Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook
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Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they're sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you're watching.
This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots.
With new TV's its time to view them as private as a browser (With less controls).
Or maybe at high volume it becomes negligible anyway.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out only being $4 a month to remove commercials. It almost hurts my feelings knowing how little I’m worth to advertisers...
For example I would never subscribe to a service with ads, regardless of price. The Hulu tier that includes ads would have to pay me about $30/mo before I would consider switching from the ad free tier.
The number might be unrelated to ad revenue at all and they figured that was the perfect threshold between capturing the highest number of "cheaper" subscribers while also maximizing new ad-free subscribers.
Their userbase is almost universally clueless as to what it is these devices are doing and what the goals of Sonos, as a company, must be.
They should have been one of the good ones - and I had such enthusiasm for their products - but they have proven to be very, very antagonistic towards their users.
This behavior is despicable and we must not accept it just because "I wouldn't connect the network cable/wifi anyway". Because one day that isn't an option and by then it is already too late.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_materials#Tr...
Services revenue in general is where all devices are going. If you subscribe to Netflix on your smart TV, the TV maker gets comms. Again, this referral/conversion model is pretty dated. Otherwise TV maker has no incentive to pre-bundle your app (same as Windows, some Android phones, Lenovo laptops, etc).
The big one is "supports popular services out of the box" is a selling point to consumers.
Even if it boots up to a store page where you can download them all, a whingy answer for "Does it do Netflix" will drive buyers to the next TV.
I was pretty put off the first time this happened. That said, I don't even know if I looked through the settings to see if I could turn it off..
And I would guess it's only audio fingerprinting, rather than full video.
And GDPR only requires that you opt in. So when you sign into the TV for the first time, it gives you an opt in choice and many do it. The States is less regulated but will be soon.
Edit: Also, on your first point, ACR is generally a variation of fingerprinting technology. It wouldn't be sending entire screenshots of whatever is being displayed even if it's not broadcast content, at least not in any variation I've heard of. It was the idea of uploading the entire image that I was questioning before.
And I also don't think it's easy to escape the scope of GDPR. I'm just saying companies come up with ways of being "GDPR compliant" and they've done so.
> We don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other type of default consent.
> We use clear, plain language that is easy to understand.
> We specify why we want the data and what we’re going to do with it.
> We give separate distinct (‘granular’) options to consent separately to different purposes and types of processing.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
These are of course just guidelines, but if you don't explicitly inform your users that you will be sending images of what's on the screen over the Internet, you are likely to get in trouble. (And no, a giant EULA-type wall of text probably wouldn't be sufficient)
It sends audio and/or video fingerprints (not frames, for privacy and bandwidth reasons), which are matched against a fingerprint database. Whatever people see on TV is usually 10 to 60 seconds behind the real live stream at the broadcaster (which is where the reference fingerprinting happens). GeoIP data can be used to roughly deduce where the TV is located, in order to better filter out false positives out of multiple matches (e.g. in the US where lots of programming on east/west side is just shifted by ~3 hours due to time difference).
Smart TV interfaces are almost uniformly worse than set top boxes (one or more of: bad UI, slow CPU, weird quirks, few updates) so you should avoid it anyway.
The current Apple TV (which I cite only because of familiarity) has a great UI, every major app, and robust HDMI-CEC support so you might never have to touch your TV’s remote again.
And Apple respects your privacy.
E.g. Some TVs will honor wifi off setting. Or alternatively setting the TV to use the Ethernet port.
Or if it needs something on the other end, set up old underclocked Raspberry Pi as a basic router/DHCP server that connects to nothing; power it with TV's USB port.
If you've got a fancy router, connect it to your network with a fixed IP and firewall deny all packets from/to its IP.
If you've got a fancy AP, set up an alternative SSID that connects to an unused VLAN or otherwise routes to nowhere.
(I'm almost astonished that advertising networks haven't switched to using raw IP addresses everywhere.)
The firewall has the same DNS block-lists as the Pi-Hole, but also has subscription lists of IPs to avoid. Most of those are spammers or malware, but can include whatever other category of malfeasance you desire.
With 5G, you will have the same problem. And I'd be very reluctant to buy anything stationary which has 5G connectivity.
I specifically bought a smart TV with Roku instead of whatever software Samsung/Sony is doing for these reasons.
And you really believe that?
Consider that even the most trivial thing that makes Apple look bad gets leaked. If Apple was selling your private information, it would have leaked long before now. Also their financial reports show no indication of revenues that could be associated with private information marketing.
