My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app
twitter.com
twitter.com
For future HN context, as the author I'm reproducing them here in full:
My @Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app from https://samba.tv and boy oh boy... this is worse than recent @facebook stuff.
From their own privacy policy: https://samba.tv/legal/privacy-policy/ … they track what you watch, when you watch it, your location, your interactions with other apps. And they share this with... well, everyone basically.
This information is then used to market to you within the TV and offer you a "hot list"... but it is also used to "Detect, investigate and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect the rights, safety and property of Samba and others"
If you have a "Smart TV" from any brand and it's doing an update you will 100% want to disable Samba.
Samba is not a feature for you, it is a snitch in your living room, snitching on everything you watch on your TV, it's a feature for corporations only.
To disable Samba the soft way... don't agree to their T&Cs post OS upgrade.
To disable Samba the hard way... use Android system settings to disable the app.
This is a good time to say that if you own a "Smart TV" from any company you should run it on a different network than your NAS and other computers. And that all other devices best require passwords to connect to them.
Ideally you run a TV on a different VLAN.
And this is where I wish that dumb panels were all the rage, and that the only "smart" functionality was external to the display itself. But when @netflix and other content providers decline the use of their apps outside of integrated devices this is the hell we live in.
I really wish that @Google provided a TV box that was the full Android TV, but that was vanilla Google with the ability to install @netflix, @BBCiPlayer, @mubi as apps. That I could just plug this into any display panel, including dumb displays.
Perhaps @Google could even call it Pixel TV.
I actually trust stock Android over Samsung, Sony, etc Android. Hence my "if we're going to have Android TV perhaps Google could supply it without the forced add-ons". I see this similar to installing Windows yourself rather than having "Windows with added vendor crap"... like if you know you want Windows, a stock one is better and same with Android.
I'm now looking at purchasing the Nvidia Shield and disabling all network connectivity on my Sony TV.
The Sony TV is a recent one, about a year old. A Bravia something or other. I have disabled the Samba app using the Android Apps system.
One thing I didn't include in the tweets was Samba's patent list, because it's too deep a topic for Twitter. The patent numbers are on their site though... go take a look: https://samba.tv/legal/patents/ Some of those are downright scary and have no positive application for privacy conscious users.
Feel free to ask anything.
The apps with rich capabilities are restricted to the platform.
Android is the one with them all.
(caveat on Amazon vs Google stupidity)
If it's doing some kind of "always scan WiFi in the background" shenanigans then it's still a computer slowly going out of date without security updates and occasionally exposing itself to the local area.
I wish I could take a "smart" TV and flip a switch and have it gracefully fall back to "dumb" TV where the Android device is physically disabled.
Edit: mainly cause they'd stopped working years ago...
Chromecast is basically a smart TV on a stick, controlled with a remote from smartphone (and partly, even the remote control of the TV). You can run a Chromecast wired as well. Same with Steam Link. It can run over wireless or wired.
I find on all of these wired far more reliable, and I keep more bandwidth for my wireless applications. Even my printer is wired. Then again, I got a 8 port gbit switch for connectivity and barely any wires visible.
The caveat is that my smart devices, although wired, are currently NOT on a VLAN, and that Chromecast is a data resource for Google, and as I mentioned the EPG data on the TV contains commercials. Instead of the Steam Link I could even just run a HDMI cable straight from computer. I can also plug in a Bluetooth USB adapter on my USB hub to listen via Bluetooth on the couch to the TV.
Other than that, its a great TV for its price. Make sure your TV has enough HDMI ports. You might also wanna have a look at Chromecast alternatives such as Miracast devices or Amazon Fire Stick (the ethernet adapter came free with Chromecast Ultra but for the other Chromecasts it costs 20 EUR extra).
I realize it's a bad solution, but that might work…unless it's "smart" enough to realize it has no connection and try other networks regardless…
https://www.apple.com/shop/question/answers/readonly/tag/app...
The only device that requires a SIM is an iPhone for obvious reasons.
How do I even turn off location services without breaking Android Device Manager?
I have location history off but I still get notifications from maps that say things like "X place you're at is popular, click here to see reviews or something"
1. You don't need to use Android Device Manager. Unlike iOS, Android gives you a choice of device finders.
2. Location services is different from location history. Location services is an AGPS service that does not track anything tied to your account. iOS does the same thing, and worse, used to send your location to a third party AGPS provider (Skyhook).
3. Google Maps is separate from location history. Google Maps on iOS will tell you to see reviews as well, and it is a setting in both. Unlike on iOS, on Android, you have a choice not to use the default maps application at all and instead use an entirely offline map.
The above three points when support my initial claim that Android is a better privacy-focused system than iOS.
If you turned off wifi so you think that would help?
So I'm selfishly asking if you could look up the version number of yours, so that I can identify mine and avoid updating it?
> Ideally you run a TV on a different VLAN.
Why don't you go with a pi instead of a shield ?
Also 4K and H.265/HEVC video support
And, sure enough, the libraries have gone downhill while the prices have gone up, and my money seems to just be going to lawyers and technology to ever-more lock things down, while content is balkanized to maximize what I've come to consider rent-seeking.
I'm not interested in a "smart TV". I want good hardware with a lot of hardware connectivity -- preferably open connectivity, but that ship has already sailed in good part. Nonetheless, connectivity I set up and control.
If I'm going to stream, it's going to be out of a separate box, that I can segregate and replace when it's warranted.
If I can get off my duff and do it, it's time for me to stop paying for streaming content and put the money instead towards purchases where I end up with a physical copy, more or less in perpetuity. If, because the media degrade or the playback devices abandon functionality or get more locked down, the lifespan of what I've purchased is limited, I no longer have any qualms -- other than "lead pipe" law enforcement -- about breaking protections and making a sustainable copy.
