Been very happy with our Panasonic OLED. It’s perfectly happy without an internet connection, turns on in 5 seconds flat (a feature these days if you can believe it, as most smart TVs boot a whole Linux or android and take for ever), the amount of options to adjust the image is incredible (they’re used as reference displays in movie studios for coloring movies apparently), and the picture is beautiful. Oh and not a single ad screen anywhere even if you connect it to the internet.
I have a Panasonic from a few years ago (cheapest 4K I could find; is "smart" so has Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and other UK streaming services like More4, ITV Player, Disney+) and it does rely on contacting Panasonic for them to work. Their server went down the other year and ALL of the services on the TV stopped working - Netflix wouldn't launch any more.
It does contact Panasonic but I have blocked the domains with a Pihole and closed outgoing port 53 other than traffic from the Pihole so nothing can make DNS requests directly (eg. hardcoded to 8.8.8.8).
The TV itself is great though. It runs FirefoxOS I believe.
The TV is not as bad as the LG I had before it which sent a web request to LG every time you pressed a button on the remote control... volume up.... web request to LG. Volume down... TV sent a web request to LG.
> Their server went down the other year and ALL of the services on the TV stopped working - Netflix wouldn't launch any more.
> It does contact Panasonic but I have blocked the domains with a Pihole and closed outgoing port 53 other than traffic from the Pihole so nothing can make DNS requests directly (eg. hardcoded to 8.8.8.8).
I don't understand - you've blocked it from contacting Panasonic; does that mean that none of the services work any more? Or is there another domain that it has to keep in contact with that you've allowed? If so, why block the Panasonic domain when you allow it to chat to some other third party?
But it is allowed to access other domains such as:
nrdp.prod.ftl.netflix.com
api-global.netflix.com
vcs.vdspf.com
push.prod.netflix.com
uiboot.netflix.com
appboot.netflix.com
auth-ctv.digitaluk.co.uk
c09.api.freeviewplay.net
secure.netflix.com
Nothing on the network other than the Pi can get out of port 53 (DNS).
If you’re talking about an LCD Panasonic, I can’t say anything about them other then they’re a completely different series than the OLED. Almost like a separate brand.
My OLED has Netflix etc. I used the built in Netflix a few times but don’t anymore since because I don’t use Netflix altogether and not subscribed to them. I put it on a special VLAN that has no internet access but can still send and receive traffic to my home assistant instance so as far as the tv is concerned, it’s offline. But it’s never nagged me about it. And when it was fully online (when using the Netflix app), I never received any ad anywhere.
Yes yours is the posher model! Mine is a LCD - just dug out the model number and it's TX-49EX600B. I languish in LCD land. (And it's 49" - no idea why I thought it was 42").
Nothing wrong with it. If it does the job and you’re happy with it ,why change. I got an OLED because I didn’t mind paying the price as we use the screen a lot but that’s just me.
Panasonic JZ OLED series is amazing. They released an update which has full working support for 4K 120hz VRR (useful for Xbox / gaming) .
I had been looking at Sony before that and saw that they had promised their users for a couple years to release the same 4k 120hz VRR update for a number of bravia models. to date they either didn't release it, or released flawed implementation. There were so many complaints online it steered me clear of Sony.
I then went into the store thinking to buy LG but Panasonic looked very nice. I watched a ton of reviews from HDTVtest on YouTube and took a gamble with the Panasonic. The calibration of the set is very much better than my old Samsung. Night and day.
In the end it was cheaper and I've been very happy.