And regarding Apple - I hear this "not their business model" argument often but I see zero real life reasons why it couldn't be but we wouldn't know it. It is like saying that "John only trades tomatoes, it is impossible to him to sell cucumbers, it is not his business model". How is even related, monster corporations have multiple divisions with multiple business models, one doesn't exclude another.
PS: this is for the sake of discussion. Personally I also tend to think that Apple collects much less data than FAGM, and there were experiments that indirectly support this theory. I'm thinking about moving to Apple ecosystem but it is rather costly and will cause vendorlock. Not an easy choice.
Yes, I think most people understand this and say "selling data" as shorthand (because, for a lot of people, it's a distinction without a difference).
Yeah, exactly for their users in China.
I was actually really pissed a while back because my in-laws were over and when I came home they told me "For some reason you hadn't connected your TV to the internet. We gave it your wifi password, and now it works!" Thanks. Now I have to change wifi passwords, and the power light on the TV constantly blinks because it thinks it should be connected to the internet, but isn't.
It all comes down to lack of transparency/oversight and the option to exercise control as an individual.
Breaking down the parent's post:
""" What's funny about this is that I think this is a legitimate and relatively non-evil use case. """ - parent is saying that fingerprinting so the advertisers know who saw the ads is legitimate and relatively non-evil.
It all comes down to lack of transparency/oversight and the option to exercise control as an individual. """ - parent acknowledges that not telling the user and not making it configurable can be problematic.
If you consider tracking an anonymous identifier for the purposes of better marketing "spying" then I think that's a stretch. Calling out TV in particular for it is a bit silly - it's simply everywhere.
"...without their consent and without telling them about it."
Yes they are. You opt in or out when you buy the TV. They tell you about it then. You can be like most people and not read the fine print, but then don't be all surprised when someone's pulling the wool over your eyes.
If information about me or my machines is being collected without my express informed consent, that counts as spying.
Also "anonymous identifier" is a bit of an oxymoron. If the identifier is unique, then anonymity is not part of the equation.
Eventually the marginal increase in profit is less than the marginal increase in adtech cost. I wouldn't be surprised if many industries passed that point years ago. There's probably a lot of hype and hubris disguising that fact, but someone's going to make a successful business case out of cheap, low-creepiness spray-and-pray advertising.
"Advertisers like ACR data because it provides second-by-second feedback on how their ads are performing. Nielsen provides its data in 15-minute blocks, so if viewers tuned out after the first ad in a pod, the advertiser has no way of knowing. And since IP addresses are included, companies like iSpot.tv and Data + Math are able to use that information to create multi-touch attribution ratings that help advertisers understand how certain ads and placements helped move viewers through the sales funnel, from seeing the ad, to googling the product to actually buying it. It’s a lengthy process that requires a lot of data and a lot of rigor, but it’s an excellent way to prove to marketers that TV advertising actually works."
https://www.inscape.tv/resources/why-acr-data-is-poised-to-b...
* in theory, as a civil matter, they could make you destroy any unlicensed copies, but they would have a hard time getting criminal charges pressed, as well as proving damages from watching a TV show from an unlicensed provider vs a licensed one
When I noticed my Roku TV was sending something to some remote analytics or tracking server every 30 seconds whenever it was turned on, I just blocked everything coming from it.
Eventually though I factory-reset it and didn't bother connecting it to the network at all. All the on-TV apps are junk and I'd rather just use an Apple TV (which sends it's own analytics, I know).
That's a far cry from relaying an audio recording of a surgical conference containing HIPAA-sensitive data.
> The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft.
Maybe someone can find the referenced studies to see what data is actually sent...
> other smart devices including speakers and cameras
In my perspective, these are other devices entirely, like smart speakers and those video hubs the FAANG companies produce, or maybe entrance cameras.. Some reasoning: what kind of television doesn't have speakers.
Insurance might be interested, for one party. Or parents. Or pimps.
They are in my go bag now for when I have to go last minute and get checked in
Which is always the issue - people want a 65" TV, but they don't want to spend $6000 on it. But if they can have it for $2000 (for example) they're all over it, glossing over the mostly unobtrusive privacy invasion that goes with it.
So what are the options for a consumer willing to pay for privacy? Will console manufacturers be more respectful for example? (I've considered a console to serve as a bluray player / host OS for streaming apps that also plays games).
Or are we stuck using dumb tvs and connecting out laptops to them via HDMI? (And thus no 4K iirc)
>Or are we stuck using dumb tvs and connecting out laptops to them via HDMI? (And thus no 4K iirc)
HDMI 2.0 (2013) supports 4k/60Hz.
HDMI 2.1 is significantly more ambitious with 8/10k resolution and variable refresh rate.