I feel like a sucker for having put my money into a system that perpetuates these schemes, for too long.
Time to hit eBay for those boxes of DVD's I've heard about, before everyone else catches on and they dry up.
My parents have a somewhat older "smart TV" -- Samsung. Recently, it received an OS update. The UI responsiveness did pick up -- it was halfway abysmal, before. But the picture quality took a major hit. (I'll let Dad fuss with that, as is his wont, if he gets around to it. He doesn't use that TV much.)
This just reinforced for me, that you can't trust these updates nor the software on these things. If it works well as a display device, keep it unconnected and so "dumb" and just pipe stuff in over HDMI.
By the way, it was on a separate "friends" subnet that their wireless router provides. But performance seemed marginal, at times, so it ended up on an Ethernet cable. The router only has physical ports on the main subnet; there went that protection. Ironically, after the OS update, it defaulted to the wireless connection and seemed to perform significantly better with it. It got switched back to the Ethernet connection, but maybe they should undo that, now.
Really with all this stuff, it's coming down to the very basic... "truism", it's proving to be: If they can, they will.
It's up to us, individual users and consumers, to stop them. No one else is.
Preferably, no one would ever purchase a smart TV. When smart TV sales go to zero, the makers would get the message.
Sadly, too many folks don't know, or if they do know, they don't care.
Ok, snark aside, what if the makers of Smart TVs call them "platforms," and they get a subsidy for bundling apps, and maybe even a revenue stream from people who sign up for things like Netflix through the TV?
Again, they will be able to make a cheaper TV if there's more money in apps than margin on hardware.
This is analogous to the situation with phones. For most companies, there's more money in the telecommunications service than in the hardware margin, so most phones are subsidized by the service providers.
So-called television is going there: It's just a platform for advertising, tracking, and services that generate revenue on subscription. This is going to relentlessly drive hardware margins deep into the negative, which makes it impossible to sell a "dumb" display for a reasonable price.
I fully expect that it won't be long before leaving a smart TV unconnected to the internet won't be an option: They won't work unless they can phone home.
Samsung's partners don't want you hooking a 4K TV up to an AppleTV and routing around their platform in favour of Apple's app store, not if you bought that TV at a discount thanks to their subsidies.
You can bet Sony didn't put this app on the TV because they wanted to give consumers an improved experience for free out of the goodness of their hearts.
If most people prefer the TV with 'more features' then they'll take it. The savings of using a dumb TV are probably not a lot, I'd ballpark it at $50. How many consumers are going to think "$50 dollars more to get netflix straigt on my TV? Great!".
Besides, that $50 advantage could well be lost in the smaller scale costs.
I did.
I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV.
The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.
Might be worth finding the network chips and disconnecting or breaking them off.
Now you're getting me paranoid.
From various places online, you can buy "scaler" boards that take HDMI/VGA/etc. to whatever interface the panel uses (LVDS is common), i.e. they comprise essentially all the electronics inside a standard non-smart monitor. They are intended for laptop display conversions but can drive much bigger displays too, as long as the interface is the same. That might be an alternative to buying a much more expensive "dumb TV", i.e. buy a smart TV and "dumb it down" yourself!
For example, this particular one is configured for an iPad's display but the sellers usually have other configurations available:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4K-eDP-HDMI-LVDS-Controller-...
Generally most modern TVs are gonna have a power supply, a main logic board, a display driver board and maybe another control board for stuff like backlights or sound. The logic board is basically gonna be an embedded mini computer running a full embedded OS that orchestrates the UI/smart features, decoding the inputs and generating the control signals for the panel driver. This will all be highly integrated on a single board, probably with almost all of the functionality in one or two main chips. Point being, you can't just yank out the smart stuff and still have a functioning TV. It'd be a bit like trying to remove a feature from a computer motherboard.
The ideal way to go about it would be to write your own firmware for the chips, but that's a practical impossibility because almost always there's no data publicly available on the chips or the other parts like the panel. You might also be able to get something working if the actual panel uses a standard interface, but it'll be a ton of work.
There aren't that many teardowns of televisions online that I can find, but this article has some to give you an idea.
https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/cracking-open-the-55-s...
I also haven't been able to find a decent non-smart tv to no avail :(
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/rca-haier-avera-fluid-sylvan...
Consumer projectors have built-in sound but you'll still want to hook up surround sound. And if you care about hi-res that much, you'll want it on a nice big screen where you can see the difference. I project onto a 100" screen.
I wonder how big the market is for "dumb" TVs priced lower than smart ones --- given that the development costs, if any, for one would be much lower since you're basically just asking an OEM to combine existing parts (panels and electrics), perhaps it could be a startup opportunity to sell "the TV you watch" --- essentially big monitors with speakers and tuners and nothing else. Some things they could advertise:
- absolutely no data collection
- zero boot-up time
- near-instant control response
- no software requiring constant upgrades or maintenanceNevertheless, a dumb TV marketing to me like that evokes an immediate "take my money!" response.
The boot time is something that has irked me forever, and it seems the culprit is the HDMI protocol itself, so that wouldn't be improved either.
There a plenty of dumb 4K Blaupunkt TVs sold in Germany pretty much everywhere.
Specific models I don't know by heart.
Have you monitored it's network activity?
If not, how can you be certain the "disable menu" was not actually a placebo?
Or, hmmm... How about simply not buying that 4k if it is "smart".
The only feedback channel you have to the makers about your displeasure over the TV offerings is to simply not buy one.
They listen to nothing else. If the unit sells, they don't care about any other expressed dislikes (it sold, after-all). If the unit does not sell, and none of the units sell, only then do they listen.
