[HN Gopher] OpenLGTV: Legal reverse engineering and research of ...
___________________________________________________________________
OpenLGTV: Legal reverse engineering and research of LG TVs firmware
Author : transpute
Score : 543 points
Date : 2021-11-25 06:09 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openlgtv.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (openlgtv.github.io)
| pabs3 wrote:
| I hope the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuit against Visio
| results in an open source distribution for TVs like there is
| OpenWRT for routers after their last lawsuit. Perhaps the
| OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will join forces on a
| common distro for smart TVs.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liber...
| https://www.samygo.tv/
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Perhaps the OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will
| join forces on a common distro for smart TVs.
|
| What's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it to
| some extent with proprietary software, but there's
| documentation, a lot of open-source stuff, and overall it
| _doesn 't look too bad._
|
| [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-
| on...
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Not parent, but I think I can respond. There is really
| nothing wrong with WebOS ( I actually find very good for my
| needs ), but the focus is not on having one decent OS we can
| mess around with as needed. The focus is on ensuring that
| users have actual control over their smart TVs.
|
| And this is where it gets fun. There is money to be made from
| harvesting data. Do you think companies will willingly give
| up the ability to keep 'users' in their grasp?
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > users have actual control over their smart TVs
|
| I would add to that _future updates_ , etc as well. LG
| stops bringing in major WebOS versions for older models, so
| you miss out on features and apps that would have no
| problems running on the hardware.
| Angostura wrote:
| I'm still getting updates on my (7 year old, plus?) LG
| model I think? Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the TV.
| mijamo wrote:
| You are getting security updates but not OS updates. OS
| updates actually stop after 1 or 2 years on LG TV. So if
| you look at the HBO max app for instance is for 2018+
| models (web os 4 and more). I have a TV from 2017 with
| web OS 3 and I can't get the HBO max app.
| toyg wrote:
| Apps are not necessarily developed by LG, but by specific
| developers. The BBC for example stopped updating their
| app for a while, saying the device would not be supported
| going forward; they must have received a bunch of
| complaints though, because a couple of months later it
| was back to normal.
| anders_p wrote:
| > Apps are not necessarily developed by LG, but by
| specific developers.
|
| Nobody here's saying anything like that, though. Not sure
| how you got that idea?
|
| But if the OS on your TV isn't being updated by LG any
| longer, then you won't be able install the newest
| versions of many apps, since they use SDK-features, that
| aren't supported by the older versions of the OS.
|
| Whether an app is actually developed by a third-party,
| like the BBC or HBO, doesn't change the fact that
| "minimum supported OS version", is as crippling for a TV,
| as it is for a smartphone or tablet.
|
| Last time I had to buy a new smartphone, even though the
| old one was still in excellent working condition, was
| because my bank and mobile payment apps, stopped
| supporting the Android OS version, it were stuck at.
|
| I'd hate to also have to buy new TV's, just because the
| Netflix, HBO, or whatever apps I use, stop working.
| drewg123 wrote:
| In that case, you'd just buy a streaming stick or settop
| box, like a FireTv, AppleTV, Roku, or AndroidTV box..
| These are a small-ish percent of the cost of a new TV.
| toyg wrote:
| From the parent post: _> So if you look at the HBO max
| app for instance is for 2018+ models_
|
| AFAIK nothing stops HBO from supporting older webOS
| releases, they just can't be arsed to. They could
| maintain builds produced with the older SDK forever, if
| they wanted to. Old models won't get new features, but
| there is no reason the app should stop working - like it
| works on the Apple Appstore every day to millions of
| apps.
| _joel wrote:
| I had to manually install iPlayer after it disappeared
| from my Sony. This week it seems to have been updated, so
| yes, I think they must have a had a fair few compaints.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| That might be down to a mix of both the service (HBO Max,
| in this case) and the OS distributor (LG). As a personal
| anecdote, I remember when the YouTube app ceased to work
| on old Sony Bravia TV's. YouTube printed a message to the
| screen explaining how the service would be cut soon.
| Angostura wrote:
| I'm confused. You seem to be conflating TV OS updates
| (which I'm stull getting) with third party App updates,
| which I'm definitely still getting.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I for one would like to connect my webcam to my TV and be
| able to use it to chat with Zoom / Signal / WebEx / Jitsi /
| Teams / Hangouts / ...
| mindslight wrote:
| > _What 's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it
| to some extent with proprietary software_
|
| You just answered your own question. Besides the Freedom
| issues and unwieldy bespoke UIs, embedded proprietary
| software inevitably becomes abandonware in a few short years.
| ptsneves wrote:
| No updates, specially to the browser. That means an old
| version of chrome that most sites refuse to run with. It is
| just useless.
| bogwog wrote:
| LG TVs are filled with ads on the operating system itself,
| there are built-in features which you can't use without
| agreeing to an invasive privacy policy, the general
| performance is dogshit after a few years of updates, and
| there are dark patterns.
|
| For example, I have one Fire TV (and nothing else) connected
| to the HDMI port of mine. Whenever I turn on the TV, it
| correctly shows the HDMI input, but it _always_ displays the
| WebOS app launcher for a couple of seconds, which covers a
| quarter of the screen. I know the difference between
| launching the Netflix app in WebOS and launching it through
| Fire TV, but I 'm pretty sure the average non-techie doesn't.
|
| WebOS itself is pretty good, especially considering it's open
| source. But I would neither trust LG to provide a safe or
| decent implementation, nor would I want to rely on the
| performance of whatever low budget SoC they're sticking into
| these TVs. An external Roku-like device would be the best
| option.
| ziml77 wrote:
| WebOS has actually been more reliable than my Nvidia
| Shield. The Shield weirdly gets slow over time until I
| reboot even if I haven't really done anything on it. The
| Hulu app on these has also been broken for years: the first
| couple minutes after it starts playing a show will just
| show black while the audio plays. I don't know if that's a
| Hulu, Google, or NVIDIA issue, but what I do know is that I
| don't have any issues if I use the WebOS app.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > An external Roku-like device would be the best option.
|
| Does something like this exist? A webOS box, so to speak? I
| would be very interested if so. It would be nice to hear of
| webOS outside of the context of TV's.
|
| > WebOS itself is pretty good, especially considering it's
| open source. But I would neither trust LG to provide a safe
| or decent implementation
|
| Me neither. It would be nice to have something I can trust
| is fully open-source. Would also be nice to use webOS like
| Kodi, though that is a truly crazy idea.
| bogwog wrote:
| The only time I've seen WebOS not in a TV was the HP
| Touchpad that was released a long time ago. It was a
| WebOS based tablet and was pretty nice, but it failed
| miserably, and most people ended up installing Android on
| it.
| eropple wrote:
| LG TVs, at least as of my C7, have a menu setting to both
| hide the ads and to not show the home bar on startup.
| corysama wrote:
| C9 here. I never see any ads. Might be because I dug
| through every menu looking for things to opt-out of. I
| can't use the voice control because I opted out of that.
| But, otherwise the WebOS experience is great.
|
| Only complaint is that I can't figure out how to disable
| "resume playing paused movie when the controller feels
| someone walking across the room".
| retSava wrote:
| I made https://github.com/msloth/lgtv.js which can control a
| webos LGTV on your local network. It was in my js beginnings so
| pretty sketchy and not at all clean. Once I was able to control
| it I kind of lost interest in making it more tweakable, cleaner
| interface etc, but there are others that did.
|
| At home I now run a small rpi0 with a telegram bot that, among
| other things, acts as a LGTV command proxy. So on my phone, I now
| tell my telegram bot eg "movie" which then puts the tv on the
| right input, sets volume, dims some hue lights and shows a nice
| float on the TV with a welcoming message.
|
| It's also useful when I can't find the physical remote, or to
| send messages like "dinner in 10" (that shows on the TV screen in
| a float) to a gaming child with selective hearing enabled :).
| asdfghjkl643 wrote:
| nice
| asdfghjkl643 wrote:
| yeah
| ciberado wrote:
| I used your library! When I asked Alexa to light the fireplace,
| a raspi turned on the home heater and the TV started playing
| the furnace video on Netflix :D My daughter told me she didn't
| understand the point, as it was not real, but the project was
| so much fun to implement ^_^ Thanks a lot for sharing it.
| mjoin wrote:
| That way of communicating with your child is some black mirror
| shit
| Netcob wrote:
| I think that's basically just a notification. Where it gets
| creepy is when parents install 24/7 surveillance cameras in
| their childrens bedrooms.
|
| I can kinda understand it when it's about being able to
| quickly check if your baby is okay, but I doubt every parent
| has the decency to disable it eventually to give their child
| some privacy.
|
| There's no way there aren't lots of children growing up with
| zero privacy right now.
| roody15 wrote:
| My wife and I have three children and we don't allow any
| cameras in the house. We believe some level of privacy is
| needed for normal human development and a healthy overall
| sense of well being.
| ezconnect wrote:
| I just turn off the device wifi on the router if my child is
| not paying attention.
| Angostura wrote:
| My daughter wanted a colour changing lightbulb in her
| bedroom, so I bought a Homekit-enabled one. I'll call her for
| dinner a couple of times, but of she still hasn't responded
| after that (headphones on, usually). "Hey Siri Red Alert"
| will start pulsing her light red.
|
| At which point there is much grumbling and stomping. Black
| Mirror? Maybe, but hey, I have to get my enjoyment where I
| can.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What would be full Black Mirror would have that voice
| message sent to the device the headphones are being used so
| that the actual message is heard as well. Maybe with the
| klaxon sound effect preceding the message. Oh, having the
| red light pulse as well still. No need to not use it when
| available. Maybe even combine movie universes and have an
| animated envelope read the message a la Harry Potter.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Black mirror or not, I like this, and can see the enjoyment
| in this too :D
|
| When I was a kid, when I didn't show up within 5 minutes of
| being called for dinner, I wasn't allowed to sit down at
| the table anymore. I then had to wait until everybody else
| was done, and enjoy a usually cold meal afterwards, and any
| dessert was usually gone by that time too. And I had to do
| the cleanup. Suffice it to say, we kids weren't late a lot
| of times.
| xattt wrote:
| And if you wanted to make the ceiling light flash, you
| had to manually and laboriously flick the switch until a
| parent yelled at you that it was bad for light bulbs.
|
| Kids these days!