> If a "theatrical release" watermark is detected in a consumer Blu-ray Disc audio track, the accompanying video is deemed to have been sourced from a "cam" recording. If the "AACS watermark" is present in the audio tracks, but no accompanying and matching AACS key is found on the disc, then it is deemed to have been a "rip" made by copying to a second blank Blu-ray Disc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
Edit: that same page says its now a requirement for all consumer bluray players to use this tech. But I don't remember seeing those messages for years. The pirates must be winning with their methods of changing the signatures.
Don't buy a TV at all. Instead, buy a large monitor and hook it up to a computer to act as a media center.
My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16727319
How Smart TVs in Millions of U.S. Homes Track More Than What’s On Tonight
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/business/media/tv-viewer-...
I no longer have a TV connected to the internet, I only have a local Plex connected to the TV and a Chromecast for things like Netflix.
Edit: I've checked with my wife who has an ad supported Kindle for over a year and keeps it in flight mode for months at a time. It never did that to her. So either Amazon changed that a long time ago, or I've believed a lie.
Worrying. "Flight" mode exists for a reason and should not be overridden.
Don't get me wrong the Kindle shouldn't do what it's doing but it's by no means a safety issue.
It's a totally different affair if you are receiving a signal by a 100 Watt transmitter at 10 Km or a signal from a 1 Watt transmitter at 5 meters distance. The 1 Watt transmitter will overpower anything in its band with great ease and any dirt on the spectral output will have the same effect in other bands. Note that most cellphones will crank up their output if they can't connect to a base station that they can receive.
Of course plane designers will still do what they can to reduce this nuisance but leaving our phone on makes it harder than it should be. Please turn your phone off or to airplane mode and consider it a very small price to pay for flying an airplane.
Yes, flight mode does matter, no it probably won't crash a plane but does it have to before you would consider following a very simple rule?
But, more importantly, it puts your phone's radio through an unusual high-power-draw situation that the phone's manufacturer may not have bothered testing for, which can make phone batteries explode that might not have otherwise ever exploded.
Oh, and also, a plane-load of people whose phones are all ranging hogs circuits on a bunch of towers at once (for no productive purpose, since the phones don't have high-enough SNR to actually communicate anything useful with any of the towers they can "see"), so the cellular service providers have politely asked the FAA to get people to not do that.
> The FAA did not consider changing the regulations regarding the use of cell phones for voice communications during flight because the issue is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The ARC did recommend that the FAA consult with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review its current rules.
So it seems to be the FCC that has made this decision (in consultation with the FAA it sounds like).
[0] https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...
2.7 million people fly on airplanes every day.
Even if you think the vast majority of them turn their phones off, it's still a huge number of people who don't.
Was on a full plane from CA to TX a while back. During the final landing approach I heard dozens of alerts as the plane got nearer to the ground.
Nobody cared one bit.
That sounded way too low so I checked -- I think your number is US domestic flights, worldwide we have about 12.6 million daily passengers.
If airplanes could be brought down by turning on a cellphone you would never have been allowed to travel with one in the first place.
As others suggested: it was an app-supported Kindle indeed. So it's not like Amazon went crazy unprovoked evil or something.
Edit: I've checked with my wife who has an ad supported Kindle for over a year and keeps it in flight mode for months at a time. It never did that to her. So either Amazon changed that a long time ago, or I've believed a lie.
What's the worst that could happen? It's not like a plane's gonna fall out of the sky - Exhibit A.
Yeah that's gross. Btw, Amazon does sell some cheaper ebook readers on the understanding that they will show ads. Was that the case here?
It was fairly straightforward to replace the ad images. Now it shows me cat pictures when turned off.
Kindle Voyage 1st generation, if that's relevant.
So not only did mine exit flight mode it somehow re-enabled updates and updated itself.
I just use a Kobo now.
EULAs are an entirely separate problem, though.
I'm not saying it's ok to ignore flight mode options, but neither is the expectation to completely avoid ads when buying this very version of the Kindle.
I have couple kindle paperwhites of different generations, and none of them did any unexpected update for years.
Type in "4k -smart" without the quotes in the search box. Use the filters on the left to narrow it down to TVs (like selecting what size you want).
They do, but from what I understand you'll pay more for such panels. As I understand it they're intended for commercial use.
That actually sounds like the dream.
Plan on getting one with a stick PC.
The UI seems to gotten much more sluggish over the last year or two. I have a 500 Mbps internet connection, but speed tests in the TV's browser measure only 40 Mbps (on Wi-Fi or Ethernet). The TV's apps load images and data as if I'm on a 2G connection.