But as I said at the outset, too few folks care enough to make a dent in their sales figures. So those of us who do care are left with simply not buying a new TV.
https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
Prices, though, are usually higher than TVs.
Exactly. A commercial display / signage display is indeed what you need to buy if you want a "dumb" TV.
Not only are they as dumb as dumb gets but they are highly reliable and usually fairly rugged.
Many of them have an expansion card slot which allows you to change the inputs - you could remove your 2x HDMI card and insert an SCART card instead, for instance.
Finally, if you get a video wall model, you'll get near-zero bezel.
They're not that expensive - how could they be if they are being purchased twelve at a time for display walls ? Yes, they are more than $399 + mail-in rebate from Frys.
It's worth it.
Disregarding the fucking awful campaign against them because some 3rd party developers make piracy-focused add-ons, as someone who never owned a smart TV, Kodi seems pretty feature-compatible.
I could be totally off though.
The only thing to gain from "smart tvs" are apps that can be controlled w/ the TV remote, if you're privacy coincious, you should know by now that it will take a bit of effort to secure your data.
I plug my TV into Ethernet to update it and disconnect it immediately.
Not much of a solution since it will never happen. The best TV's are "smart", and people like nice things, myself included. You're much better of simply never connecting them to the internet. They get the same message and you don't limit yourself to a small set of poor options.
If by "they" you mean the manufacturers, no they don't get the "same message".
The message they (makers) got was: "A smart TV sold". They interpret that to mean "purchaser wanted a smart TV".
The makers are not tracking that statistic (number of units sold that were not connected to the internet). They don't care if you connect it to the internet or not. Anything that happens after the initial sale (beyond returns and warranty repairs) is simply irrelevant to them, because there is zero income stream (unless they are charging an 'upgrade fee' later for something).
They care only about that initial sale. The only feedback channel they listen to is "units sold".
But too many people are addicted to the upgrade cycle and as a result not enough will simply turn away and say "no thanks, I'll stick with my dumb TV" (or go hunt down those few dumb TV's that still exist, so the sales numbers shift to dumb TV's).
That is absolutely wrong. They are making money off of the data; of course they care! That's the whole point!
I feel like you should mention that in your bio, it's not standard and breaks conversations. People should know that they should cite you if they want something to be preserved in conversations or when linking.
So - why are you using Twitter at all if you want to delete stuff so quickly?
You sound the kind of chap who would much prefer their own platform. Heard of these things called "blogs"?
Aaaaand it went away.
Walled gardens are always going to be a massive vulnerability for link rot.
In any case, if Twitter allows posy deletion, then it's standard. You may consider deleting bad form, but that's just another case of someone's perception of a platform not matching reality.
The internet makes it hard to definitively remove something, but a large percentage has already been lost to churn and bit rot due to lack of care.
Cool URIs don't change and all that... Thank heavens for the Internet Archive.
I haven't bothered to examine how it works, but if you can do that and you have a disaster recovery plan that replicates your entire output to a different service (e.g. GitHub Pages) while retaining the link structure, then perhaps Medium is now superior to Posterous's original offering.
The last time I googled it they had it discontinued this option.
I purge content from my law firm website all the time.
I completely trash and start over my personal website every few years, too, and I've never kept anything in a purge. I have personal archives of it, and the various archiving sites have been snapshotting my stuff since 1999, so, meh, if anyone wants to find my old work product, there's a way, without me having to archive it all for the whole world for all eternity.
Sometimes it's nice to start over.
I like to purge my real life too. De-cluttering is fun. My zen would be to have nothing left.
Regarding link rot, the walled garden comment above/below is spot on. When you're dealing with a bunch of walled gardens, link rot is so far unavoidable.
If people are worried about that they shouldn't be relying on a third-party (twitter) for record keeping.
Do you mean Chromecast? You can just plug it into your TV's hdmi port and use netflix/youtube/twitch/mubi android apps to control your streams on TV.
Now I know the Shield exists that's what I'll be doing.
Without thinking about it I configured my current TV to join my wifi network. After it so kindly started putting ads on the screen while watching things I turned it off. A few months later, ads again. Somewhere in the bowels of the settings the wifi was reenabled, so I shut it off. A few months later, more ads. In a new place in the settings it was back on. Repeat a few more times.
Changed my wifi password and that took care of that.
Do they have a in-hardware or in-app purchase to remove the ads? <- That would be a horrible trend to start.
Then I started disabling my wifi and that kept magically re-enabling.
And that's the point I took the nuclear option.
Same experience as https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/TVs/Annoying-notificatio... but with a different notification.
I don't think I'll buy a Samsung TV again after that, and I don't connect any TV to the internet anymore.
> But when @netflix and other content providers decline the use of their apps outside of integrated devices this is the hell we live in.
I don't understand. I can just open a web browser on a little media center PC, connect it by HDMI, point it to Netflix and play a movie, right? (Admittedly I haven't tried because our Panasonic has Netflix and no ads or spy apps that I've noticed)
But what exactly does Netflix forbid that @buro9 is referring to? And does anyone know what their reasoning is for doing so?
I ask because I'm rather interested in the concept of buying a dumb TV once this one breaks (hopefully long from now), but I do like me my Netflix. Lots of people in this thread suggest buying a dumb TV but I don't understand why Netflix and friends would disallow customers using that.
Samba have patents for how to communicate and track across the boundaries of security sandboxes for example.
Whereas Netflix on my Android that has NetGuard really is just talking to netflix.com and apparently not doing anything else bad.
I have zero expectations that an app won't track in-app use for that app... but Samba is (with the consent of the hardware provider who owns the local instance of Android) tracking everything it can across apps.
