I only witness it whenever any of my work colleagues anyone with a phone wants to show me a video. Always have to sit through ads before & during the video. Absolutely horrific. Mind you they also have to close multiple pop up ads in every app they ever use on their phone. I couldn’t live with it & not learn how to deal with it

OmsAnd can seem daunting for new users. I persevered because the map info is so detailed & it works offline. On a couple of occasions my family found ourselves in a new city in a foreign country in need of food etc & OsmAnd has had the info telling us exactly what we needed & where to go thanks to the dedicated community. It encouraged me to map my own city suburb in detail to help fellow travelers.

I also love its offline Wikipedia function.

If anyone is interested, even adding a park bench or litter bin helps & is quite simple with something like StreetComplete

Go into this completely blind - do not watch the trailer, do not read about it first, just take a deep breath & enjoy the ride

Simplest option is probably speak to sales staff & specifically ask about the set up process. It might be worth phoning a couple of reputable TV vendors as they may have more understanding than the spotty herberts in the sheds at the local retail park.

I last bought a TV outside of your preferred time frame but back then Panasonic made, what for my needs, was the best panel for the price & didnt insist on having internet in order to set it up (no idea whether this has changed with current generation models)

It doesnt help with your hdmi concerns, but what about blocking the TV at router level or restrict it by putting it on VLAN/guest network then disconnecting it from the internet forever once set up.is complete?

For images, on Android you could use Imagepipe.

Once you’ve set it up, simply “share” the image to Imagepipe, it does its thing then automatically passes it on to whatever app you want - for example a messaging app for you to send on to others (it stores a copy of the image minus its metadata in an Imagepipe folder in your gallery for ease of access should you need it again).

For video, from memory I think mp3tag for Windows/Mac can remove metadata from some video formats

Everyone knows the popular ones so here’s a shout out to a few that are perhaps not so commonly known:

• whoBIRD - Shazam for birds
• Subz - Subscription manager
• zCard - Loyalty/membership/store card wallet

My most used can no longer live without app:

• Joplin - Note taking. Various sync options. Brilliant app, helpful community & very regular updates (especially desktop)

Ha I once fell for this same issue with the exact same bars. To be fair they’re so darn tasty I’ve fallen for it again several times since!

I really like it. Tech comminities & some others are very bouyant & interesting but niche communities really struggle. Even direct replacements of big subreddits struggle. Hopefully this improves.

One tip from my own experience. I use Voyager & blocked a load of US politics keywords.

And another, I subscribed to as many interesting Lemmy communities as i could then browse Home feed in the main & occasionally All to see if any other interesting communities crop up that could be worth joining.

Welcome & enjoy.