t better than the DAC in an AVR or soundbar.
Surround sound receiver that works via optical or HDMI. That’s what I would recommend over a soundbar that will ultimately end up unusable after a few years. No need to overcomplicate it with HA.
Or… An older Bose soundbar. Bose recently open-sourced some of their older stuff that is no longer supported.
As someone who grew up with older surround sound equipment in the house, I’m just having a hard time imagining a scenario where any network connection at all would need to be involved.
Surround sound receiver that works via optical or HDMI. That’s what I would recommend
Those are both digital outputs, not analog. Maybe you’re confusing digital with internet connected?
I’m not advocating internet-connected audio gear, but plenty of people like the utility of networked audio for automation, in-home streaming, and multi-room setups. But again, those can be isolated from the internet.
I’m not confusing anything.
This is what OP was asking:
Are there any TVs and soundbars out there that can integrate with Home Assistant, and don’t need a cloud connection at all?
I answered accordingly. There really isn’t a reason for a soundbar or surround sound system to be connected to any sort of network. Streaming music is the only reason I can think of, but that can be handled by bluetooth (which many sound systems have), or even an AUX IN with a dock or bluetooth adapter.