The result is that the higher quality content is only available on apps on closed platforms.
So if you got a dumb panel and wanted high definition content, you'd still need to hook up something like the Nvidia Shield... essentially a closed platform (Android again in this instance).
Fortunately I'm the opposite of a videophile - I don't even know how High the Definition of our TV is. But I see your point, so indeed, a 4k dumb TV won't be able to show most Netflix content in 4k, correct? That's a major shame and pretty ridiculous.
edit: I just noticed that Netflix actually supports UHD on the Windows 10 app and on Microsoft Edge[0]. So running Windows on the media center PC appears to be a practical option.
Still a closed platform :)
It's the DRM problem. They insist on these limitations as an anti-piracy measure. Fundamentally the only way to decode 4k in real time is to pass it fairly-unmodified to the video hardware, and at that point in a non-closed system a driver could steal it. Or just record it off the screen from the inside.
Sure, but not a smart TV and that's the part I personally care the most about. I doubt Microsoft, even with all their telemetry nonsense, will ever include something as ridiculous as samba.tv. Also, they employ more than 0 UI designers.
Thanks for the explanation btw. So it's basically the 4k video version of copy-protected CD's. And that was a great idea that totally worked!
Pleasant surprise:
Microsoft Store -> "..." button -> My Library.
I had it running on my second monitor as background noise while I was working on a project
Every time I'd use Alt+Tab, the entire window would go black. Presumably as part of its inane DRM
Unfortunately, the only way to get it to work again was to close and relaunch the entire app!
Is there even such a thing ? Honest question, because i looked for a "dumb" 4K with HDR10 support TV and i haven't found anything.
Which the insane video card prices recently getting 4K output is an expensive issue.
1080p is by far "good enough" to watch anything on TV, IMO.
I re-watched a couple of episodes of "Friends" recently (apparently the series is now available on Netflix) at a couple of friends' house, on a huge tv set, and I had a totally different experience compared to what I remembered from last watching the episodes ~15 years ago because I could only focus on looking at the actresses' faces, asking myself: "Did Monica's face really looked like that? Did Phoebe's?". I'll stick with 1080 or even with 780 from now on.
I'm specifying hardware too because of HDCP - you can't just connect it to some random monitor because it might not support 'DRM for monitors'.
If you used a DVI cable you could indeed do that. But HDMI was pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed despite no real benefit (having sound and video separate is an ADVANTAGE if you want to easily handle sound with different hardware..)
and now, well, you can't.
The number of people with dedicated audio equipment is too great for any TV manufacturer to break this.
Why though? If you're concerned about privacy and freedom (as you should well be) then why jump out of the fire into the frying pan? Grab a dumb TV, grab a small form-factor PC (like an RPi) and install whatever you want on it (kodi, etc.)
Learned my lesson a few years ago when my 3,000+ Samsung tv decided one day they were going to spam advertisements for GameStop in the notifications. Of course they deny that ever happened but I have proof on my twitter. Too lazy to look it up right now though.
The tv's never been updated since I bought it, never configured wifi and there isn't any open wifi around for it to try to connect to.
Smart tv's aren't smart enough to come with their own internet connection... yet. God I hope they don't put something like cellular connections in these things, then I'd have to find the damn radio and desolder the antennae.
for example,
did you know that when you purchase an ebook using kindle software amazon knows exactly what page you've read to and how long you've stayed on each page. They also know exactly what books you have purchased.
Or
Did you know that whenever you use a smart tv app that every time you "hover" over a tv show an event is logged that you hovered over it? Same with every click and every time you rent a movie.
This all seems pretty scary but these services could not function without this information.
Why does Kindle NEED to know how long I've stayed on each page?
Why does a smart TV NEED to store hover events in a persistent DB?
It doesn't, but every page turn event has a time stamp. Using that info it's pretty easy to know how long someone has been on a page.
>Why does a smart TV NEED to store hover events in a persistent DB?
When the company is doing AB testing to decide on the optimal page layout this information is important.
Yea :'( That's why i always purchase ebooks with my Laptop, then use Calibre + DeDrm plugin to send the ebook to my Kindle through usb. Also, my kindle is ALWAYS in airplain mode and has never been connected to any wifi.
It's so sad we are forced to do these things, and most people probably don't even realise they are being spied on and have their info/profile sold...
By the way, i hope my Pi-hole blocks all the smarttv trackers... but i'm not sure.
I don't consider my Kindle Paperwhite as an always-on tracking-my-reading device, I consider it as an e-ink screen that I can transfer my books to via USB.
I still buy books from Amazon, but that's because I know how to de-DRM them, which is something I don't know how to do with books from... for example, Microsoft Store, or Google Play Books.
I don't own a smart TV because I don't need a TV at all, I need a screen to plug an HDMI cable into.
I don't own Alexa / Google Home because fuck that.
I've refused to own a smartphone until August 2016.
There was also the Nexus Q a while ago but that was before Android TV and also a massive failure.
Could you not simply turn off WiFi on your smart TV and use an external device anyway?
...you should turn that crap off and replace it with a Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, or anything else external. The Amazon app on our Vizio was so out of date that it literally couldn't connect to Amazon's API. Later updates fixed Amazon but enabled some flat-out 1984 level spying: https://consumerist.com/2015/11/09/vizio-smart-tvs-are-watch... . That's when I hard reset the TV, banned its MAC from our Wi-Fi, and started treating it exclusively as a dumb display for other devices.
Under no circumstances would I give any smart TV Internet access. It's not that I have great trust for any of the settop box manufacturers (although Apple's been doing a great job here), but I actively distrust all TV manufacturers.