| rndgermandude wrote:
| yeah. When it was summer and I was like 6 or 7, my
| parents bought me a cheap digital wrist watch with alarm
| function, otherwise I would have never made it back to
| dinner in time when I was outside on the playground,
| biking around with buddies or playing football (soccer).
| That was the most "tech" parenting I ever experienced
| while subject to said parenting :P
|
| I later learned from mom that other parents too kinda
| relied on that thing going off, so their own kids would
| go home too when they heard my alarm.
| jes wrote:
| I have a color scheme in my Hue setup called "Rig for Red."
| I like being able to say "Alexa, turn on Rig for Red in
| Living Room." :-)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Rename Alexa to Vasiliy so you could then ask it for one
| ping only.
| mig39 wrote:
| I routinely SSH to my kid's iMac and use the 'say' command to
| deliver important messages. Like "this computer will be
| rebooting in 30 seconds ..."
| midasuni wrote:
| Self destruct. Then play the mission impossible music.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Nah. We have Nest Mini's in our kids rooms, and I will
| routinely cast my phone audio to those speakers, turn the
| volume to max, type my message into the Google Translate
| webpage and then press the "Read Aloud" button. It's funny
| and it works.
| mkl wrote:
| Why? It's just an instant message.
| tekstar wrote:
| If you ever want a kid to listen to you, try airplaying to
| the Apple TV from your phone, turn on selfie camera and
| deliver the message
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If you prefer shouting up the stairs through multiple doors
| over whatever it is they're doing, that's your prerogative of
| course.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Anyone remember home intercoms? They seemed to be
| incredibly popular in new home construction for awhile in
| the late 80s and early 90s where I live. They were very
| useful. They seemed to disappear without really being
| replaced by anything.
|
| I'm considering getting a bunch of HomePod Minis to try out
| the intercom function.
| _joel wrote:
| Back when mobiles had become more accessible. My friend
| would phone his sister downstairs to get us some snack
| and drinks. She wasn't impressed, to say the least
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I don't see why. Can you elaborate? Black Mirror explicitly
| explores paths of technology gone wrong? I might be missing
| the concern here.
|
| For the record; I think its cool. I do like my LG ( but it is
| not connected to anything ). This is the first time ever I am
| actually tempted.
| nkrisc wrote:
| But sending someone a text message on the phone isn't?
| sneak wrote:
| Note that telegram is not e2e encrypted, so you're sharing your
| private family communications with logging servers in russia.
| orangepurple wrote:
| USA: PRISM is probably still a very active project. This is
| the program where the NSA would request access to major US
| companies (notably Google and Microsoft) and the companies
| would grant them access to some of their databases. The NSA
| slide says that "it varies by provider" what information the
| NSA is privy to, but it never breaks it down fully to say
| exactly which provider is providing which data. The NSA
| slides do mention email contents, photos, etc., so it's
| probably safe to assume that at least some of the major
| providers are/were providing contents and not just metadata.
| kyrra wrote:
| Googler, opinions are my own. I wasn't at Google when PRISM
| was discovered.
|
| As far as I understand, your take on this is incorrect. At
| least for Google, people that worked there were pissed,
| some posting nasty posts about the NSA hacking their
| network. My understanding was, that the NSA tapped the
| lines between data centers.
|
| The NSA was able to hack Google, because there inter
| datacenter communication was not encrypted, partially
| because it was on private fiber that they fully owned.
| After this project came to light, Google already had a
| project in the works to encrypt all traffic between data
| centers, which they enabled shortly after.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Your description of PRISM is wrong. The FBI issued court
| orders for the content (not metadata) of specific accounts
| to US Internet companies. The Internet companies reviewed
| the court orders and set up forwarding of some of those
| accounts' data. PRISM then ingested a subset of the data
| from the FBI DITU's systems (those collected from foreign
| accounts) into the NSA's databases. The slides Snowden
| released are very clear about this.
| GranPC wrote:
| Telegram is indeed not E2E encrypted, and messages sent
| to/from bots cannot opt into E2E; but would you happen to
| have a citation handy for more information on these logging
| servers in Russia you speak of? Thanks!
| throw10920 wrote:
| "In August 2014, SORM-2 usage was extended to monitoring of
| social networks, chats and forums, requiring their
| operators to install SORM probes in their networks."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM
| nailk wrote:
| Telegram didn't comply that rule and Russia tried to
| block Telegram that time without success
| mistrial9 wrote:
| unlike say, Google Inc
| vmception wrote:
| And? Everyone with a cloud cron job or doing the same thing
| on a compute instance hosted somewhere has the same reality
|
| Telegram is just a nice platform, have you tried using it?
| basically just a standard ui so that none of your bots need
| frontend development
|
| Why regurgitate something about the optional e2e feature
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| It's interesting that FOSS point inexorably towards what people
| want if only the interface was available - and it is clearly not
| what corporate decision makers want.
| sebyx07 wrote:
| free streaming sites + offline tv as monitor + an old thinkpad +
| vpn + Unified Remote app, is my setup. Better than any netflix
| and crapware as a service
| squarefoot wrote:
| The 1st goal of such software should be to neutralize and
| possibly remove all built-in malware/spyware, then disable any
| means that would allow the manufacturers to reinstall it or
| control the device in any way. A so called SmartTV must be able
| to 100% function without any Internet connection, and if having
| one it should benefit from it only in ways that are completely
| under the user control. Right now, there's a lot more junk that
| has to be removed rather than new functions to be added.
| rootsudo wrote:
| The same time, it's a bit sad that people are doing this and
| putting this much effort into a toxic product.
|
| I don't mind the fire stick/tv, and DNS rules but if it gets too
| much I just won't buy a tv and get rid of it.
|
| I get that it's a nice piece of furniture and such, but if it's
| hostile, expensive and after a few years becomes worthless - why
| bother.
|
| I'll fight by not purchasing a tv.
| rxt_ian wrote:
| It's possible that buying the TV and removing the toxisity is
| more effective - you get the subsidised price, but the
| manufacturer never makes the ad money back.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| I so want this for my Samsung TV... since they did a firmware
| update that puts ads into the source selection screen.
|
| And for what? A couple of dollars of side revenue. And whole lot
| of customer hatred.
| imglorp wrote:
| Here's more reasons to hate: it's a serious surveillance
| device.
|
| 1. It uploads voice samples. Don't say anything sensitive in
| the room. https://imgur.com/Phy1uzX
|
| 2.It uploads screenshots regardless of input. See other
| threads.
|
| 3.Front facing camera. Not kidding.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x6TOtkFQxY
|
| 4. Audio beacons? Old news. https://threatpost.com/ultrasonic-
| beacons-are-tracking-your-...
|
| 5. Targeted ad market, selling you.
| https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsungs-invasive-plans-...
|
| 6. If you don't give it wifi, it may decide to find some by
| itself anyway.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTechnology/comments/odf9qu/can_s...
| oehpr wrote:
| What's going on with number 3?
|
| Obviously there's a front facing camera, they're not hiding
| it. It's even a GOOD webcam, to disable it you push it into
| the bezel and that physically blocks the camera. Great
| design.
|
| Beyond that, the criticisms are just "This is a proprietary
| OS by a company that makes hardware, it's not trustworthy."
| So why the focus on the camera? It's almost like you're
| trying to imply that Samsung is integrating hidden cameras
| just to covertly surveil their customers.
| phire wrote:
| Most of the examples you link don't prove what you claim.
|
| 1. Same issues as any voice assistant. It only uploads things
| when voice recognition is actually active, and puts a big
| icon on the screen to show this.
|
| 2. Not screenshots, it uses fingerprints to recognise
| content.
|
| 3. That TV is an older special model advertised with built-in
| camera for skype. The linked video raises a minor security
| issue that web pages you navigate to (on your smart TV, how
| many people actually do that?) can enable the webcam without
| you knowing.
|
| Most TVs don't have a hidden front facing camera.
|
| 4. Audio beacons are hard-coded into the tv content, your
| smart TV doesn't add them. It's more of a privacy issue with
| smart phone apps using them, and the studios who add them.
|
| 5. Actually true
|
| 6. You link to a thread of someone asking if TVs might do
| this. Nobody has provided any evidence of TVs actually doing
| it, it's 100% theoretical.
|
| IMO, the fingerprinting and advertising are bad enough. No
| need to invent extra FUD about what smart tvs can do.
| kall wrote:
| This is all horrific, but I was especially shocked by 6 so I
| read that. This seems to be only someone asking if this may
| happen, and no one answering that it would.
|
| Of course this is the point of Amazon Sidewalk, so in due
| time, it probably will.
| imglorp wrote:
| Okay, I found a better link. Here's a sighting in action: h
| ttps://web.archive.org/web/20210830002600/https://forum.dev
| ...
|
| Also two other observations. First, there is means:
| unsecured and public groups like xfinity, sidewalk, fios
| via some business deal maybe. Also in the means column is a
| full linux machine, totally possible (not saying it's
| happening but possible) to run Kismet all day in the
| background to look for auth. There's all kinds of pocket
| doodads at Defcon doing this. Second is motive: your data
| as revenue is the these things are getting so cheap. Why
| would they leave free cash on the table?
| snvzz wrote:
| I would expect a friendly nearby neighbor's TV which has
| network to be able to act as access point for other TVs
| surveillance facilities.
|
| They can technically do it, and I totally expect them to be
| doing it already.
| lvass wrote:
| The cheapest TV models mention access point as a feature
| nowadays, they're targeted to hotel rooms.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Neighbor's TV, neighbor's Amazon Echo or Ring doorbell:
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-amazon-
| sidewalk
| grishka wrote:
| Audio beacons aren't plausible to me as a mobile app
| developer. Mobile OSes have been tightening their privacy
| controls for quite some time. At this point you can't run an
| Android app in the background without the user knowing. You
| have to explicitly request access to the microphone. In
| recent Android and iOS versions, the user will be notified
| about which apps used the microphone when. Besides,
| constantly recording and analyzing an audio stream would have
| a noticeable effect on battery life.
| genewitch wrote:
| SoniControl firewall on android will either confirm or
| disabuse your conception of how common this sort of thing
| is.
|
| with no media playing it never shows anything, but bring up
| some youtube or television and it squawks every so often.
| imglorp wrote:
| How about apps that already have permission, like Shazam,
| Siri, and GA?
|
| As for battery, they would only need to sample a second
| every few minutes, to see if there was a beacon afoot,
| quick DFFT, and they wouldn't need to analyze much.