The Amazon and YouTube apps hang if I turn the TV off and try to resume playback later. I have to switch to two other apps and then back to Amazon to force the app to crash. Then I can launch it again. And sometimes the only way to exit the Netflix app is to power cycle the TV.
I used to joke with my brother and turn his TV on/off, he went crazy thinking the TV is broke.
In general, my last like, 5 Samsung products have been disappointing, mostly due to software, or lack there of.
It makes it a bit more convenient to switch between my Roku/Switch/PC when I can push a button on the remote to have the devices ping the TV themselves.
I do prefer a dumb TV, but it doesn't have to be completely brainless.
Edit- my bad, it was a Hitachi. The vizio tv I have was purchased last year. However both are dumb, they have no internet capabilities at all
Which is great news - they are fantastic displays, they last forever, and they behave just like a very big computer monitor.
NEC commercial displays (P461, for instance) are not expensive. I highly recommend you look into it.
Or somebody will invent a small short-range backhaul-less 5G spoof microcell you can put next to the TV that will confuse the TV's modem into connecting to nothing.
Or just wrap the TV in a Faraday cage. But keeping the screen visible might make that tricky.
There's always been rumours that some Intel vPro CPUs have modems (and entire secondary CPUs..) built in to the chip itself.
Atom x3/x5/x7 processors have a modem in the CPU package.
I imagine disabling the modem without breaking the TV would be impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_materials#Tr...
It's getting to the point where it's not even watchable. I click back to exit and maybe go back later but I have hundreds of partially watched videos I've forgotten about.
And they're paying for that. Well, more like, and YOU'RE paying for that.
YouTube has YouTube Red so you can kill ads. Seems like either way you're going to pay.
https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
I have never seen a single ad or anything remotely like it. The only thing is the remote has dedicated buttons for Amazon something and Rakuten (both not available in my country) and Netflix.
Basically create a new hidden ssid and make a new rout that goes nowhere
Then enter SSID and password into the tv
You can monitor that interface too
Stop making everything connected, or at least make it work properly without Internet access, and stop connecting devices at any cost.
But I can imagine it popular in apartment buildings. To be fair, if my TV connects to a network on its right own, I'd return it.
The lines seem to be blurred between what data is being sent by the TV OS itself versus a third party app that someone may have decided to use during the period that the researchers watched outbound network connections.
If someone is using the Netflix app, this necessitates that the TV must communicate with Netflix. How else would it work? Similarly, if you use the YouTube app, you would definitely get some requests to Google. Surely some developers of smart TV apps have decided to use Mixpanel or Adobe for analytics.
The "sensitive user data" alluded to in the headline is later admitted to be, at a minimum, "information about the device people are using, their locations, and possibly even when they are interacting with it".
Let's unpack that. It's pretty common for every web browser to send a user agent. Why shouldn't apps for a TV send device info to the app maker? Location can be inferred via IP, like any network request (nothing special here). And with any request, you of course know the time it was made (and could infer the interaction that produced it, like opening the app).
So they've told us nothing to support the headline. Indeed, the original paper from Northeastern notes that they did not try to inspect the data or MITM encrypted connections, so all we know is that requests are being made to these services during the course of operating the device and its apps. Not that the device manufacturer itself is sending your data, unprompted, to these third parties. So, the headline does not match the story.
Seems like university PR office must have gone a little crazy with this one. Why is nobody on HN questioning such a sensationalist, substanceless article?
For now I'm comfortable using my appleTV but I like the fact that I can disconnect it at any time. I want a TV that will simply display whatever signal it receives without any connectivity required.
If you have a separate box for TV anyways, its perfect. Don't need anything else.
Otherwise, you can simply not connect your smart TV to the internet. Just leave it unconnected and use it as if it is a dumb TV.
It doesn't end there; while I was looking for a monitor I found several models running Android! One can not be too careful these days.
That said, it is still possible to get a Dumb TV, say up to 55'. Larger devices are almost exclusively ~~spies~~ smart.
But if you're willing to spend some extra $$, you can get a "meeting room display" with the same panel, but zero smart features and no speakers.
Meeting room displays you can buy from anyone, they're just basically really big monitors without any smart features. The only downside is that, they're a good 100-200% more expensive than the exact same panel with smart features =/
Example - https://www.samsung.com/in/business/smart-signage/profession...
All I see of the LG interface during normal use is a small box in the top right corner that says "Apple TV" on boot and "Denon available" or something like that when the speaker systems has booted.
Also, the screen turns on quickly so there's practically no waiting for anything.
I was thinking of getting one of those in-store displays instead of a TV, but they don't usually have HDR.
A++++, would buy again!