I totally agree, though my only exception is for Roku TV devices. They're essentially a flat-panel LCD with a Roku permanently stuck in the case with software that supports different inputs as "apps." I've been doing some packet sniffing and, so far as I can see, my TCL Roku TV doesn't do anything different on the wire that my Roku Premiere does.
Just from a couple months ago: "And that’s where streaming TV company Roku comes in. Today, the company is introducing a new measurement suite called Roku Ad Insights that lets brands and agencies measure how effective their marketing is on OTT in four ways."
You really should assume that any app you run on any device is gathering data about what you are doing. Could be used in house and/or sold to third parties.
Serious question: so what? Lots of things don’t benefit me. Lots of things benefit corporations only. Why am I supposed to get outraged by this?
Samba.tv is... Something else. It has nothing to do with us.
>"Infringement may occur when one party, the 'infringer', uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers"
this basically means that in order to have an infringement case, you need to show that both the name/brand/logo are confusingly similar, and also that the product/service/domain are close enough to each other. I don't know that "software" is a sufficiently narrow category to count.
(I'm imagining an a scenario in which an elderly version of myself becomes confused...
Me: "Honey, I think we should watch a movie over the samba!".
My elderly wife: "Did you mean the samba on the smart TV, or the samba on the PC?"
Me: Dag Nabbit!)
"Oooooh, some sort of media centre software based on samba? Count me in. Oh, wait ... :("
Admittedly, a few seconds of thinking made me realise they'd never do that... but it's easy to see why people are getting confused, which is EXACTLY where Trademark stuff comes in.
(BTW, I do really appreciate all the work done on samba over the past few decades, so thanks!).
If nothing else my SEWER VLAN has a very strange view of DNS (thanks pfBlocker) and a rather limited view of the internet as a whole.
Squid docs on Bump etc: https://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/SslPeekAndSplice
In what way do they force you to use it?
2. I can not fathom why anyone would connect their "smart" TV to the network at all.
By opting out of our service, we will no longer collect your TV viewing information, and our functionality we’ve built to enhance your TV experience – like content recommendations – will be disabled.
We believe there is a need for more guidance to discover new shows or be notified when a new season of your favorite shows come out. We also believe there is a need for better insights to guide the media industry, which is stuck with an antiquated system of measuring TV broadcasts. Our apps may not be for everyone, so when you disable Samba TV, your viewership data is not used in our media research or ad targeting offerings.
As far as advertising, we like the privacy model Apple has for iOS: If you want to continue using the functionality, but prefer your data not be used for advertising, you may reset your advertising ID and/or choose to limit ad tracking at any time through your TV settings. Your Samba TV advertising ID is a device ID used to serve targeted ads. By resetting this advertising ID, we will remove the link between your Samba TV advertising profile and the content you previously watched, so interest-based advertisements will not be served based on such content. Limiting ad tracking will opt your Samba TV Advertising ID out of receiving targeted advertising based on your TV usage.
Even in areas other than privacy, my bank mistreats me far worse than Internet companies like Google and Twitter.
Not to mention that in a multi-sided ecosystem, Internet companies need to keep both users and advertisers happy, so even if you're not paying, your desires still factor into the decision.
To be clear, I didn't say this meme is a lie, just that it's a half-truth. It makes sense to some extent.
Oh boy is this true, I'm on my fourth bank for my UK business and they have all been appalling. I'm not very happy with the current one but have given up on the idea that any other might be better.
Read it again, you are falling in a logical fallacy. The phrase is only saying that "if you are not paying", it doesn't make any claims to what happens when you are paying.
So, a small, 720p TV? In other words, a TV most people don't want? I fail to see how that's an alternative when I'm looking for a 60" 4K model, not to mention I have no idea what the quality of the device will be.
I worked at Samsung and given how much they poured into Tizen and the various in-house services for SmartHub, I guarantee they aren't making any significant money from them. They have zero leverage with apps for services that people consider a given (like Netflix). And a lot of smaller partnerships don't end well (see Peel for instance).
I'm not sure about brands that went with Android TV, but Google is pretty smart in such partnerships and fully takes advantage of the fact that OEMs like Sony don't have the internal resources to come up even with a half-decent OS.
Questionable updates that push things like samba.tv are probably a (poor) afterthought.
I wonder how the GDPR will affect companies like Samba's business model.
Also, isn't this effectively true of all internet connected TVs since they will never receive security patches and become part of the botnet of things?
Also it much be easy to opt out.
That's where that nice multiplier of 250,000 gets going. See, even if to a first approximation zero consumers take advantage of these laws if it turns out that 'approximately zero' out of 100 million is say 10,000 you're still fucked if you decide to play dumb.
So round off all you want, but keep in mind the multiplier.
anyway, a company like google or apple could hardly care less about a number like 250,000 but a small European startup is hopelessly screwed.
One company isn't a particularly solid sample.
For some contrast: I've looked at 9 companies since the beginning of the year and all of them took the GDPR serious enough that it made them re-evaluate their privacy, security and data life cycles. The interesting bit is that they would have never done any of that if not for the GDPR, and that no matter what level of use the data privacy tools will see it doesn't matter because before they didn't have those tools and now they do.
Besides that the GDPR has much wider scope than just allowing people access to their own data. Also, you should expect that as people become more aware of these things - and consumers will be more aware - that such tools will see more use.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421326/smart-tv-hacking...
What I want is a law that requires a product to clearly indicate if it has ads or not in the software, and it cannot change at any point in the product's life. So I know what the price tag actually is.
Edit: I want to be clear. I am not against advertising or the freedom for a manufacturer to decide that advertising is their business model. What I want is to protect consumers who pay for a product that slowly devolves into an advertising box. I am also not expecting my rush-designed law to prevent ads or give consumers more options. All it would do is make it clear to consumers what they're paying for.