|
| Not saying it's happening, just that it's easily possible.
| Look how many apps have location permissions that don't
| need it.
| 3guk wrote:
| Disable Samsung TV Plus - https://factory-
| reset.com/wiki/Samsung_TV_Plus - and you'll be most of the way
| there to removing a lot of the intrusive advertising that
| currently shows on the Samsung homescreen.
| superjan wrote:
| I concur. This removed the auto play trailers on my parent's
| TV.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| That crap forced me to finally pi-hole my entire home. I'm
| never buying a Samsung TV ever again, or other Samsung stuff.
|
| My dryer broke yesterday. I specifically bought an AEG because
| it was a dumb dryer, not some smart appliance with an app and
| all that junk. Don't get me wrong, I love smart stuff. In fact,
| I plugged my new dryer into a Shelly S plug so my home
| assistant can send me a notification on my phone when it's
| finished. But I trust my HA. I can never trust Samsung again.
|
| Pi-hole your network for a week and take a look at the logs to
| see all the crap it has blocked. You'll be surprised.
| IanSanders wrote:
| Pi-hole does not solve the problem completely unfortunately;
| it's fairly trivial to bypass network DNS. In theory any
| software could manually call one of the public DNS ip's or
| just have a fallback hardcoded list of IPs.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Nothing solves the problem completely. Redirecting DNS at
| the router to a blocking DNS server goes a long way, but
| DNS over HTTPS is a tougher nut to crack.
| koprulusector wrote:
| I block all dns outbound on my home network. My resolver
| uses DNS over https to Cloudflare. I consider any DNS / udp
| 53 traffic outbound unauthorized or a leak that should be
| prevented. If I see a beacon to a particular DNS server
| externally, I'll create a NAT to point to my resolver so I
| can manipulate the answers, if I deem it necessary.
| genewitch wrote:
| That solves the first issue, what about the hardcoded IPs
| issue?
| lordnacho wrote:
| I added PiHole on a RBP and it turns out up to half the
| rejected requests come from my various Samsung TVs. It's
| staggering how much traffic comes out of them. And that's in
| a home with two work from home adults in laptops all day.
|
| What are other people's experiences with other brands of TV?
| genewitch wrote:
| TCL ran through my mobile hotspot data allowance (150MB)
| while _off_ ; i enabled the hotspot so it could get and
| update (the UI was jank out of the box). I use my hotspot
| with my console, i was using my projector in another room
| with the console and i got the alert about hotspot data.
|
| I changed the hotspot password and now the TCL blinks its
| status light while it's turned on, to chastise me for
| disabling its internet.
|
| There needs to be some regulation on this - because a
| boycott will never work, people don't think about boycotts
| or this sort of thing when they "need a TV today"; they
| either are shopping for a specific feature or going on
| price per square inch of screen or cheapest overall. These
| TVs blowing through 100MB/hr of internet data even while
| 'off' has to potential to lock people out of their internet
| connections, or get a large bill for overages. I only have
| 15GB of hotspot data, and i "need" that for the console, my
| fixed wireless home internet only has 150GB of data
| included in the plan, and even if i 'cheat' and use pdanet
| or something to use my cellphone without the hotspot data
| in the plan i only have 75GB of data there, as well.
|
| So, in summary, smart TVs need to be regulated. And I
| really need to sniff that traffic while it's off because
| what could it possibly be doing? how much storage is on
| these things?
| crtasm wrote:
| Note that some devices just keep retrying after a failed
| (blocked) connection, leading to massively inflated numbers
| in pihole.
| fossuser wrote:
| When I researched them a while back I came away with LG
| OLEDs being the best, particularly if you paired them with
| an Apple TV.
|
| There are no good high-end "dumb" tv options.
| null_object wrote:
| > There are no good high-end "dumb" tv options.
|
| Loewe[0] make really nice, simple, high-end TVs with
| great picture and sound, which really don't have
| intrusive 'smart' features. I use mine purely as a
| 'monitor' for AppleTV (and Nintendo Switch).
|
| The problem is distribution: they're difficult to source
| even within Europe.
|
| [0]https://www.loewe.tv/int
| KineticLensman wrote:
| (UK here) I have had a Loewe for about two years now. I
| hadn't heard of them myself but came across them when
| buying a Linn [0] audio system - the audio shop I went to
| offered Loewe as one of the options for an integrated
| sound+vision package. My overall system uses Linn as the
| sound output for the TV instead of a Loewe sound bar.
|
| The TV is fairly excellent and the hosted apps are fine
| and not in your face - the TV comes on directly showing
| its current input (e.g. in my case from a BT smart box)
| rather than apps or a start screen or similar. I can also
| immediately cast media to it by a right click from my PC.
|
| I initially had problems with the overall system
| integration: I have poor wifi coverage in my house and
| the TV (Loewe) and sound systems (Linn) wouldn't always
| work reliably together until I had ethernet wired into my
| house. Also, and this is not a big problem for me, an
| Alexa can recognise the Loeve as a device but appears
| unable to use it for sound output. In the bin for you,
| Alexa.
|
| [0] https://www.linn.co.uk/uk/
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| My problem is, that I essentially want a dumb TV, but
| with gaming features, I guess the mix of my requirements
| is what makes it impossible. If someone knows a dumb,
| 120hz, GSync and OLED TV, let me know :)
| netr0ute wrote:
| There are a couple OLED computer monitors that are just
| TVs with the TV parts removed and the monitor parts
| thrown in. For example, the Gigabyte FO48U.
| gnud wrote:
| I recently bought a simple TV from SwedX [0]. Pretty
| happy with it so far. Seems to be simple enough. No
| "apps", no network connectivity, simple remote and simple
| menus. Quite quick to turn on.
|
| I didn't go for an extremely high-end display, but I
| wouldn't have done that anyway. They seem to be out of
| stock of a lot of their "4K" models, but they are priced
| at 600-1000EUR.
|
| Ships from Sweden, so should be possible for a lot of
| Europe.
|
| 0: https://www.swedx.se/
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am glad we are moving in that direction ( as in, there
| are options for people, who are ok with paying more for
| not intrusive versions ). Sadly, no US option.
| null_object wrote:
| For some reason I'm unable to reply to _maccard_ -
| apologies for this misplaced response
|
| > I had never heard of loewe, but after 10 minutes of
| searching, I still know nothing more about them - there
| is no pricing available, no idea where to buy them and no
| list of models. The one model I could find I also can't
| find tech specs for because the download link is broken.
|
| Loewe are indeed wonderful TVs totally letdown by their
| marketing and distribution.
|
| FWIW their website (which I linked to above) does have
| model and spec information, but it's fair to say that
| they've fallen off the radar for most consumer-TV review
| sites, and even their user-base forum[0] is predominantly
| German-language (although any questions asked in English
| _do_ receive a response).
|
| I think the problem is that the TV-market is saturated by
| the major brands, and they achieve market-dominance by
| stealing and selling their users' data, instead of
| pricing their TVs realistically. Most people don't care.
|
| [0] https://www.loewe-friends.de
| maccard wrote:
| I had never heard of loewe, but after 10 minutes of
| searching, I still know nothing more about them - there
| is no pricing available, no idea where to buy them and no
| list of models. The one model I could find I also can't
| find tech specs for because the download link is broken.
| [deleted]
| alfrede81 wrote:
| Loewe was an old traditionell German Manufacture of Radio
| and later TVs. Here is the german Wikipediasite
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loewe_Technology
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Most TV makers have versions for commercial display
| purposes that don't include the "smart" stuff. Typically
| cheaper too.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah I looked at those when I learned of them. They often
| come with serious quality (and price) trade offs if
| you're able to source them at all.
|
| If you're looking for a generic LCD it's probably fine,
| but if you're comparing to an LG OLED you won't find an
| ad free option in the commercial market. At least I
| couldn't back when I tried.
|
| Giving the TV no network access and using an Apple TV
| seemed to be the best option.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Give network access, but blackhole all the traffic
| nottorp wrote:
| Some pointers to model numbers / where those can be
| bought would be helpful, thanks!
| bo1024 wrote:
| Projectors - great.
|
| Scepter brand tv - Walmart -not greatest quality, but at
| least it's dumb.
| genewitch wrote:
| did you mean Spectre? are they a walmart brand _now_?
| They were one of the first producers of retail LCD
| screens that consumers in the US could buy. I had two of
| them, and they were quite good compared to other
| offerings back then. This is the same era as 802.11b
| dongles. I even had one in my SUV to replace a 14 " CRT
| that finally had enough of driving on california freeway
| overpasses, large amounts of magnetism would wobble the
| entire display on the crt.
|
| I recently bought a 1080p spectre for my youngest kid,
| wall mounted it, put an indoor antenna on it and a
| raspberry Pi running openElec with a wifi dongle.
|
| as far as i can tell, it's a "dumb" tv.
| melbourne_mat wrote:
| You have a clothes dryer?
| genewitch wrote:
| I've had Samsung on "boycott and complain" list, anytime
| someone asks me for a recommendation and samsung is an option
| i say "avoid samsung"; I started boycotting them after they
| told me to pound sand when i had an issue with my $800 4k
| monitor a couple months after i bought it. I had also bought
| a new samsung refrigerator around that time as well, and
| among other issues, it leaked water from the ice machine
| starting about 1 year after i bought it. I've had to replace
| the mainboard in it, as well.
|
| So no phones, appliances, laptops, TVs, memory sticks, SD
| cards, and whatever else they make. Even if they magically
| got a better reputation for customer service, the shenanigans
| with the smart TVs is enough to keep the boycott up.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| "I'm never buying a Samsung TV ever again, or other Samsung
| stuff."
|
| I swore off buying Samsung stuff after the Galaxy S3. I
| eventually gave them another chance and bought one of their
| TVs since the reviews were great. Huge mistake. I hated that
| thing so much, and recently replaced it with an LG which has
| been fantastic.
| freen wrote:
| Same. Spent an ungodly amount on the Samsung "frame". After
| two RMAs because it randomly rebooted, the interface froze,
| etc. I'm looking for another tv that we can pretend is art
| when it is "off".
| marceldegraaf wrote:
| Pro-tip: use a DNS provider that can block ads (e.g. NextDNS)
| or install Pi-Hole in your local network, and block Samsung's
| ad network domains.
