Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.
The text in the image:
I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology
99.9% of all these "problems" can be solved by using an ablocker DNS and a couple of adb commands (on Android).
I'd be setting up a pihole if I had a smart tv
I went from pihole, to Adguard Home to (finally) ControlD. I chose to eventually outsource the DNS because I was letting all family without connection when playing with my miniserver :-P
Too bad adv commands are blocked on firetvs 😢
Well, yeah, though luck... Amazon (the store) is entirely banned from my house.
I thought this doesn't work cause AndroidTV forces its own DNS server, specifically 8.8.8.8, Googles own.
It works, but it needs a bit of work. In particular, you need a router capable of redirecting all DNS call to the DNS you specify (Asus routers can do that, for instance). Moreover, one should also use a blocklist to forbid the connection to most common DoT/DoH public servers, such as
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists/main/adblock/doh-vpn-proxy-bypass.txt
tl;dr It can be done and it's relatively easy, but one has to learn how to do it and choose proper tools (HW and SW).