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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Destroy the tvs with a sledgehammer, boom. No more Bluetooth.