|
| It's sad that this is necessary to keep enjoying a device of
| $2,000+ that you own, but it has worked beautifully for my
| Samsung Frame TV.
| josteink wrote:
| Samsung does this for their top end models? WTF!
|
| I'll put them on my list of devices to never buy then. Jeez.
| patrickk wrote:
| Samsung boasts about having Automatic Content
| Recognition[1] on their website.
|
| There was a discussion on HN some time ago, many/all major
| tv manufacturers suck in your viewing data via HDMI
| fingerprinting (IIRC) in order to serve up unblockable ads
| and sell your viewing profile to ad networks. Many tv
| makers send data to Chinese based servers too, from memory.
| It's nuts.
|
| [1]https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources
| /tv-...
|
| Edit, more reading:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-
| wat...
| ornornor wrote:
| They do a lot more than that. In particular, they take a
| screenshot of what you're currently watching at regular
| intervals and send it to a content recognition server. That
| way they're able to tell what every single Samsung owner is
| watching at any given time and even if you're watching a
| show you downloaded or something that's not on the air.
| They then sell this data to broadcasters for measuring
| audience but also to show you ads related to what you're
| watching (if you watched ice age, maybe they'll advertise
| another animation movie to you). And they also use that
| data to target you on other devices you own because they're
| able to use your tv as a Trojan horse and figure out what
| other devices are on your network and thus belong to the
| same person. IIRC they also scan and extract what devices
| are connected to hdmi ports so they know what consoles etc
| you're using to further complete your advertising profile.
| That was several years ago, I can't imagine they've gotten
| anything but even more data greedy over time.
|
| A good Samsung tv is an offline Samsung tv. A better
| Samsung tv is one you don't own.
| amelius wrote:
| > That way they're able to tell what every single Samsung
| owner is watching at any given time and even if you're
| watching a show you downloaded or something that's not on
| the air.
|
| Wait a second, what if I use my TV as a monitor for my
| PC?
| ornornor wrote:
| If you're watching tv shows or movies that way, they know
| all the same. ACR works based on the image being
| displayed, not the source.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Well then they know you're using Excel and probably want
| to be sold pension plans...
| genewitch wrote:
| it's not a screenshot, they sample pixels and get
| essentially a CSV of the pixel values at several
| locations. There's then a content database with frame by
| frame values for those pixels for all the content in the
| database.
|
| Sending a screenshot would use too much bandwidth/data on
| Samsung's side, but a couple dozen bytes every few
| minutes would not.
| albert_e wrote:
| ...And doing all kinds of business confidential work for
| my employer or government ... and also looking at
| PII,financial,medical data of my own including SSNs and
| whatnot.
|
| !!!
| amelius wrote:
| Or video chatting with gf ...
| fnord123 wrote:
| This is gonna be some hefty GDPR fines in Europe.
| null_object wrote:
| > This is gonna be some hefty GDPR fines in Europe.
|
| I keep hoping this is gonna be the case, but the years
| roll on, I'm still clicking some stupid consent-popup on
| _every single website I ever visit_ , and in the meantime
| TV manufacturers continuously spy on their users, sell
| their user-data, and push unwanted ads into their
| interface and even in programs being watched, and
| apparently no-one (apart from a few of us on HN) seems to
| care.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| For what it's worth, at least on my Swedish model, this
| seems to be gated behind an opt-in (default off!) consent
| toggle. It was buried in several layers of menus, and not
| even mentioned during the setup process.
|
| So I would assume that this is mostly an issue in non-
| GDPR regions (or they're doing some really ugly legal
| shenanigans to ignore the denied consent?).
| fnord123 wrote:
| "We have a '''legitimate interest''' in getting your
| personal info, because we want to sell it to third
| parties"
|
| https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-
| concepts/legitimat...
|
| > Legitimate interests is most appropriate as a lawful
| basis where companies use personal data in a way that
| individuals can reasonably expect. If it impacts
| individuals, it can still apply if the controller company
| can justify there is a compelling reason for the impact
| the processing will have.
|
| > Companies can rely on legitimate interests for
| marketing purposes if they can prove that the data usage
| is proportionate and fair to the user. It must have a
| minimal impact on the user in privacy terms and be for a
| reason that people would not be surprised at.
|
| Sadly I would reasonably expect Samsung to sell the data
| and I would not be surprised by it.
| [deleted]
| iicc wrote:
| Support https://noyb.eu ?
|
| https://noyb.eu/en/our-detailed-concept
|
| >noyb uses best practices from consumer rights groups,
| privacy activists, hackers, and legal tech initiatives
| and merges them into a stable European enforcement
| platform. Together with the many enforcement
| possibilities under the European data protection
| regulation (GDPR), noyb is able to submit privacy cases
| in a much more effective way than before. Additionally,
| noyb follows the idea of targeted and strategic
| litigation in order to strengthen your right to privacy.
| We will also make use of PR and media initiatives to
| emphasize and ensure your right to privacy without having
| to go before court. Ultimately, noyb is designed to join
| forces with existing organizations, resources and
| structures to maximize the impact of GDPR, while avoiding
| parallel structures.
| shawn-butler wrote:
| Because people keep buying them and no viable competitive
| manufacturing capability exists in the West anymore.
|
| Soon it will violate the warranty not to plug it into the
| network. Probably for "security" or to protect the
| children.
| krageon wrote:
| It depends. For that to be on the radar, in most
| countries you have to contact Samsung and come to a
| solution with them (or try to) first. Then you have to
| argue with them about whether or not their anonymisation
| (which they will surely claim to do) is sufficient. Then
| when you forward the request to the gdpr institution of
| your country, you must make reasonable for them why you
| feel that your request for them to fix it has not been
| honoured.
|
| Naturally this is a process most people do not feel like
| going through, and as such most companies continue flying
| under the radar :)
| charcircuit wrote:
| Wouldn't that only be a problem if they stored personal
| data? They could just associate it with a TV id.
| fnord123 wrote:
| https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-
| concepts/personal-...
|
| > Data ceases to be personal when it is made anonymous,
| and an individual is no longer identifiable. But for data
| to be truly anonymized, the anonymization must be
| irreversible.
|
| Examples of PII:
|
| A cookie ID. Internet Protocol (IP) address Location data
| (for example, the location data from a mobile phone). The
| advertising identifier of your phone.
|
| A tvid is personally identifiable.
| charcircuit wrote:
| No, a TVID identifies a TV, not a person. Multiple people
| can use a TV. You can sell that TV to others. The TVID
| will be the same.
| fnord123 wrote:
| This is the official EU legislation explaining what
| constitutes PII:
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
|
| > (30) Natural persons may be associated with *online
| identifiers provided by their devices*, applications,
| tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses,
| cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio
| frequency identification tags. This may leave traces
| which, in particular when combined with unique
| identifiers and other information received by the
| servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural
| persons and identify them.
|
| Device Identifiers explicitly covered as a definition of
| GDPR. Further, IPs are also shared if you are behind an
| ipv4 gateway and these are also covered.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The difference is that the TV manufacturer has to clue
| who owns a specific tvid. The whole point of personable
| identifiable information is that you can use it to find
| the identity of someone. There is no registry somewhere
| that keeps track of this.
| dTal wrote:
| What? The content of your screen _is_ personal data.
| There could be anything on that - name, address,
| passwords, photos of your living room, nudes...
| charcircuit wrote:
| They are just feeding image through an alogrithm. Saving
| it would incur legal problems like copyright and have
| storage costs.
|
| Most people don't use their TV to look at that kind of
| thing anyways.
| dTal wrote:
| Why are you making excuses for them? They're bad excuses
| anyway:
|
| >They are just feeding image through an alogrithm [sic]
|
| You don't know that.
|
| >Saving it would incur legal problems like copyright
|
| That's not how copyright works.
|
| >and have storage costs
|
| Negligible.
|
| >Most people don't use their TV to look at that kind of
| thing anyways.
|
| Irrelevant.
| yardstick wrote:
| What about when they are hacked/compromised and now an
| attacker has access to the actual images? Seems way too
| risky.
| charcircuit wrote:
| If we are talking about what aboutisms what about if they
| didn't send screenshots and then they were hacked and an
| attacker deployed a new update that spied on everyone.
| MereInterest wrote:
| That's an entirely different issue, but yes, automatic
| updates are an attack vector. But that's another step
| that would need to be performed by an attacker, rather
| than already having the images available without
| designing custom firmware.
| charcircuit wrote:
| My point is that making up theoretical situations is not
| useful. You can make up theoretical situations where it's
| bad with it and I can make up theoretical situations
| where it's bad without it.
| yardstick wrote:
| Also true, which is why they shouldn't be allowed to join
| any old wifi network and not try to workaround firewall
| policies on the network the user wants them on.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| IIRC it doesn't actually send the content, just a hash of
| it that can be checked against popular channels or on-
| demand content. So text contained within a screen
| wouldn't be identifiable.
| sneak wrote:
| Just don't connect your tv to any network, wired or wireless,
| ever. It's much simpler.
| slig wrote:
| It works until every device has a 5G chip on them.
| snvzz wrote:
| Or your neighbor's tv has internet access, and relays
| telemetry for yours.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| then the pi hole won't even save you. we're going to need
| to go full on Faraday cage to escape their prying eyes!
| burnt_toast wrote:
| If it comes to that point I will open my devices and cut
| the antennas
| slig wrote:
| And then you'll ruin your warrant.
| burnt_toast wrote:
| Warranty doesn't mean much to me. I'm an outlier who
| enjoys repairing their own devices. I recently repaired a
| week old laptop that arrived faulty (trackpad was messed
| up) instead of mailing it back.
|
| I'd only cut the antennas in a last case scenario. It's
| more likely they'd have a connector or I'd try to de-
| solder them first.
| [deleted]
| yardstick wrote:
| Or extract the eSIM / figure out a way to use it for free
| internet like some did with Amazon Kindle SIMs.
| LeonM wrote:
| > And for what? A couple of dollars of side revenue. And whole
| lot of customer hatred.
|
| Don't forget that the HN crowd is not your average consumer.
| Most people don't care, or don't seem to have issues with the
| ads. They just want the best TV they can afford in terms of
| size and picture quality.
|
| With companies this big, who have been in the consumer
| electronics market for decades, you can be sure that every
| decision (like putting ads in a menu) is tested over and over.
