Why are there such idiotic smart TVs that can’t even turn off bluetooth?!
There are at least two such devices in my apartment block and my bluetooth audio transmitter always tries to connect to them instead of my headphones. I have already talked to the people owning those TVs and we tried to disable BT, but it just isn’t possible. This is driving me insane!
Tv companies use those features to collect advertising metrics. While the BT can’t connect with anything on it’s own, it can see things like what other bluetooth devices are near by and how often.
It’s a small inconvenience to the user but knowing device 001A3FD24AE3 was present during a viewing of all of Star Trek TNG in 4 weeks is critically important for the TV to know.
I don’t care what’s “important” for some random marketing executive to know about me and what’s happening inside my house.
I bought this device and I will use it how I want and not how these predatory bastards want.
Yuuup. Fuck their “features” with a rusty shovel.
Bluetooth gets a normal plain text device name, and many of then are default. Knowing “Steve’s S20 FE” is near by is more useful, especially when farming that information from tens of thousands of tv’s and cross referencing that with other factors like income demographics for a given area.
The best part of this? They know you inside out, what you watch and listen to, where and when, and then use it… to try to sell you stuff you already have.
I actually had the reverse problem: some stupid neighbor kept trying to pair something with my smart TV, to the point where I couldn’t watch TV at times, due to this moron’s insistence. I looked in the settings and also found I couldn’t disable Bluetooth, or blacklist devices, so I thought of a simple solution: changing the TV name to “virus”. From that day on, no one tried to pair anything with my TV.
I actually had a similar situation. I found out I had a neighbor stealing my wifi a few years ago because of BT shenanigans.
I gave the guest wifi pw to the previous neighbor, who must’ve written it down somewhere. The new neighbor was a douche who kept piggybacking off of it to watch stuff with his shitty little kid, so I’d occasionally get notifications on my network. When I confronted him about it, he got belligerent and threatened violence.
So I paired to his device and blasted porn at full volume.
Well then, just hope that your neighbor doesn’t turn around to pair into your device and blast porn at full volume on your TV, get you pissed off as to WTF you can’t turn it off, end up throwing the whole thing into the Recycle Bin, and look into some kind of CRT TV that can’t be f***ed with like you are also pissed off with the current company that produces the current flat screen stuff.
It’s all good, my dude. I run old school cabling for my devices so I never have to deal with these shenanigans. Plus it’s been over a decade since this happened and I haven’t seen that family since. They left me alone after the incident and were quite civil afterwards.
Also, you okay? You seem quite upset about an anecdote on the Internet that has nothing whatsoever to do with you.
Not sure what anecdote is, but I’m actually quite upset about these shenanigans the companies that produce the current flat screen stuff they allow to happen in the first place.
I feel stupid for never having looked into changing Bluetooth device names but it’s clearly not easy or I’d be naming all the Bluetooth shit I own crazy stuff.
I’ve not yet met a device whose Bluetooth name i couldn’t change. Just Google, “How do I change the Bluetooth name on “x device”?”, and substitute, “x device”, with the manufacturer, make, and model of the device whose Bluetooth name you want to change. I believe in you.
Wait why are complaining about the stupid devices of others instead of your one that doesn’t allow you to manage its connections?
I would be furious at my stuff doing stupid shit not that of others.
Some TV remotes are now using bluetooth instead of IR, so yeah you can’t turn that off without locking yourself out…
Damn this unlocked a lot of infuriating memories of working night shift and being woken up by the kids from one of the other apartments connecting to my TV’s sound bar and playing loud obnoxious games for toddlers and cranking it way up presumably because they couldn’t hear it, all while I was trying to sleep because night was my day.
It should be legally required that on any system that has settings you should be able to disable wireless stuff.
Lol and I can’t even get my TVs to output over Bluetooth! Smart TVs are dumb, why build a radio into a thing if I can’t connect both ways with it.
Or why build a radio into a TV to listen to music when the stereo system is already during that job?
I mean like the Bluetooth radio, not like a radio tuner. Sorry should’ve clarified
It might be because right now remotes are Bluetooth due to the microphone
Just start transmitting some music, it’ll get squared away real quick