Advertising is just another form of payment. Imagine if you bought a smart fridge and 3 years in it required a subscription to use the "smart" part of it. You would be furious.
Sony makes money off every video game sale; attempting to get more from ads is just greedy. And how they present the ads as another game a very dark pattern.
Isn't it obvious? That's the buyers problem because any time they "buy" something for less than it actually costs, they actually get an ad/app/service subsidized experience.
This makes ads on the PS4 a product of greed alone.
The cost of games is like printers and ink. The hardware is the loss leader more than made up for by the "subscription" to those over-priced consumables.
There was anger and upset, and many articles in dead-tree magazines at the change in the expected price of full games, and sheer greed of manufacturers, during the launch phase of those consoles.
Ads were another bait and switch for yet more greed.
Ads are not an acceptable solution.
And since customers continue to buy PS4s it appears that they are (accepted).
1. 8 Inputs, with at least four HDMI and one HDMI accessible from the front panel. The remaining inputs would have at least two composite inputs. There would be no cable input since most cable companies, around here anyway, require a set-top box anyway.
2. An optical audio output, for those who wish to hook up a proper audio system. Those who don’t would get ok-ish built in speakers.
3. An always-on power outlet or two, to make hooking up the obligatory set-top box, Apple TV, etc easier. It would also have two USB power outlets, which are also always on, which would make hooking up a Raspberry Pi, Chromecast, etc easier. This requirement is optional, but desirable.
The remote on the TV would have a button for each input, a power button, volume controls, and a couple of buttons to support the on-screen settings menu (things like picture adjustments, activate/deactivate/rename inputs, etc). The TV would respond to HDMI CEC controls from attached devices, but would have the option to ignore these on particular inputs.
In the end, the TV provides the appropriate infrastructure to hook up whatever devices meet my needs. It also doesn’t try to solve problems that TV manufacturers aren’t good at solving.
Why does nobody make a TV like this? Assuming this was price-competitive with a regular TV, I’d buy two.
EDIT: I found one that’s pretty close[0].
[0] https://www.costco.ca/Haier-49UG2500-49-in.-4K-LED-TV.produc...
https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/bfgd-big-format-g...
> the Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD)
The only way this would be more delightful is if it were styled "BigFormat Gaming Display".
NVIDIA isn’t manufacturing the TVs themselves, they’re probably just going to do what they do with GSync, give OEMs a box and say “Hook it up to this type of connection and we’ll certify it”
[1] http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor
The closest thing I've found to what I want is a projector. But those are inconvenient for other reasons and I can't stand the visual corruption that occurs on a single-cell (affordable) projector.
https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/bfgd-big-format-g...
I wish it was possible to jailbreak TVs and make smart TVs dumb, but I don't think that is a feasible option.
Maybe one of the better brands will take note and develop something with a similar feature set, but a higher quality panel, etc. I’m not hopeful though.
USB3.1 supports a power draw up up to 3A, tho 1.5A is the more common implementation. Either will power a rPi just fine.
Fuck this wild-west anarchistic behaviour of software companies. When we have legal protection, we can make use of it.
The only way to be sure with untrustworthy devices like this is not to connect them to the network at all (i.e. use a separate device you can trust instead), or better yet, buy a dumb monitor instead.
Why let it ‘run’ on your network or the internet at all? I’ve never connected my newest TV to my WiFi, and can’t ever foresee a reason to do so. All of the apps I want are running on a connected box I trust to maintain a degree of privacy that I’d never assume from Sony, Samsung, or the like.
It’s not as if Netflix or Hulu actually force you to use the embedded TV apps.
2018: your TV needs internet access because updates
What the hell happened? This is ridiculous.
2018: defect in firmware found. New version deployed to internet connected devices and lifespan extended.
Both of those are made up scenarios, but I would argue that there are legitimate reasons for devices to be connected to the internet. Along with a bunch of terrible reasons, of course.
Right. Sure. The manufacturer will spend time and money to extend the life of devices already purchased.
I would prefer not take the chance, and see what happens. If the TV dies early, so be it.
There is a fix available - return it to the store.
2008: profits from TV sales are declining rapidly. Manufacturers are panicking.
2018: TV manufacturers partnered with some shady organization that pays them big bucks to install spyware into their Smart TVs.
I would never connect it over WiFi for fear that it wouldn't forget the network. If someone has a smart TV that only supports WiFi, then I would suggest they setup a new WiFi network, temporarily connect the TV to perform the software update, and then disable the WiFi network.
When you want the IoT device to have Internet access, temporarily relax the restriction.
I did this because my TV is mounted on a wall with a large desk in front and its ethernet port is inaccessible.
However, it works best for images and text-- video or graphics tend to have more issues, and there is definitely a lot of lag, as with remote desktop.
This is slightly worse from a control perspective, but quality wise it is great.
I also don't allow my screens to have Internet access; did that the second time Samsung demanded I approve a firmware update before I was allowed to watch my TV show. Fuck that.
I say, tackle the problem when it gets here, for now I’ve never had a smart TV hooked up to the internet and it’s not even because I hate Smart features, I just don’t see a point, my 30$ Chromecast covers every use case I could have.
I noticed the Samba nonsense when I set up the TV and have declined to participate -- but guess what? The TV still regularly connects to the domain flingo.tv, which is Samba's old name. It also connects to other strange things, like playstation-related domains. (and what is ndmdhs.com?)
I've set our WAN router to block samba/flingo and few other things, but my wife is (rightfully) concerned that I'll disrupt the Android update process, so I'm being careful.
It would be useful for someone with the skill, time and tools to investigate what places these Internet TVs are contacting, aside from the actual video content providers. If someone is doing that, I'd love to hear what they find.