| Obviously Samsung knows that they will loose a tiny percentage
| of the enthusiast market by placing ads. But the margin on the
| sale of a TV is pretty slim anyways, and multiple years of ad
| income for every sold unit is probably worth losing a small
| fraction of your audience.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > Most people don't care, or don't seem to have issues with
| the ads.
|
| There's a difference between enjoying the current state and
| accepting the current state. A few years ago, while helping
| my grandmother find something online, I asked if she would
| want an adblocker installed. After explaining what it was,
| and what the effect was, she was over the moon for it.
|
| Ads are noticed by everyone, and are pretty universally
| despised. The difference is that you and I know that there
| are options, while less techy relatives assume that nothing
| can be changed.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| So funny story. I have two wifis in our house ( one piholed,
| one not ). One day my wife comes up to me asks me why there
| are ads on her game now ( she was using pihole all this time
| ). Edit: Turns out cable was pulled.
|
| People notice, but you have to re-condition them. I know
| adless hulu and netflix did their part in that fight.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I generally agree, but they put that crap on TVs that cost
| well into the thousands. Surely it's _only_ enthusiasts
| buying those?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > ads into the source selection screen
|
| Is there ever a point where these advertisers stop and think
| "no, this is too obnoxious"?
| reaperducer wrote:
| The advertisers probably don't pick the placement. All they
| know is that their content is being shown on TVs.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I assumed the TV manufacturers are also considered
| advertisers since the TVs show ads.
| illuminated wrote:
| Is there any similar project covering Panasonic smart TV's?
| Hakashiro wrote:
| Can someone explain to me how this is legal?
|
| I understand LG may not want to enforce IP laws, but something
| illegal is illegal regardless of perpetrators being punished or
| not.
|
| And to me this seems quite obviously to be a violation of
| international IP laws. Like I'm all for right to repair and
| whatnot but I don't even think the LG TOS/EULA allows you to do
| this? Correct me if I'm wrong.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| What, more exactly, is illegal? Reverse engineering is not
| illegal (in no jurisdiction that I know of). And neither being
| in violation of a EULA or a TOS.
| Hakashiro wrote:
| If the EULA explicitly states you are not allowed to reverse-
| engineer the product, which is so common I've never seen one
| that doesn't say so (I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm
| saying I haven't see it) then... doing so is a breach of the
| terms and therefore illegal by definition.
| GoToRO wrote:
| Finally I can find out why the tv messes up the channel list by
| moving some channels at random after which any edit of the
| channel list will corrupt it even further...
| michaelyuan2012 wrote:
| High Bed Trailer information. welcome to inquiry, Tel,
| whatsapp:+86-15099927791 DTG Group Trailer
|
| https://www.dreamtruegroup.com/high-bed-trailer/
|
| hope it is helpful for the people who need in logistic transport
| jancsika wrote:
| I just hook my rpi up to the (non-smart) tv and use x2x over ssh
| to open Chromium from whatever device I'm running.
|
| What am I missing that open source version of smart-tv
| firmware/software would get me?
| marcodiego wrote:
| Unfortunately non smart tv's are getting rarer and more
| expensive.
| speeder wrote:
| 1. Non-smart TVs are being hard to find.
|
| 2. most devices to plug into TVs are underpowered for some
| applications, for example I tried to transmit games from my PC
| to such devices, and they all introduced too much artifacting
| and input lag, TVs tend to have a bunch of ASIC/FPGA alongside
| their general processor to handle video and thus can perform
| better.
|
| 3. computers that CAN handle the previous use cases, often are
| very expensive anywya, so... in a sense doesn't make sense
| anymore, for example I looked into this and concluded the
| "cheapeast" option would be a rpi4 with more RAM and SSD... at
| the prices here it made more sense to buy a actual x86 computer
| instead.
| vbphprubyjsgo wrote:
| What use case are you talking about? Plugging a chord from PC
| to TV will only have input lag due to the TV itself. No
| artifacting would be caused from this either. I can't imagine
| what "transmitting a game to such devices as a rasberry pi"
| means.
| speeder wrote:
| You send input from Pi to a PC elsewhere, then on that PC
| the game is running, instead of outputting to screen it
| instead writes to a compressed video stream and sends it
| back to the pi. Same thing for audio.
|
| Then the pi must uncompress the video and audio, convert to
| the format HDMI uses and send to TV.
|
| All that must be done in less than a millisecond, and
| depending on your TV model might require it to be done 120
| or even 240 times per second.
| [deleted]
| Retr0id wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://github.com/webosbrew/webos-homebrew-channel - A GUI app
| for easily installing homebrew applications on LG WebOS TVs
|
| https://repo.webosbrew.org/apps/ - A repo of such homebrew
| applications
|
| https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io - A one-click* LG
| TV rooting tool
|
| *firmware-version dependent, an updated exploit supporting "all"
| firmwares is in the pipeline.
| ig0r0 wrote:
| Many thanks for this. Rooting my LG TV with rootmy.tv took a
| few seconds and now I am enjoying YouTube without ads which
| Pihole was never able block properly.
| kristofferR wrote:
| An alternative universal solution is to just VPN to India and
| then buy Premium for $1.66 USD per month (399 rs per
| quarter).
| drewg123 wrote:
| Do the homebrew apps obey the normal screen saver / burn-in
| protections? Eg, Netflix on the TV, when paused, will put up a
| fireworks screen saver very quickly. Will the homebrew youtube
| app do the same thing?
| Retr0id wrote:
| Yes, the screensaver is part of the OS, not the app.
| anktor wrote:
| Does anyone know of anything equivalent for samsung? I have a
| QE65Q75T model which I feel gets more ads as the weeks go by,
| and I didn't know this type of things were possible
| Jleagle wrote:
| Pihole?
| anktor wrote:
| That's something I'm looking, but I would also be able to
| personalize the UI of the TV, since it has a lot of clutter
| and things I am never going to use. Add to that the fact
| that some apps cannot be uninstalled and a tiny disk size,
| I would really like to "own" my tv more.
| Nursie wrote:
| That's interesting.
|
| To your knowlege does the rooting/installation of this stuff
| break existing streaming apps, or are they not affected?
| Retr0id wrote:
| They are not affected.
| michaelyuan2012 wrote:
| Container Semi Trailer need for transport business. suitable for
| everyone?
|
| welcome to inquiry, Tel, whatsapp:+86-15099927791 DTG Group
| Trailer
|
| https://www.dreamtruegroup.com/container-semi-trailer/
| marcodiego wrote:
| This should not only be legal, this should be the law. A
| manufacturer/vendor should be obliged by law to hand out keys to
| allow the user to own the device that was bought.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes!! I wonder if EFF, FSF actively lobby governments for such
| laws.
| sneak wrote:
| Consumers are already free to choose to buy from manufacturers
| that do this. Consumers largely dgaf.
|
| Additionally, companies like Apple know and believe that if
| consumers could exercise such control, a large number of them
| would be deceived into using such control to backdoor their own
| devices for advertisers and other shady characters, such as is
| the case in Android-land. Consumers often choose products
| specifically because they offer the feature that they are
| completely and totally managed by the vendor.
|
| You may not like it, but many people who don't care much about
| their privacy from the vendor do.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Consumers are already free to choose to buy from
| manufacturers that do this. Consumers largely dgaf.
|
| Can you point me one manufacturer whose is smart tv is simple
| for the user to replace the software it runs?
| hjtkfkfmr wrote:
| The fact that they don't exist should tell you something -
| paying consumers don't care about this.
|
| You sitting on the sideline are not a paying consumer, and
| there are two few like you for such a product.
|
| Remember that all TV started dumb, and SMART TV's were
| always premium products.
| MereInterest wrote:
| In Voltaire's "Candide", there is a character who insists
| that this is the best of all possible worlds. Every hurt
| you have ever felt, every illness and death anyone has
| experienced, everything is exactly as it should be. That
| neither humans nor God could improve upon the world as it
| is, because any change would make things worse somewhere
| else.
|
| As the story shows more and more tragedies, natural
| disasters, wars, and famines, this character needs to
| come up with increasingly convoluted explanations for how
| those can possibly exist in the best of all possible
| worlds. The reader sees just how foolish this idea is.
|
| The efficient market hypothesis to which you are alluding
| is just the same, stating that the market state is the
| best of all possible markets.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Why don't you instead suggest why it doesn't exist
| instead of referring to some random story that is not
| relevant (he's not making up a convoluted excuse).
| MereInterest wrote:
| > instead of referring to some random story that is not
| relevant
|
| Absolutely relevant, by analogy. Pangloss (the character
| from Candide) is presented as a counter-argument to an
| overly optimistic view of the world. Pangloss's overly
| optimistic view dismisses all evidence that this is an
| imperfect world based on a nebulous and unprovable idea
| that the world is already as good as it can be.
| hjtkfkfmr's overly optimistic view dismisses all evidence
| that this is an inefficient market based on a nebulous
| and unprovable idea that the market is already as
| efficient as it can be.
|
| > suggest why it doesn't exist
|
| Sure, here's a list of reasons, any one of which is
| sufficient for hjtkfkfmr's argument to be invalid. Some
| of these are general statements about the efficient
| market hypothesis, and some are arguments about it being
| inappropriately applied to cases outside of an idealized
| stock market.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that all
| information needed to evaluate a product has already been
| disseminated. If somebody is unaware of the extent of
| advertisements that are present in a device, then they
| may make a decision that doesn't represent their actual
| preferences.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that all
| information needed to evaluate a product exists at the
| current time. Since manufacturers and developers can push
| software updates that change or remove features (e.g.
| Youtube being removed from Roku, or the "Install Other
| OS" feature being removed from the PS3), your typical
| customer who cannot foretell the future cannot accurately
| evaluate a product.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis is a statement about
| the market at equilibrium. This doesn't apply to reality,
| which is not at an equilibrium state (e.g. technology
| development, wars, pandemics).
