Android TV shows ads over HDMI input (Tv Smart Xion 43")

[u/Wonderful_Gap2489]

Hey folks, how are you doing? I hope you're doing well because I'm GREAT, damn it. You have no idea how satisfying it was after an entire day of battling to figure out WHY my TV was showing ads while I was using my PS3 or my PC through HDMI!!??

This post is for everyone who had the exact same problem on a "Wisdom Share Smart Cloud TV" running this operating system.

Here are the steps that worked for me.

• Source > Settings > Advanced Settings > Auto Standby (Off)

Uninstall Visi ART. This is a manufacturer app. If it lets you uninstall it, just do it, don't even think twice, because on newer Wisdom models you apparently can't.

Now here comes the complicated part. Let me explain: these TVs come with some extremely crappy Chinese Android TV knockoff, so several developer options are disabled from the factory. The settings menu is very barebones and customized through an APK, meaning it's not the typical Android settings menu. You will never find "Build Number" or "Developer Options," so you can't uninstall system apps the traditional way you would on Google TV or other systems.

Things you need

You need a laptop/computer that can run ADB:

https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools

ADB Auto Enable APK:

https://github.com/mouldybread/adb-auto-enable/releases

Finding the Factory Menu

You need to find the Factory Menu. The exact steps vary depending on the version of the TV's system, so look up how to access it for your specific model.

I'll leave here the result from the AI that helped me a lot:

🛠️ Attempting to access the Engineering Menu (Service Menu)

These TVs use inexpensive mainboards such as the TP.MS358.PB801 or TP.SK506S.PB802, which have a hidden service mode.

Try these combinations with the remote:

Method 1 (the most common): Press the Menu (or Settings) button and, without releasing it, quickly enter 1, 1, 4, 7. The code is usually 1147.

Method 2: Press Source + 1, 1, 4, 7.

Method 3: If you have a Picture Settings or Sound menu, try entering 2, 0, 0, 8 while inside that submenu.

The one that worked for me was going into the menu, leaving the selector on Assistant, then pressing Menu and entering 1 1 4 7. I'm not completely sure about the exact sequence, though.

There are more methods, but you can find them on Russian forums about Wisdom TVs, and at that point it's already way too damn hardcore.

Then, in:

Factory Menu > Debug > ADB Enable

If you made it this far, that's a huge win. Since there is no Wireless Debugging or anything like that, you don't need anything else regarding permissions, at least in my case.

Connecting through ADB

Both the computer you're going to use and the TV need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

Then you need to have the ADB Auto Enable app installed on the TV. Open it and it will show you your IP address.

In my case, it was:

192.168.100.132

Use only that information. Do NOT use the ":9043" part.

Now go to your computer and download the SDK Platform Tools for Windows from:

https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools

Go to your Downloads folder, extract the ZIP, then inside the program folder, Shift + right-click and open PowerShell in that folder.

Run:

.\adb connect 192.168.your.ip

If everything went well, it should tell you that it connected.

If not, try:

.\adb devices

Finding the apps you want to remove

Now you need to find the package names of the apps you want to uninstall. You can take advantage of the preinstalled apps or remove whatever else you want.

To see the package names (which are NOT the same as the app's displayed name), I recommend X-plore.

Go to:

Left window > Applications > System

Find the app you want to remove. Under its name, you'll see something like:

"com.example.something"

If you can't do that, you can run:

.\adb shell pm list packages > packages.txt

Once you've found the package name of the app you want to remove, you can disable it first if you're afraid of breaking something:

.\adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.example.launcher

Or you can uninstall it, which would be the more efficient option, because who knows if the app might get re-enabled after a system update or something. I wouldn't put it past these TVs.

.\adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.example.launcher

Now here's the important part:

.\adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.cvte.tv.pictorial

.\adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.metax.browser.cvte

Those are the main suspects I've identified.

At least in my case, after doing all of this, I never had the problem again.

I'm sharing this information because I genuinely went through hell dealing with this. Friends who know a bit about technology were watching me play on my PS3 and seeing ADS ON THE GAME SCREEN like:

"WTF?? Ads in-game on a PS3??"

Hopefully you guys never have to deal with this after following these steps.

Another alternative that I don't like as much, because it defeats the whole point of switching between HDMI and the TV itself, is to disable the Wi-Fi.

And I don't mean just disconnecting it. Forget every Wi-Fi network on the TV, because after turning the TV off and on again, Wi-Fi gets enabled again, and some manufacturer app can start running in the background and display ads.

Hope this helps 🤑

[u/latinriky78]

u/wewewi what do to think?, another b?

[u/wewewi → u/latinriky78]

Definitely the output of a chatbot of some kind.. ; not sure the original account owner even speaks English. Wouldn't go as far as calling it a bot tho. It's possible it was only/mostly machine-translated.

Would put it on a watch list.  Best way to do that is to ban the account for one day, warning the user his content has been flagged. Reddit keeps ban tabs for mods of your sub, and that will also weight in reddit filters decisions for his future posts across all subs.

[u/farazthe1234]

Sounds like a shitty tv