If I decide to go "deep techie" on this, I'd probably pursue an alternative DNS approach. "Pi-hole" looks very interesting in this regard. I wish I hadn't just gotten rid of my old laptop. (smile)
Something I forgot to mention in my original comment -- that darn TV is accessing the Internet even when it is (supposedly) turned off. It's hard not be cynical about this stuff.
This could of course just be propaganda, but my friends who work at Apple seem to believe it too.
Smart TVs are full of stuff like this. They need to go.
We have two Roku TVs and two other TVs with Roku sticks. We also have AppleTvs connected to each of the TVs - one 4K ATV and the rest 3rd Gen ATVs.
Fortunately it's possible to fix the ads at least by blocking doubleclick and the roku ad/tracking domain at the router level. Doing this leaves a blank "empty poster" graphic instead of an ad, but doesn't seem to break anything else. Updates, search, and content all continue to work fine.
Why is youtube running? Apparently the TV is an Android base, but I have no information on how to flash it because if I could turn it into something not Sony produced I'd be a lot happier.
--
Another annoyance is that it /really/ wants me to use speech to text in everything, but the TV has (thankfully) no mic.... Why!?
This app pushes ads and tries to protect everybody except the user!
During the last 2 or so years I've drastically changed the kinds of media I consume. Now my primary sources of entertainment are a mix of books and audiobooks. Last year I think I read somewhere between 200 and 300 books.
Books don't include any tracking bullshit. If you stick with digital you can at least buy DRM-free copies in a few online stores. But even cooler, we actually have tons of huge buildings all across the US, each with thousands of books, and you can grab any one you want and read it for free!
Most books aren't specially interesting. The history of the books that you borrow in the public library is registered with your library customer card, address and name. Some local libraries or universities will ask you to write your name in a card when you take the book and let the card in the shelf. Therefore anybody could read the names of the former five or ten people that borrow the book before, and how many days they have it.
The complete history for some "person of interest" shouldn't be much complicated to obtain for authorities. Maybe anybody borrowing a lot of controversial texts in a short time and a small village would trigger some alerts. Who knows. Let suppose that this is a library specialized in history and the book title written in the public card is "mein kampf", for example.
They pushed back on the Patriot Act:
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa...
And have guidelines for librarians when law enforcement comes knocking:
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy/lawenforcement
Again, it will vary depending on your town and library.
> or in response to some form of judicial process (subpoena, search warrant, or other court order).
So basically, this info is available and can be used against you in a trial. Is a fake sense of privacy.
The main difference between public libraries and internet is that the former have much less controversial adult or political stuff but a lot of stablished literature touch taboo and very sensitive matter. Has this people read 'Lolita', 'the Catcher in the Rye' or took a look to 'The Capital' in the past?, has borrow a Quran recently? For how many days? How many times? Any attorney could easily use pseudoscience and cheap psychology to draw a line and build a relate leading to any conclusion of their interest with this info.
At startup there should be a prompt with suggested apps that they want the user to install, if the user selects an app to install it(after reading the description) then pull that app from the store.
He is basically asking to be spied in a different way, just like his cellphone does.
The doomsday scenario is if we have tons of little pop-up 3rd party data collectors that fail at infosec and produce datasets that become public knowledge via leaks and can be cross-referenced for all eternity.
Are these the depths to which we have sunk? I remember when a television was a thing that showed moving images using a cathode ray tube. The switch to liquid crystal displays was a genuine technological improvement. Now we need to treat our televisions as hostile surveillance devices because "ad tech" runs the world? I can't wait until our robot taxis drive diabetics to Krispy Kreme, then to Bob's Dialysis Center.
I was affected by this, I'm never getting a Samsung TV ever again.
[0] http://adage.com/article/digital/samsung-smart-tv-update-for...
My refrigerator shouldn't need to reboot. Or at one point get into an endless reboot cycle. This "smart" but mediocre age needs to go away
Really? The 40+ different pre-programmed wash cycle options aren't enough and you expect to think of new washing machine routines over the next year or two? Its like ... DLC but for washing my clothes. Who thinks this is a good idea?
I wonder how much of that functionality will still work in 10-15 years when the machine is getting long in the tooth.
I can't wait for botnets made up of old internet connected washing machines. You know its just a matter of time before some Russian teenager takes down github using your grandma's washing machine.
I scanned the code and don't find any egregious problems like hard coded passwords but I just assume the codebase is a complete shit show with flaws.
I will not connect those devices to my wifi.
A $50 player box does everything better than the built-in player hardware and software.
Don't we have such things, called "monitors"?
Maybe it's just a marketing thing but there are definitely differences which make monitors a hard sell to be used in place of TVs (e.g. in a living room, opposite to the sofa).
http://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-display/displays-tv...
The downsides are that it doesn't do HDR (that's typical for the pricepoint anyway, but I'm not sure they make their nicer lines as dumb-TVs "for business" if you wanted it). And it only has two HDMI inputs (which is fine for me, or I might get a separate splitter if I want to expand later).
The upsides: the TV just works, works fast, and never gets in my way. The remote-control is simple.
I'll avoid Smart TVs as long as I possibly can.
Google wants Android to be "cleaner," to better compete with Apple. This means no underhanded service modules or system extensions, and no intrusive or otherwise low quality privileged apps.
Android phones are inexpensive because Google doesn't make money directly from licensing the OS. Barriers to entry are low, competition is fierce, and hardware differentiation is only possible at the high end (e.g. vertically integrated OEMs like Samsung).
This means at the high end Samsung's product managers won't give up making Samsung phone differentiated through things like Bixby, which is a value-subtracted wart on Android, and at the low end, cheap OEMs won't stop taking payments from app makers who monetize by collecting user data.
