Make sure you’re also blocking all other outbound DNS at your firewall. Many “smart” devices (and presumably some apps, though I have no way to check this) are hard coded to use 8.8.8.8 regardless of what DCHP says to use.

You think I’m jumping through mental hoops for telling people to use an ad blocker?

I’m tempted to do a master reset on mine to see if I got that option. I have the Roku edition and I know that I can specify what source it defaults to on power on. I can also turn off content recognition, which is what’s going on in OP’s case. But using it as just a dumb TV would be awesome.

The TVs I’ve seen that do this have been smart enough to not get naggy about a lack of Internet until 30+ days after first power on. Then you get popups or autoplay videos begging you to connect it.

My Hisense has been pretty decent, surprisingly. But for my next TV I’m honestly thinking of going with a commercial display.

You can, but don’t forget to also block other outbound DNS connections in your firewall. Lots of “smart” devices are hard coded to use 8.8.8.8 regardless of what DHCP says. Pihole won’t stop those, so you have to block it at the firewall.

Yeah I just want to be clear – Linux has come a LONG way with gaming. If anyone tried it a few years ago and just gave up in frustration, give it another try now. It is MASSIVELY better.

Wait … I can remove Edge?

That bloated pile of trash needs to die.

It amazes me that print management continues to be so spectacularly bad in Windows. It's been terrible since my first days using Win 3.1 and it has never gotten better.

I use Linux for my daily driver. It has really come a long way even in the last five years, but especially compared to 10-15 years ago. For the most part, stuff just works out of the box.

My ONLY beef is that many of the games I play (Civ 5, Banished, Sins of a Solar Empire, Frostpunk) are not stable and/or have performance issues under Linux, so I occasionally need to boot into Windows. For example Civ 5 works great until around 20 turns in when the lag between turns grows unbearable. That really sucks in multiplayer.

I see a lot of people saying “but that’s how creators get paid”.

Listen: I didn’t put ads on my video. YouTube did. I can’t take them off and I don’t see a cent from them. Block away.

I miss the day when you could search YouTube for something like "JFK skyclub" and actually get video of the Skyclub at JFK. Today you'll get 15-minute videos that are 90% a guy talking about his thoughts on JFK, or Skyclub, or airlines, or whatever. If you're really lucky, some of them may feature a few seconds of actual footage of Skyclub.

It's not just Skyclub or travel videos. If I search for "repair mr coffee" I want to see a howto, not someone's SEO-optimized long winded lecture about whatever coffeemakers they're selling.