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Roku and TCL are being sued for allegedly bricking smart TVs with bad updates
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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...ok I've never felt more justified in completely turning off my TCL's ability to connect to the internet, then.
damn. the only reason I initially did it was because they'd introduced an update that put ads on the bottom of the screen every hour or so.
factory reset, internet gone. dumb TV is the best TV.
My main TV is an originally bricked Vizio from a bad update. I was able to buy a replacement logic board for $20 to get the TV to work again. When I reassembled it I intentionally never connected the TVs Wifi antennas to the logic board. The TV has been operating fine for close to 2 years now having never been attached to the internet.
I don't know how it is now, but I know a few years ago if Roku was pre-installed on the TCLs, they would be required to connect to the internet in order to even set it up because they required a Roku account in order to operate.
We had issues setting up demo units for it because our demo broadcast used a unified source that was via HDMI and we couldn't get the TV to broadcast a HDMI signal without setting up a Roku account.
We ended up just not setting those TVs up, and when customers would ask to see how it looked, we'd say unfortunately we don't have the capability of showing you.
Nobody was about to sign up to Roku using a store account and then have to deal with juggling the passwords just to use a display TV.