Google has the power to reject OEM products that violate whatever standards Google chooses to impose on OEMs, but, as Microsoft learned decades ago, standing between a low margin OEM and a few extra dollars per unit is a difficult position. Once a product ships, policing updates is even harder.
If you are wondering "Why can't I get a 'clean' TV, phone, PC, etc?" This is why.
What is this about? Afaik windows (desktop) and windows phone all get 5+ years of patches.
Here it is: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Samsung-43-class-fhd-1080p-led-tv...
Seems things have not changed much at the company.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I actually will probably trust Facebook again once they have been suitably thrashed over past deeds and have had time to reflect on what went wrong.
Both companies will eventually become privacy conscious by necessity and have the resources (hopefully) to enforce it internally.
If they don't then the next revelation or the one after that might be their death knell.
What Facebook and Google lose in (pretty much entirely self-imposed, for now) regulations, they gain in the ability to index against all of your other activity, everywhere.
The scrappy startup has only one data point on you, and has to work with others to make it useful (which, with GDPR will be a lot harder to do).
I run two ctv ad camapigns partially using samba tv data.
Kinda feel like they are building in smart TV features just to say "me to". Plus some of the blu-ray players that came with Netflix and stuff aren't being updated anymore and then when the APIs are deprecated at some point. So then you have these boxes lose their originally functionality other than just playing disks.
Seems like displays last longer than the software.
Otherwise you may find that your smart TV is tracking everything you do and listening to everything you say! (ala 2001 A Space Odyssey; "I'm sorry Dave I can't do that.")
Last year, Sony's privacy policy for their Digital Paper app (without which the Digital Paper device is useless) and Headphones Connect (not required for the headphones to function) claimed the content of the device the app was installed on as fair game for telemetry without opt out. That's not OK. The Headphones Connect privacy language seems to have been revised in January, but I'm still not installing the app.
Digital Paper is marketed to legal and medical professionals!
You ask when these practices are going to end? They will not end while we quietly implement them! You look for who to blame? As a profession we need to look in the mirror.
These surveillance boxes masquerading as consumer electronics don’t build themselves.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-player/general/sony-a...
Source: helped build it.
Ha.
I have no guarantee my TV wont spy on me through my wireless network tomorrow (if not today). I have no true guarantee that my TV wont become exploitable to some botnet either. I rather be able to take my Android TV device and unplug it and still be able to use my TV with a DVD player if it came down to my device being exploited somehow.
Please put open boot loader so one can load Open source software in TVs.
Another great feature is that the TV will continue to get security updates and longer from a software perspective. Longer lasting TV will be better for the environment.
I just use a Chromecast and Kodi on a NUC for everything now.
I’ll agree in advance you shouldn’t have to secure yourself from inside the home network like this but I also assume there will be more and more smart devices exfiltrating data that you didn’t really want.
Very important. I used to have no password on any of my internal network devices, then changed to all the same pw. I need to put them all different, because threats seem more likely to come from internal "trusted" sources that we bring in
I wouldn't allow anything "smart" in my home, and I urge you to do the same. As for Netflix, I refuse to let a company know what I watch, or tolerate DRM, or agree to a contract not to give, lend or share copies. See stallman.org/netflix.html.
I don't trust the security on any networked device I don't have the source code for (and I don't really trust the media PC hardware either since its intel, not a fan of their security policies).
Why in 2018, we have "Smart TV" that requires so much settings and are not really anyway Smarter for most consumers. We then gives in so much privacy and information before we are allow to use it?
Have a look at the Dell P4317Q, decent 4k 43" screen, less than 1k€.
I use it as a TV, very satisfied (and since it's got no tuner, I get to avoid the Irish TV tax (but IANAL) !)
Only caveat is no HDMI 2.0, you can only get 4k@60hz via DisplayPort so not fully compatible with ChromeCast 4k for example.
If consumers are 'lucky' it will surface as something they can use. But the bare minimum of a persistent connection to load you ads and track your usage seems inevitable.
Get an AppleTV or whatever, plug it in, problem solved.
How long until you TV or microweave oven is part of a botnet?
What they need to do is just to make the panel with no network features. I ended up simply disconnecting the tv panel from the net work and using a small pc to get to netflix. Crude, but effective.
Part I. Information Collection
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We also collect usage data such as your search history (including letters you key in for searches, and utterances provided if you choose to use voice search (if available on your Roku Device)), search results, content and advertisements you select and view, including through use of automatic content recognition technology (ACR) (see “Smart TV Experience and ACR on Roku TVs” (Section I-B-4) and “Choices regarding Smart TV Experience and ACR on Roku TVs” (Section IV-E), below), and content settings and preferences, channels you add and view, including time and duration in the channels, and other usage statistics.
Love VR but feel bad ever since.. going to ditch it, I think
[0] https://www.vrheads.com/vr-and-your-privacy-how-are-these-co...
It's not an upgrade if you can't roll it back.
if you still buy sony products, I can't be sory for you.
Such condescension towards those not in the know, even though they are likely allies or soon will be, is pernicious and self-defeating.
I've been reasonably happy with my Panasonic.
That’s worse than the Samba.tv app in the OP since Vizio didn’t even tell people they were doing it.
What a mess, I'm really curious to see if there are any good choices. The trouble is what is good now may turn into a turd somewhere down the line.
Currently I have a Samsung and 2 LGs in the house.
I absolutely love that media interfaces are getting snappy again (e.g., no more hitting a button on the remote and waiting 4 seconds to it do finish opening a menu).
I think the law already did a decent job on poison & fire, so maybe there is hope for the privacy too.