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that there are
| sufficiently many actors in a market to test all possible
| products that could be developed.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that an
| object's worth to an individual can always be assigned a
| monetary value, and those monetary values can be compared
| across individuals. That is, if a poor person is willing
| to spend $10 on a limited resource (e.g. food to
| survive), while a wealthy person is willing to spend
| $1000 on that same resource (e.g. food to waste for their
| amusement), then the "efficient" allocation is to give it
| to the wealthy person.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that there
| exists a free market. A market in which competitors are
| bought out and never actually reach the consumers is not
| a free market.
|
| * The efficient market hypothesis assumes that there are
| no barriers to entry. If barriers to entry exist, such as
| the hardware/software design time needed to start a
| product, the number of people with expertise to perform
| that design, the number of manufacturers with
| availability to construct the hardware, etc, then those
| reduce the number of suppliers of a product, and so an
| idea may not reach the market.
| sonicggg wrote:
| The mental gymnastics people go through just to sound
| smart.
| vbphprubyjsgo wrote:
| > The main goal of the project is to improve the functionalities
| of the TVs by adding new features, fixing bugs and providing new
| software.
|
| The solution to software in TVs is to have no software in TVs. A
| TV is just a big monitor you plug into your PC (albeit, with 10
| years of input lag, caused by the said software that should not
| exist). General purpose OS like Windows or Linux are a good
| enough interface to choose what video / stream to watch. You can
| use some software that runs on startup to provide support for a
| remote control or whatever comfy thing you think requires buying
| Samsung Garbage Half Working GUI T5007. This fact was stumbled
| upon by most 20 years ago (largely due to the warez scene, who
| unintentionally provided a better user experience than anything
| corpos could create). The idea of needing a special proprietary
| GUI is purely artificial. Smart TVs were trying to become a thing
| for 20 years (and had all the same insane security problems from
| the get go as with any industry who's software is driven by high
| churn newgrads). Various marketing pitches failed and failed
| until around 2010-2012 (can't remember). If you are a geek and
| are trying to jerry rig a modified proprietary Smart TV firmware
| into your TV, you have fallen for the marketing trick. There's no
| way you would have come up with an idea like this if they haven't
| previously marketed Smart TVs as a thing. A much better and
| easier effort would be to bypass all the garbage circuitry in
| modern TVs and monitors to ensure they are an actual useful
| product that can consume and deliver a video input.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| > The solution to software in TVs is to have no software in
| TVs. A TV is just a big monitor you plug into your PC
|
| I disagree - I don't think there's anything wrong with having a
| computer built-in to a TV, as long as the user has control over
| it (Granted, they obviously don't right now). For the average
| user, it's going to be far more convenient to be able to stream
| or play offline media without having to connect an external
| device. I'm hopeful we'll reach a point where we can install an
| openwrt equivalent for easy, dark pattern free operation.
| Epa095 wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree!
|
| And still I use the webos apps on my LG to watch netflix,
| Disney, hbo and our national TV channel. It's weird how it
| goes. There is no getting away from the fact that as long as
| the app works on my TV its easier to install it and use the
| stock remote that doing something custom. And since it works OK
| for 99% of people, the TV producers will ad the little
| computer, and there will be nothing to save on buying a TV
| without (if you can even find one).
| [deleted]
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Glad to see some work on this. The most expensive Smart TV in my
| house is the worst one because LG refuses to support their TVs
| more than a couple years: All the new streaming apps are only
| available on newer TVs, even if they're far cheaper and less
| powerful.
|
| My experience with LG's TV software support may have driven me to
| Roku forever. Age old Rokus still tend to have fantastic app
| support and run modern versions of their OS.
| square_usual wrote:
| > Age old Rokus still tend to have fantastic app support and
| run modern versions of their OS.
|
| Yes, because Roku's business model is getting into your living
| room to spy on you. Of course they'd like to do that for as
| long as possible!
| franga2000 wrote:
| It's the same with the TV vendors these days, only they want
| you to buy a new device every few years too.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There's a menu setting to disable telemetry.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I think consoles are the best option if you want at least
| sometimes play some games. They sell so much of them that the
| application developers support them for a long, long time - the
| 2013 PS4 is still being sold and will still be supported for at
| least few years.
| polished85 wrote:
| I mostly agree, but recently I was pleasantly surprised to find
| that the Apple TV app became available on my 2017 50" LG. I was
| able to remove my Gen 3 Apple TV box. The only app I use that
| is still not available is HBO Max. For that I bring my
| daughter's PS4 into the room, but who knows maybe that will
| also become available.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> The only app I use that is still not available is HBO
| Max._
|
| That's a biggie. Isn't it available on the AppleTV app?
|
| For myself, I only use my AppleTV (device), for streaming. I
| have an LG, but am not a fan of the weird WebOS UI, so I just
| leave it connected to the AppleTV.
| taneq wrote:
| Our (now-7-year-old) LG TV was pretty good for the first 3-4
| years. Now it's just a big monitor for a Raspberry Pi and very
| occasionally an old Bluray player.
| xahrepap wrote:
| Here's what I want for custom firmware: nothing. I don't mean "I
| don't want custom firmware". I want custom firmware THAT DOES
| NOTHING. Turn the TV into a dumb monitor. Do nothing else. Don't
| make me wait X seconds long for the TV Software to boot. Because
| I don't want it. I don't need it. I have external devices that do
| everything I want.
| anontrot wrote:
| I'm assuming you meant the smart part, and not the image
| processing part. And all other kinds of audio/video processing.
| If yes, even I'd love to have that!
| brindy wrote:
| I desperately want the this too, but a good reason not to is
| that I got a message from LG about my tv possibly overheating
| and having a free motherboard replacement even if it doesn't,
| which I would never have known about otherwise (likewise if I
| disabled the network on it, I guess).
| baq wrote:
| I ignored this message until my friend's tv psu let some
| smoke out.
|
| So yeah, it was worth it.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| What really gets me is how _inconvenient_ most interfaces are.
|
| I don't own a TV, but every time I interact with one, be it
| apple TV, firestick, or some custom on-TV firmware thing, I
| find the UI reasonably beautiful but an absolute nightmare to
| use.
|
| This might be because I don't use the TVs the way they are
| intended to be used. I typically know exactly what I want to
| watch before even switching it on. Their UIs however are built
| around aimlessly browsing and picking something off the top of
| the recommendations.
|
| I always end up wishing I just had a keyboard and a mouse
| attached.
| can16358p wrote:
| I think the reason bubbles down to the fact that people are
| used to TVs being dumb TVs with a remote that everyone knows
| how to operate. But the abilities of these TVs are growing
| exponentially compared to what people expect so they have to
| find a middleground by having a remote-looking pointing
| device and a TV-looking interface for this computer with a
| giant screen.
|
| Eventually I believe it will evolve into something more
| functional.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > that everyone knows how to operate
|
| These machines are almost impossible to operate without a
| remote. But remotes are not standardised; nor are the UIs
| the machines present. As a consequence, I become the only
| person that can efficiently operate my TV. And when I
| switch TVs, it takes me a month to learn how to drive it.
| The girlfriend doesn't have a chance.
|
| Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake.
|
| If TVs were cars, each brand of car would have different
| arrangements of controls; some would have a joystick for
| steering, some would have manual accelerator lever like a
| boat, some would have a horn operated by a foot-pedal, and
| they'd all have completely different gearstick locations
| for the different gears.
|
| I need three different remotes to operate my TV: one for
| the TV, which I use only for switching inputs; one for the
| Sky STB; and one for my audio amplifier. I need all three
| to set up a viewing session. This is nuts, not least
| because none of these remotes is specific to the device
| they're paired with; each of these remotes has non-
| functional controls that are obviously meant for some other
| model, because they have no function or meaning with my
| model.
|
| Disused remotes pile up in drifts in a cardboard box in my
| spare room.
|
| Maybe in some distant future, the industry will come up
| with a standard for remote controls and user-interfaces,
| such that once you know one, you know them all, and so that
| any remote can be used to control any A/V device. This
| would drastically reduce the number of prefectly-good
| remote controls that end up in landfill.
| can16358p wrote:
| I was referring to regular old-school features on the
| remote, the 1-9 buttons, channel/volume up/down, power
| on/off etc.
| __david__ wrote:
| This is kinda what HDMI CEC is (https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control). When I push the
| button on my AppleTV remote, the TV turns on, the
| receiver turns on and switches its input to the AppleTV.
| When push the power button again, the TV and receiver
| both turn off. Same thing when I grab the Playstation
| controller and turn it on.
|
| I have a remote for my receiver and my TV, but I never
| ever touch them. The nice thing was that the only
| configuration required was to enable CEC on the TV and
| receiver. Everything else just worked.
| fragmede wrote:
| Have you tried a Chromecast? Your phone or laptop is the UI,
| and the software you're using (which does need to explicitly
| support) sends it to the TV. Netflix, YouTube, VLC, and
| Chrome all support this.
|
| It's a different workflow than with a mouse and keyboard, and
| the software's still generally going to prioritize
| browsing/top recommendations, but at least you're not dealing
| with an on-TV UX nightmare (even if it is pretty).
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > I always end up wishing I just had a keyboard and a mouse
| attached.
|
| I'm with you on that. Screen keyboards suck, especially on a
| TV.
|
| I still have my old Netcast 4K TV here, but the software is
| really clunky. It quite literally comes with advertisements
| built-in to the main GUI (placeholdered by "Smart LG TV")
| whenever you're connected to the internet. It's not seeing so
| much internet these days (some sort of LAN-only solution for
| Miracast would be nice), though.
|
| Have you ever tried plugging a keyboard into your TV? Most of
| them have USB ports these days, and I'm sure with Linux
| they're got the basic keyboard drivers bundled.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| there are also remote controls with keyboards, trackpads,
| airmice, etc. which most TVs with a USB port can recognise
| fy20 wrote:
| Are you willing to pay for it? A lot of manufacturers make
| displays intended for digital signage, which under the hood are
| basically just a TV with different software:
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/
|
| There's an infographic on the differences here:
|
| https://image-us.samsung.com/SamsungUS/b2b/resource/2016/07/...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Wow what a document. Commerical products are always nicely so
| much less bullshit. Funny to read the manufacturer say so!
