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.
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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Mildly Infuriating
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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.
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.
You would think that with all that demographic data and spying on everything they'd have a clue, but it's like they've not been using it to make products better at all. It's like they're finding out just exactly how awful something has to be until we complain.
Don’t the Bluetooth beacons only see the MAC address unless it’s in discovery mode?
I don’t know the actual spec, I just thought that’s how it worked.
Some TV remotes are now using bluetooth instead of IR, so yeah you can't turn that off without locking yourself out..
It should be legally required that on any system that has settings you should be able to disable wireless stuff.
I won't let my TV access the internet. No good reason for it. If I want spyware I'll be one of the Amazon or Apple spyware modules. At least then I know its spyware that runs well.
That’s cool and all, but that has literally nothing to do with Bluetooth…
It means that the Bluetooth data the TV collects does not get transmitted anywhere. It's better than disabling Bluetooth.
Other than the whole issue of it still trying to connect to devices, or allowing other devices to try to connect to it. Which is what the post is about.
I've refused to hook my TV up to the internet. Massive bloatware and spyware machine. I bought high end. Samsung 70" top of the line last year. But everything I watch is though a jailbroken 4k firestick or straight up on disc.
It's a pain in the ass to switch inputs. THERES NO INPUT BUTTON. It wants to choose FOR ME what input I'm using based off the most recent input. Lick my balls. I'll switch from the first stick to the Xbox but if the fire stick is still streaming I'll choose the Xbox and it'll switch back to the firestick. Fuck you. I can't even imagine if I let that thing connect to the internet. It'd probably want a huge update, send everything I watch back to hq, and then try to show me ads. Fuck you Koreans.
It's a great tv. Top of the line picture quality. But it's about as good as it gets in this age. If I was more tech savvy I could probably make it better but I'm not.
Samsung's auto input stuff is so frustrating. When I had one I would just plug and unplug into the last input used but even then it would try to detect input for settings I guess and delay me over a minute.
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.
Yeah at first I thought it was his TV. Why are they even paired to begin with? It's his device doing it, the TVs are just complying.
It seems the neighbours device is constantly in pairing mode. If your device has no display, you have to rely on only your devices wanting to pair at the time you need to.
Oh that would make sense!
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.
My wife's car disconnects my bt audio like every 5 mins. There are certain intersections where it always connects. I've long suspected its because of other bt devices using the same frequencies. This is on a 2023 ev car using android auto.
My shitty aftermarket bt radio I installed on my 2003 PoS is 100% stable. No problems.
New cars are such fucking garbage.
That sounds like an issue with your transmitter, not the TVs. It shouldn't be initiating the pairing process with untrusted devices.
It might be because right now remotes are Bluetooth due to the microphone
It also just works way better than infrared lights. No need for line of sight or to point it ever so precisely at the receiver
Well, my Samsung “smart” tv starts playing other people’s streams. Tried dumbing down the piece of shit to absolute bottom (I have media connected via hdmi/usb/etc and am not using that ad-ridden OS), but it still lets others randomly connect. A decent manyport monitor will work just as fine, so that replacement will happen!
Welcome to late-stage capitalism, where companies sell what you do not want to buy. e.g., no wired connection has ever once had this problem, but they had to sell more thingies, so now everything is bluetooth, whether it should be or not, plus it seems like nobody ever bothered to finish implementing bluetooth - e.g., this exact issue you are having, which surely could be fixed except... why bother, when you (& your neighbors) have already bought all the thingies?
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
Most crappy TV's I've had were cheap. YMMV.
Just start transmitting some music, it'll get squared away real quick