Though HDMI has evolved into a supper chatty protocol with information going both ways. HDMI doesn’t allow a TV to access the internet connection of a laptop or ps4 connected to it, right?
Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them. This doesn't give them any information other than the channel you have selected at any given moment (and whether the TV's actually on), but that's enough for ad tracking and viewership ratings, and that's usually all the network cares about.
(Note that I still find that whole feedback loop a bit uncomfortable; I won't ever have a cable subscription myself. But I have a hard time believing those cheap set top boxes are sophisticated enough to extract frame data from arbitrarily televisions over HEC; the compatibility issues alone would be a nightmare to code around.)
I believe they were worried about the reverse - the (isolated, wifi-disabled) Smart TV using ethernet-over-HDMI to phone home.
https://www.sencor.com/ultra-hd-televisions?smarttv=false
There is not a lot of options though. And getting a DumbTV larger than 55' is near-impossible.
I've already got many NEC panels around the office and they're fantastic.
They almost got me, but thankfully there was an option to skip that step. But I'm sure they'd hook my parents and friends for sure.
My ideal TV has power and video in and nothing else. Basically a monitor. I have a separate box for content and another for input switching.
Seriously, the melodrama people treat their privacy with is frequently astounding.
No way! Has that ever been news? It is the first thing that comes to mind when some product 'needs' to be connected to the internet. Sending private data is most likely the only reason a internet connection can be made with the device. All the 'great' software around it is only fluff supporting to lure people sending their private data unknowingly. Do they send microphone and camera data home? Of course, that's the cream. Oh, and do they protect your sensitive data well? Nah, that's not a priority, who cares..
In the past you bought a new tv, and the manufacturer was happy and treated you with respect. Today you think you buy a tv, but tv is actually the secondary feature, you just bought an intrusion device that collects your private life in order to send it to the manufacturer for selling it.
I have a new x-large smart tv which I would never connect to the internet for these reasons. I use a dedicated pc with a good graphics card that connects through HDMI. On my couch I have a wireless mouse and keyboard. With this dead simple setup I cannot only watch regular tv, I can of course do anything you can think of doing on a pc. It also has become my favorite gaming setup.
I think governments should be more active to protect citizens of course. Non-technical people are prey nowadays. I despise this new economy and I'll never ever want to make any money of of it, I'd rather live and die poor.
>>I have a new x-large smart tv which I would never connect to the internet for these reasons. I use a dedicated pc with a good graphics card that connects through HDMI.
Assuming you use windows on it, haven't you just traded one type of telemetry for the other?
Projectors are safe for now, but I think it's because they are seen as a niche/hipster thing.
Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?
for a while you couldn't find a tv with decent features that wasn't 3d. happy to see that trend be over.
unfortunately, it seems that industrial tv panels seem to be going away as well.
Huh, why would one avoid TVs that have 3D?
Don't care enough about 3D to buy my own 3D glasses though, so solution (don't watch 3D movies) is the same.
1. A TV that just displays video from an HDMI input.
2. An A/V amplifier that just receives an HDMI A/V signal from a single input, passes the video from that to to the TV, and does Dolby/DTS/whatever decoding of the audio, amplifies the result, and sends it to my speakers.
3. An HDMI switch that I can plug assorted A/V source into (FireTV, Roku, OTA TV tuner, Blu-ray player, Cable box, etc) into, which I'll connect to the A/V receiver.
(Actually, what I really want is for the switch to split the A/V signal into separate audio and video on two different HDMI ports. Video goes to the TV, audio the A/V amplifier--except now it is just an A amplifier. But I think there may be licensing restrictions on that kind of splitting that make it so you can only split at the step that converts to analog for the speakers).
All of the HDMI connections should support Ethernet over HDMI.
None of these should have WiFi built-in. They networking should be via Ethernet. If I want WiFi, I'll add a WiFi access point to the home theater LAN.
I'm not sure how Ethernet over HDMI interacts with HDMI switches. If you have, say, a 4 input, 1 output HDMI switch, does that switch all signals, so that you only have Ethernet between the one selected input and the output, or are the Ethernet lines treated specially and connected like a hub, so that all devices on both sides of the switch can communicated over Ethernet, regardless of which input is currently selected for A/V?
If the later, then the home theater LAN can use the HDMI ports. If the former, then all the devices need an Ethernet port.
I frequently use hdmi but I still use the my tvs smart functions as it has dedicated amazon and netflix buttons and other buttons to control those apps. Works 99% of the time perfectly and than I'm not at risk of hdmi cable connections to my laptop so i use it all the time. Oh, and mine was a pretty good deal at the time (65 inch with 4k and smart functions for $1,000 3.5 years ago). What is so shitty about the smart tv functions you use?
