Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am absolutely baffled at how bad the user experience with this device is, especially considering the other reviews. I am contemplating whether to return it to Amazon. Most importantly, this TV spies on you. When you set this up, you give them permission to observe everything you do, including what program you watch both on your cable and on Netflix/Amazon Prime, and how you interact with the TV. You allow them to collect all that data on their servers and you explicitly allow them to use that for marketing. You should ask yourself: -- why exactly does a TV require an "advertising ID" and -- why exactly should I agree that LG has the right to display advertisements on my private property? I am quite surprised that people put up with this. But let's go through this one by one: --- First Setup Experience Half way through setup, the setup application crashed. That left me with a totally unusable device. The problem is that there is no proper manual (just tedious videos on LG's website). It took me a while to figure out how to reset this to factory settings. In fact, I have had to reset the TV several times, and it required multiple software updates before it became stable. Then, it turns out that this TV really only works properly as intended if you allow it to take over your cable box. The problem is that my cable box is not among those that LG has in their database (I have an Evolution DMS23344UHDS). Now, LG has a web site where you can submit additional cable boxes and they promise to add them, but when you browse the web, you find that people have been complaining about the non-support of this particular cable box with LG as far back as 2016 and apparently LG still hasn't bothered to add it. --- Second Setup Experience Since my cable box is not supported, and I don't really want LG to know (and report back to Korea) every channel that I watch on my cable and when I watch it, I decided to run this expensive TV as a dumb monitor. So I set it up with a Logitech Harmony instead of the fancy remote that comes with it. Small problem - the Harmony also thinks that the LG should take over my cable, so when I press the "guide" button on the Harmony remote, it brings up the TV's interactive guide rather than the cable company's. That can be fixed by telling the Harmony that you have a "dumb" LG TV rather than a smart one. Apparently, all the important IR codes are the same. --- Verdict After One Week So now I have a very expensive dumb monitor, but with good speakers and great picture. If it weren't such a hassle, I would probably still return this to Amazon. I will certainly not buy another LG TV ever. The user interface is stupid, the privacy implications are horrendous, and the TV has surprisingly many quirks. Among them: - no physical controls: there is no way of turning the TV off other than by remote. That is just stupid - no headphone jack: this TV has only optical out, not even a regular line out jack, and switching between sound options is complicated and requires the fancy unusable remote - no component input --- Summary Good screen, good sound, disappointing everything else. I will not ever buy another LG TV --- update after 2 months Update: it gets worse. Now LG has started sending me spam emails to the email address that they previously forced me to give to them to create an "LG account". These emails of the sort of "Register to discover all your product can do" are just stupid and will lust alienate customers further. I am not using the "smart" features of my LG TV, I am using it as a dumb monitor now. But every time that LG sends me spam email, I am even less likely to ever buy another LG device and even more likely to tell all my friends how bad LG is.