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| These type of displays are usually low to mid range displays.
| You aren't likely to find an OLED panel that supports Dolby
| Vision etc without "smart" features.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Are you willing to pay for it? A lot of manufacturers make
| displays intended for digital signage, which under the hood
| are basically just a TV with different software
|
| According to your link (and to what I've seen at work) that's
| not entirlely correct. One of the differences they give:
|
| > Built to run from 16/7 to 24/7 hours per day, have better
| cooling for longer runtimes
|
| I bet this alone increases the price but quite a hefty
| amount.
|
| I'm not the GP, but if they're anything like me, they just
| want the "dumb" part, not the "runs 24/7/365 at blindingly
| high levels of brightness".
| amne wrote:
| I actually have one of these made by Samsung. It's quite old
| though. It's a 40" 720p panel but it can take 1080p HDMI and
| looks quite ok actually. Can function as a standalone display
| or it has a builtin PC (a sub 1ghz AMD CPU I think, 256mb ram
| and a couple GB HDD inside it).
|
| It is insanely heavy and well built (slightly dropped it
| once, RIP floor).
|
| The panel: it is much much brighter than a regular TV but the
| kicker is there is no color or contrasts shift no matter how
| you look at it. I gamed on it for a while and the pixel
| response time is insanely fast. It is truly an amazing
| display. Too bad about the resolution though. I'm not using
| it anymore but I did not throw it away either.
| pkulak wrote:
| Okay, then you gotta pay for it. And the problem is, no one
| really wants to pay for it.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
|
| I find it easier to just never connect my TV to the internet
| and call that as much of a win as I'm gonna get. Though, with
| this sidewalk stuff, soon even that may not be possible.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Nothing stops you from disconnecting the antenna or having a
| faraday cage around the tx/rx components
| tpxl wrote:
| > Where the numbers keep growing is in its number of active
| SmartCast accounts, which are now over 14 million, and how
| much money it makes from each user on average. That number
| has nearly doubled from last year, going from $10.44 to
| $19.89. On the call with investors and analysts, Vizio execs
| said 77 percent of that money comes directly from
| advertising.
|
| (Amounts in article per month I think) I'd be glad to pay
| 300$ extra for a good dumb TV, the problem is _no one really
| wants to sell it_.
| shurane wrote:
| This is like the Kindle with Ads model from Amazon. You can
| pay Amazon an extra $20 (or request via support) to not
| have advertisements on the device forever. Or save a few
| bucks and deal with the occasional ad. And from what I can
| tell, the Kindle with Ads is still a pretty popular
| product.
| laumars wrote:
| I have paid to turn ads off and the infuriating thing is
| you still get ads for Amazon services, usability hints
| and a tonne of other junk that cannot be turned off (like
| "you haven't bought washing liquid in a while, want to
| add it to your list?").
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Recently, they reprogrammed every Kindle Paperwhite so
| the UI is almost completely different. Ever since I first
| saw one in a shop, Kindle Paperwhites have always looked
| and functioned a certain way... and now it's different.
| Instead of the "book" that I have muscle memory for, it's
| now _interacting with a computer interface_ again. If I
| wanted that, I 'd read on my laptop.
|
| Looking "clunky" and "old", more like a dictionary-
| bookmark than an iPhone, was a _feature_ , to me. It
| doesn't need to be slick and rounded with a main menu.
| You certainly don't have to move everything around so
| that there's a x button in the top-right corner of things
| that _aren 't modal popups_; that just breaks the pre-
| existing "top-left corner to go back" idiom (which still
| exists for the "library" and reader mode).
|
| And whose idea was it to make it so the "change
| brightness" menu also drew a cross-hatched pattern over
| your actual book? That makes it so you have to repeatedly
| enter and exit that menu (which now takes up nearly half
| the screen, for smaller buttons than before), unless
| you've memorised the brightness level numbers. You also
| can't judge at a glance where to touch for the correct
| brightness level if you _do_ know it, because they
| replaced the custom 15-little-boxes interface with a
| generic slider widget that _only uses the middle of the
| range_ - making it behave differently to every other
| identical-in-appearance slider in the OS. So what 's the
| point of making it look the same?
|
| The one improvement is that they removed a banner ad
| (presumably because they wanted the space for extra UI
| padding). I don't think that's worth it - but I have no
| choice, because I don't control my own device.
|
| (They also removed the "experimental" from the
| "experimental web browser", which _might_ be an
| improvement, even though it seems the same; there 's less
| UI space thanks to the pad-pocalypse, and it still can't
| do Cloudflare DDOS-walls properly. Not that I blame
| Amazon for the latter problem; my browser can't, either.)
| polymatter wrote:
| In general, I'm beginning to feel that habitually
| updating software is a risk.
|
| I have a paperwhite, but I haven't connected it for a
| while. Generally when I do connect it to a PC to upload
| more books, I'll habitually update the software. Its good
| practice right? Guess I'll now have to remember in
| perpetuity not to.
|
| Recently I updated my Raspberry Pi setup to find that the
| latest version of Raspberry Pi OS does not support the
| official Raspberry Pi cameras (it does add a ton of
| functionality, including a speed boost for Raspberry Pi
| 4, but nothing that adds stuff in my setup). So I rolled
| back everything. And I'll have to remember not to update
| unless they (or someone else) has added camera support
| back in.
|
| The point is that I used to laugh at the old guys who
| refused to update their software. Now I'm turning into
| them. If everything is working the way I want, why
| update? Especially for personal devices where the impact
| of "security vulnerabilities" is so low.
| franga2000 wrote:
| The thing is, you can't pay extra for a TV without ads -
| that option simply doesn't exist like it does for the
| Kindle. At best, you can buy a completely different TV
| from a digital signage vendor for 10x the price, but
| that's going to be a completely different product.
|
| And what if I want the smart features, just without the
| ads and tracking? Where's the "unlock ad-free version"
| button that Android apps figured out a decade ago?
| pydry wrote:
| I would be a lot more motivated to buy this stuff (& pay
| extra) if the FSF/Mozilla or somebody provided certification
| for IoT hygiene - devices that don't spy on you, don't have
| ads, dont send telemetry home and dont even have the
| capability to access the internet.
|
| This is one of the main reasons I dont buy IoT devices and
| don't have an oura ring (though I'd like one). I'm skeptical
| even of the "good" brands and I cant be bothered to set up
| offline VLANS and the like to "fight" the natural tendency of
| corporate whores to worm their way into my life uninvited. I
| think this is why many corporate execs voluntarily forgo
| opportunities for profit from people like me - _power_ is
| just so much more enticing.
|
| What's worse is that 5G probably means that IoT devices won't
| even _need_ our internet connections in future. Imagine a
| brave new world of subscription lightswitches and TVs to go
| with already existing subscription phones that turn off when
| you dont pay the bill. Clearly consumers are clamoring for
| all of this, since the market will probably one day exist.
| /s
|
| Organic labeling serves as a good model to follow here.
|
| Obviously before there was a market for organic food many
| farmers claimed that there wasn't a market for organic food
| and that outside of a few activists nobody really cared.
| There was though.
| jonatron wrote:
| If you're willing to take your TV to bits, you could replace
| the motherboard with a generic LCD controller board from
| aliexpress.
| revax wrote:
| I think the closest thing you'll find are hospitality TV.
| Display used in hotel, restaurants and the like.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Sceptre makes "dumb" TVs:
|
| https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
|
| Vision and HiSense don't incorporate any ads. You can also buy
| kits to convert your television into, well, just a television.
|
| Also, not having features doesn't necessarily make your TV
| faster. I have a 39" Seiki from 2013 that takes 6-8 seconds to
| power on and about 5 to display the image again when changing
| resolutions. Great panel, wouldn't trade it for another LG at
| least.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Hisense definitely does automatic content recognition.
|
| the sceptre panels are stupid cheap, but they fail. and good
| luck getting an rma through support. otherwise they support
| hdr and motion compensation etc etc so its not a bad deal
| deanc wrote:
| This "dumb tv" trope comes up in every one of these
| discussions. We are the minority and most people want a tv with
| a Netflix all and not to have to buy a set top box. There isn't
| a market here.
| awill wrote:
| >>There isn't a market here.
|
| I can assure you there is an even smaller a market for a
| reverse engineered open source LG TV firmware.
| TuringTest wrote:
| And an even smaller market for a reverse engineered open
| source LG TV firmware that does nothing, I'm afraid.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| The fun part of open source is that a market of 1
| interested person is enough.
|
| As an extreme case, Linus Torvalds decided to write a
| terminal emulator, do it straight on the bare metal for
| his PC, accidentally deleted his OS in the process, then
| got carried away a bit trying to survive without real OS.
| None of these decisions made any business sense, yet we
| have the entire Linux ecosystem out of it.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Not that much smaller, though. Of _course_ the market for
| things-that-are-X is larger than the market for things-
| that-are-both-X-and-Y, since the latter is a subset of
| the former.
| laumars wrote:
| I wonder how many people in that majority category you've
| described are likely to want to install custom firmware
| though.
|
| I'm a "hacker" with multiple LG TVs around the house (in fact
| I exclusively buy LG TVs) and I have no interest in putting
| custom firmware on those TV sets. So I can't imagine there's
| many inside the Venn bubble that are both laymen enough to
| want Netflix, technical enough to know about custom firmware
| but also motivated enough to want to install it.
|
| So the number of people who want dumb firmware might not be
| disproportionately less than those who want custom smart
| firmware.
| franga2000 wrote:
| > laymen enough to want Netflix
|
| Not wanting to commit digital piracy makes you a "layman"?
| What other options are there? I'm assuming you're using
| "Netflix" as a placeholder for all similar streaming
| services, but even if not, there are still many shows only
| available there that you simply can't legally watch without
| it.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I think, given the context of the thread, they mean that
| a layman would be more likely to want a TV with Netflix
| built-in as opposed to an external device that typically
| performs better and is more flexible.
| laumars wrote:
| Exactly this. :)
| whazor wrote:
| Not true, pre-install a removable box. Preferably this
| becomes a standard where Google, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia share
| the same form factor. Now my LG TV from 2020 is missing out
| functionality, even though the hardware could support it.
| pjerem wrote:
| That's HDMI.
| franga2000 wrote:
| ...which can't carry power or a network connection - both
| things that could easily be provided to the module
| through a single slot connector.
| mindslight wrote:
| Why would it need to carry a network connection (apart
| from CEC), when the point is that the display itself
| shouldn't be connecting to the network? Standardize on a
| certain barrel connector a certain distance away from the
| HDMI port, with the ethernet/wifi on the other side of
| the module.
|
| It'd be great if say Google pushed TVs in this direction
| ("Google Display with smart cube. Never have an outdated
| TV again" or something), but I bet the decommodified
| dumpster fire of baked in software benefits them too
| much. After all, the last thing any of those companies in
| the business of selling "content" wants people to do is
| to end up plugging in a Kodi box. It's like banks with
| overdraft fees - by abusing your customers, you make them
| worry that switching will result in even more abuse, thus
| encouraging them stick with the abuse they already know.