Unfortunately, outside of rural areas that may not be under your control.
It's not something that should just be left up to chance, but I also don't know of a good solution other than regulation.
Some enterprise systems don’t require users to enter passwords, but the software still uses them internally when talking to the network.
PS: Unless you know of some other exception?
Yes, you can be sure. The network capabilities aren't hidden spy equipment. You can disable WiFi and simply not connect Ethernet. The market for your data is relying on the indifference of 99% of TV buyers to data collection. Manufacturers and advertisers -- at least those not too far down the grey market rabbit hole -- don't care enough about the tiny fraction of people that actively thwart this collection activity to employ some sort of legally dubious super sekrit network capability to capture your precious data.
Ethernet over HDMI is a thing, isn't it?
* https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/325215/appletv-eth...
Consider three ways to play a movie:
1. From a source device (AppleTV, Blu-ray player, etc) connected to an A/V receiver.
2. From an app on your Smart TV, with the TV passing sound over ARC or optical to the A/V receiver.
3. From a source device, as in #1, but with the device connected to one of the TV's HDMI inputs instead of to the receiver. Sound going from the TV to the A/V receiver via ARC or optical.
Everything I've found seems to agree that #1 can handle anything, with the only limit being formats that are newer than your A/V receiver understands. Mine doesn't know about Dolby Atmos, for example, so wouldn't be able to do that.
For #2, the limit seems to be the bandwidth of ARC or optical. Optical can't do 5.1 or higher PCM, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or a view others. It can only do stereo PCM, or matrix surround formats.
ARC, if your TV and A/V receiver implement a new enough version of the HDMI spec, has the bandwidth for all those formats.
For #3, some sources say that there are licensing limits, enforced by HDCP, that disallow the TV from passing a high bandwidth audio signal directly from an HDMI input to an HDMI output. Instead, the TV has to do the Dolby or DTS decoding itself, and then re-encode to a lower bandwidth Dolby or DTS format, and send that on.
I think that the very latest version of HDCP will remove that restriction, if both the TV and the the A/V receiver support it (not sure if it also needs to be on the source). But I don't think that is expected to start showing up on consumer equipment until next year.
Unfortunately, my receiver is not 4K, and I really don't want to get a new receiver until that latest HDCP is out, to maximize future proofing. So for now I have to choose between #2 and #3 when I want to watch something in 4K. I think the ARC supported by my TV and/or my receiver probably only has enough bandwidth to support matrix formats for surround sound, but with #2 I think it will be using a matrix encoded bitstream from the source, just passing it through. With #3, it's going to be going through decoding and re-encoding on the TV, to then be decoded again on the receiver. #2 seems better, then.
This is all WAY too freaking complicated.
Opened it up, disconnected the WiFi module, connected my Apple TV to it and am pretty happy.
The thing is, in my opinion that you shouldn't have to set-up PiHole in the first place.
If we do that and don't vote with the feet and wallets we won't see a single DumbTv in a few years. It is still possible to find a non-Smart device. Don't pay for someone's ad-space!
There is a limited selection of 'dumb' TVs in the world. The 50-inch Sceptre E505BV-FMQK has no "smart" capabilities and lacks WiFi or Ethernet.
The usual advice is to simply not connect the internal "smart" capabilities to anything; disable WiFi and don't connect a Ethernet cable. The built-in host and all the nefarious crap it wants to run can't reach anything unless you somehow connect it. Just use the TV tuner and HDMI inputs. If you need a network connection for streaming from some local source then block the TV at your Internet router.
Like the adware you get with many laptops and other mobile devices there are 'financial incentives' to manufacturers to build this stuff in, so don't expect the practice to abate anytime soon.
The prices don't seem outrageous.
As one of the draws of Ultra HD displays for consumers is HDR content which has become more common with online films/tv, UHD Blu-Rays and games.
Into it I plugged a Denon HEOS receiver, which is WiFi-connected for the purposes of serving as a Spotify and AirPlay output device, and which drives wired and wireless speakers. Into the HEOS runs an Apple TV for video streaming, a DVD player for old times' sake, and my wife's phonograph.
Newegg and Walmart had the lowest prices but turned out to fronting for the same seller, who was running a bait-and-switch. I ordered through Newegg first – and received a different product! A big heavy LCD display. I shipped it back to them for a refund.
Then I ordered through Walmart – and again received that other product! After the seller refused to exchange or refund and stopped answering e-mails, Walmart refunded me the price – and told me to keep the LCD display, which I donated.
Finally I ordered from CDW, who shipped me the right product – but under all the cardboard and styrofoam it was packed in, the corner of the display was bent up 90 degrees! And the display wouldn't light up.
To their credit, CDW shipped a replacement unit right away. It was in perfect condition – you can watch me unbox it at https://youtu.be/o9Mu4K-ApkU – and I'm watching it right now.
Took me 30 seconds, three of the TVs on page 1 are not smart: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/tvs/all-flat-screen-tvs/abcat01...
You have to find your way to the "commercial" section of LG's website and even then find the ones that are dumb.
I'm very happy with it. 55" 4k, a bit cheaper than its comparable consumer line. Simple remote, doesn't hassle me, quick to start and stop.
I was able to purchase it from "Canada Computers" but YMMV in your region etc. Not always easy to get the "business" line of products as a consumer but very often (TVs, laptops) it is preferable to the junk they'll sell to consumers from the big box stores even at the same price-point.
This is no different than PC makers who make money from bundled crapware and stickers plastered on the computer.
People use to complain about the “Windows Tax” and thought the computer would be cheaper without it being bundled, but the PC manufacturers actually loss money when Windows wasn’t bundled because they also couldn’t bundle third party crap.
[1] eg https://www.dell.com/en-au/work/shop/accessories/apd/210-aqx...
You build your own set top box to connect to it, which can be pretty good quality while being pretty cheap [1]
If you need free to air tv plug a usb dvb dongle into it. Use Kodi, possibly witha mythtv plugin and enjoy.
[1] https://www.pine64.org/devices/single-board-computers/rock64...
Not everyone here is a pre-IPO employee. I'd say 90% maybe, not everyone.
55'' for 380. Google is easy.
I've found other brands. It's hard to find a dummy, but doable.
I couldn't find anything in stock that was larger than 55'.
edit
The tv definitely phones home too, my Pi Hole blocks a few hundred attempts to lookup log-ingestion.samsungacr.com, xpu.samsungelectronics.com and upu.samsungelectronics.com per day.
Apple is definitely a for profit business and they charge for their products instead of subsidizing with data aggregation or theft.
Statements like yours seem to exist in some weird ideological vacuum. Reality is far messier and much more nuanced.
So unless you're willing to let your ideology clash with reality to produce something of value in the real world, it's essentially grandstanding.
Conceptually, I understand that they don't want to continue paying for a therapy if you're not actually using the equipment. But having a wireless modem built-in is a bridge too far.
That's really bad -- they should be well insulated
(tip your waiter)
- place them in a faraday cage
- open and cut the antenna traceI suppose I could just never connect it to WiFi, but then it wouldn't get firmware updates.
1) How exactly is this targeting information useful to advertisers? Do they pay for targeting in order to pay for fewer ads?
2) Where is the market for "user data"? How do you sell your blog visitor's data?
3) How much is the data worth? Some equivalent to CPM? Could you monetize your blog not by showing ads but by selling user information?
Yes. There can be more and smaller advertisers when you can tailor ads to the market. Nontargeted advertising is economic only for biggest brands.
Data that is collected sparsely can help to identify interests and match ads to users. Geographic location helps to match adds from your local market to the blog the user is currently reading, for example.
Continuously collected information can be used to direct and predict behavior. The user matches profile of stressed person. People under stress have low impulse control, show them ads for products that are typical impulse purchases. S
>Where is the market for "user data"? How do you sell your blog visitor's data?
You don't. You add common trackers to your site and receive income from ads trough them.
> Could you monetize your blog not by showing ads but by selling user information?
No. This does not work in small scale. Single blogger can't create much value by selling data directly. Google or Facebook do that.
I guess it's time to fire up Wireshark. I love these TV's because they can be integrated with home automation like Home Assistant. But maybe it's time to put it on a VLAN with no access to the WAN.
I bought an Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8345 Projector refurbished for around $470 a couple years ago to replace my 720p Panasonic AX200U. The Epsons have a solid warranty and will easily project a 100"+ image in a dark room on a basic (<$200) screen. The bulbs work out to about 10 cents/hour of usage.
This 3100 is basically the newer (and better) version of mine for $684, and the one I'd get if I was buying today. https://epson.com/Clearance-Center/Home-Entertainment/Home-C...
This cheap SBC comes to mind, there's a very similar one from OrangePI too. https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&...
It would be nice having say a version for traveling with laptops etc if we don't trust the hotel connection and one to protect from being spied by the SmartTVs, where changing from one to the other requires nothing more than swapping an SD and reboot.
That would be harder, especially true in case of encrypted traffic.
"Moreover it is a moving target, as the firmware can, at some point in time, use another endpoint (especially after an update)."