| timthorn wrote:
| HDMI can certainly carry Ethernet
| franga2000 wrote:
| Yes, I know, also power, just not a usable amount.
| Ethernet over HDMI is rarely implemented and caps out at
| 100Mbps. Even if you have it, that still leaves you with
| a power cable and big ugly box to put somewhere.
| timthorn wrote:
| The bit rate of all the current streaming providers and
| Bluray players fits well within 100Mbps, so I'm not sure
| that's really a limitation?
| [deleted]
| beezischillin wrote:
| It's not really worth it for them to make dumb TVs either, I
| assume, since that implies they can't shove ads and telemetry
| into them.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| The point being exactly that since we're now entering a
| time where open source TV firmware is a thing, profit
| motives don't necessarily trump everything else anymore.
|
| Making a firmware that does "nothing" is probably less work
| than making one that does a lot of things. So even in the
| new currency (developer time) it might be cheap and make
| _some_ people happy.
| summm wrote:
| Developer time is paid only once. As soon as it is paid,
| the manufacturer loses out when he is not putting the
| spyware everywhere he can.
| Talanes wrote:
| The manufacturer is completely irrelevant to the
| development in this case though, so sod what they want.
|
| Which is GPs point. Open source TV firmware means that
| the manufacturers motives are no longer the totality of
| the conversation.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Well, what it does is reinforce the idea that privacy is a
| luxury. You can get it ( to an extent ), if you pay enough.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Even if true (and I don't think it is), that is irrelevant to
| an attempt to reverse engineer an existing smart TV and
| create custom "dumb" firmware for it. All that needs is
| people with the desire for it and the technical skills to
| pull it off.
| taneq wrote:
| That makes it pretty much perfect for an open source project,
| then. Suitably motivated individuals with some technical
| skills can build and use it if they want to and the majority
| can remain blissfully ignorant of its existence.
| deckiedan wrote:
| I think there could be a bit of a market in installations /
| events.
|
| Often smaller installs / live events people want simple non-
| smart screens for all kinds of things (on stage, in waiting
| areas, musician cues, info to crew, signage, etc), and
| although it's _possible_ to buy expensive "monitors" that do
| it - being able to use cheap and large domestic kit with much
| faster startup and no extra crap, and no logos being
| displayed while booting or if it loses signal or whatever
| would be very desirable.
| 3guk wrote:
| Most of the time - at least within events, we end up using
| "Hotel Mode" to disable some of the features or force the
| LCD to always boot up into a specific source.
| baq wrote:
| These are called digital signage displays - they have rs232
| control ports, are a bit more ruggedly built, have a bit
| more cooling and are twice as expensive if not more than a
| civilian tv - if somebody sells one to you at all.
| colordrops wrote:
| You can buy some brands on B&H.
| colordrops wrote:
| These exist. Even LG sells them. They are just a lot more
| expensive.
| xahrepap wrote:
| I bring it up here because they're reversing the LG firmware
| and modifying it. I would love a fork of this work that does
| nothing.
|
| While a developer, this kind of work is outside my current
| wheelhouse and I just don't have the time to learn and fork
| it myself. So throwing out my desire. Half hoping someone out
| there wants it more than I do.. and half just expressing my
| frustration with modern TVs.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Oh, there's a market all right. I want one
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ryall wrote:
| Exactly! When it comes to home media I prefer the Linux model
| of small utilities connected by pipes.
| colordrops wrote:
| Sorry to be pedantic but it's the unix model.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| My TV is the final AV output device for 3 games consoles
| running 8 TV apps.
|
| One thing I'd love for it to do is provide unified close
| caption styling, always on closed captions, automated sound
| levelling, and automated color / black levelling.
|
| I'm always surprised when I see a tv that has brightness /
| contrast sliders. That stuff could be easily automated the same
| way I calibrate my PC display.
| bborud wrote:
| Given that modern TVs like to phone home a lot, and have
| microphones and cameras. I think an open source solution would be
| really nice to have.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I'd love a feature that would allow alphabetical sorting of
| channels. It's kind of ridiculous that this isn't possible on a
| 'smart' TV today.
| lorek123 wrote:
| I wonder if I could remap movies button on my remote so it won't
| try to install/open Rakuten TV and run other app instead.
| kayson wrote:
| I hope this eventually leads to the ability to remove ads. It's
| unbelievable to me that you can pay top dollar for a high end
| OLED tv and it will still drown you in ads and notifications. I
| ended up just disconnecting my tv from the internet entirely and
| using a dedicated Roku Ultra for streaming.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| pihole + check connections made from tv + block em == no ads
| ornornor wrote:
| Panasonic OLEDs are the same price as LG but they show no ads
| whatsoever, don't have gimmicky menus, and turn on in 5 seconds
| flat.
| vbphprubyjsgo wrote:
| I have a 15" LCD from 1998 and it turns on in a few hundred
| ms. 2010s+ LCDs take about 5-10 seconds which is insanely
| slow (even for a casual user, in which case it causes more
| confusion when plugging cables in because he's likely to
| assume the cables are wrong and disconnect them because the
| screen didn't react right away). TVs take as long or worse
| because they are simply more poorly designed. 5 seconds is
| literally longer than it takes for a _CRT_ to turn on and
| have a viewable picture.
|
| The general quality of hardware can be gleaned as the inverse
| of how much software is in it.
|
| As for vendor fetishizing: _All_ monitor /TV vendors are
| _terrible_.
| _puk wrote:
| Haha, I find the recommendation for Panasonic for an ad free
| experience quite ironic.
|
| They were the first to go there circa 2013: boot screen, home
| screen and volume ads.
|
| But, they got a lot of backlash, and I doubt it was as
| lucrative as expected, so it appears they removed them in
| more recent years.
| ornornor wrote:
| Maybe the OLED displays are in a different class in their
| lineup. I only ever owned this one Panasonic OLED from
| 2018.
| Narretz wrote:
| Then you shouldn't make a general recommendation for all
| Panasonic OLED TVs.
| eklavya wrote:
| We all have bad days but perhaps you should read the
| comment again and try and be a bit less confrontational?
| elabajaba wrote:
| Panasonic got out of the NA TV market a few years ago, and no
| warranty+exorbitant shipping costs means it isn't worth
| buying one in Europe and having it shipped.
|
| They're also ending their inhouse TV production and
| outsourcing it for 2022, which probably means they're going
| to get worse.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| They moved to Android since 2020.
| adanto6840 wrote:
| Shouldn't have to do this at all, obviously, but at least
| if it's android then you're just a few commands away from
| removing most anything.
|
| Used it to rid my Sony of all the annoyances and the
| continual "enable samba?" Prompts that kept coming up
| despite always choosing "disable" explicitly.
|
| Google for "adb remove ads <model/brand>" or similar. 20
| minutes helped my wife not be annoyed at popovers on the
| TV, and saved me countless time looking for the OEM remote.
| :D
| fossuser wrote:
| I've found the android based TVs to be awful. Their boot
| up time is slow and they often seem to have trouble
| starting via the Apple TV remote.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Wait, where do you get all those ads? I might be blind but I
| don't see any in my CX. Unless you count the "recommendation
| service".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Unless you count the "recommendation service"
|
| Which will never turn on if you don't agree to the terms &
| conditions. So far, I've been able to avoid things like ads,
| but every time the TV pops up with an update I get the Fear.
|
| I do not want ads or voice commands on my devices. Especially
| not given I paid a premium :/.
| martyvis wrote:
| Really like my 2020 LG TV. (First TV I have ever bought - I'm 58
| and every other TV was either a gift, the 14" Sanyo from my
| parents-in-law in 1989, or hand-me-down)
|
| The one thing I'd like fixed is when I watch an in-progress
| scheduled recording, say 15 minutes behind real-time, the TV
| jumps in to live TV mode rather than continue to play the
| recording. I have to manually go and select the recording and
| then jog forward to the point I was watching. Seems a strange
| default, certainly different to Kodi. I've been meaning to write
| a bug report but it would be interesting if this project has a
| fix.
| antihero wrote:
| I just wish I could get the auto-turn off timer to disable. I've
| disabled it everywhere in menus. Still, after a few hours of it
| being connected to my Apple TV 4K, it gives me the whole "TV will
| be turned off in five minutes unless you press a button on the
| controller" bullshit.
|
| Other than that I just want the thing to be a lowest-possible-
| latency, accuratest-possible-colour dumb display. No cool shit,
| just a dumb accurate fast panel.
| maweki wrote:
| Maybe you could periodically give some remote control command
| through one of the WebOSTV python libraries. Needs networking
| though. Alternatively, an Arduino/ESP that sends a useless IR
| signal.
| doikor wrote:
| If you can get your hands on a service remote it will allow you
| to access a menu to disable that and a bunch more (a lot of the
| OLED burnin prevention features you can't normally fully
| disable)
| 0x53 wrote:
| If you have a phone with a IR blaster (mostly older LG
| phones) you have download an android app that with act as an
| LG service remote
| heeen2 wrote:
| You can do it with a rpi, ir diode and resistor even. The
| tool for sending and receiving ir commands is called lirc
| genewitch wrote:
| Huawei and Xiaomi phones have IR blasters as well. I always
| try to buy phones that have those, because A) "i lost the
| remote" and B) "shut off every TV at the store" is
| hilarious.
|
| The first device i had that had this was a Palm, and it
| wasn't like "here's a remote control" it was "this 1 button
| will cycle every known TV IR code for the power button."
| Someone eventually released an actual IR blaster app for
| Palms, though.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Some old Samsungs have it as well, such as the Galaxy S5.
| mojomark wrote:
| This problem reminded me of an equally frustrating struggle I
| read about on Kiva [1], in which a woman named Svetlana in
| Maldova (a medical worker out of work due to severe back pain)
| and her husband (a driver) can't seem to scrape together enough
| capital to connect their house to a source of running water and
| eliminate the need to routinely lug water in from a nearby
| well.
|
| Happy Thanksgiving!
|
| 1. https://www.kiva.org/lend-beta/2279796
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| HN is intended for discussion of computers and related
| subjects, isn't it? What's wrong with that?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > This problem reminded me of an equally frustrating struggle
|
| Could you perhaps explain the similarity?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| I read it as a sarcastic and round about way of calling
| this a first world problem.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-25 23:01 UTC)