This one might be easier to fight than the former. Upgradabe black lists might be a solution, not unlike some antispam software work: the firewall software downloads weekly/daily from a central server (1) a list of all legit/evil addresses and checks where the TV attempts to connect against that list, then filters traffic as required.
(1) I would assume we would trust a centralized server for this purpose as much as we would trust a server holding spam and malware sites.
For the customer eager to benefit from a connection to the Internet it may be a lost battle, he will be spied on.
Also on this thread is the supposition that eventually TVs will just have their own cellular data connections: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21010790
Sickening, really.
Oh, and WiFi won't change how much bandwidth you're using. And given the low (compared to Bluray) bitrate of 4k content on the streaming services, you probably don't need gigabit.
And, it's not for everyone, but I personally like just hooking up a small PC (Intel's NUC works well here) and using that instead of AppleTV or Roku.
I have a Sony TV that I absolutely love but the built in Android TV will have a row of ads on the main screen. I configured my WiFi to use AdGuard DNS and now they have just disappeared. The Android TV is bit faster too.
If Sony, Phillips or some other manufacture made a SmartTV with software that rivalled the AppleTV, or even just a Chromecast, then it would make some sense to save the money from the AppleTV and buy a better TV.
The thing is that all of the SmartTVs I tried are slow and confusing. You're better off buying a cheaper TV and getting the $200 AppleTV HD.
If you factor in the cost of developing shitty software, then maybe there would be more profit in just release a new dumb TV.
Our TV is old enough that it's not smart. We mostly watch things from the AppleTV on it, plus some from our very small cable package/DVR.
Choosing a set-top-box vendor you trust (and for us, that's Apple) gives you everything you'd get by trusting Samsung or Vizio, right? What even turn ON the network features of the TV?
Knowing what else gets collected online, this isn't a big concern for me. I'm more worried about these devices not having great security and not getting security updates for their entire life.
> Threat Management Alert 1: A Network Trojan was Detected. Signature ET MALWARE Misspelled Mozilla User-Agent (Mozila). From: 192.168.1.x:46372, to: 23.52.164.68:80, protocol: TCP
My firewall picks this up, otherwise I'd never know it.
The dst IP in your alert is an akamai one according to centralops.
I wish the people who make my parents' TV would stop trying to trick them into doxing themselves.
I understand that Netflix is going to track me when I'm a Netflix subscriber, but why should Facebook do it?
config.samsungads.com samsungacr.com samsungads.com samsungcloudsolution.com samsungcloudsolution.net samsungotn.net samsungtvads.com
This is why regulation is IMPORTANT. A whole industry can decide this is their business model, an industry where competitors can't really get in, and consumers are screwed. Well just don't drive a car, just don't use a tv is not a valid argument.
My TV's UI is incredibly laggy and Vizio forces upon me a barely tolerable UI with the first two rows on the main page consisting of unhideable suggestions on what I should watch---even content that I cannot watch since I'm not subscribed to every service.
I used to be(and still am) a big fan of the Smart TV concept, seeing as there's a whole quad core ARM SoC built into my TV that might as well take the streaming duty instead of having an extra HTPC or Chromecast lying outside of it.
The number of devices I have plugged into my home network is astonishing and the chatter / discovery they do to each other is interesting to watch.
Zero trust model for everything ... I guess ?
Cars are going this way too. The current model year has all car manufacturers producing these ruined vehicles. Hold what you got, or buy used until this bullshit is regulated away.
this is true for your banking apps to music apps like Pandora and Spotify
you can get Netguard, which functions as VPN/Firewall and get visibility into the data exfilitration that is happening right now on your Android phone (and block some of it). Similar things should exist on iPhone too
CCC had some coverage recently, but this has been happening for a long long time - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc
*
google apps are also constantly trying to phone home and panic when they cannot connect to the mothership, causing signficant battery drain... I haven't seen them trying to call facebook directly though
Granted there are plenty of other ways to get that data.
They will bring in a new era of surge-based pricing, which will eliminate all tariff comparisons as it will be impossible to compare.
Higher pricing is already starting with non-spy tariffs being more expensive than spy tariffs.
If you happen to buy a home with one, and want the spy meter removed, you are at the mercy of the supplier and they will embark on a campaign against you to keep it. The lies will soon start saying they have no analogue meters in stock etc.
Here is a novel idea: if your shit is so great for users, not contrary to their interests, why don't you ask them to opt-in?
At this point, people have to wonder what benefits the IOT fabric provides THEM versus what benefits it provides the vendor or configurator/bundler...
Of far greater concern is the pile of unpatched linuces these crapware bloatware "embedded linux" devices tend to be equipped with. It's an entry vector...
or hardcoded "admin:admin" login credentials...