FBI warns that connected televisions can provide hackers a window into homes

I think it'll be a long time before any TV has a native app store as decent as Apple's (and probably Amazon's, but I don't have personal experience with that so can't vouch for it).

It's been shown time and again that developer support of past products is atrocious. You just can't count on getting your apps updated through the whole lifecycle of the device. This is partly understandable, as older hardware just isn't going to be able to handle some things (say, H.265). But even so, the developers seem to be doing little more than paying lip service.

The best strategy is to have a dumb monitor, and a device like Roku that you can upgrade very cheaply every year or two.

That's more a criticism of "crappy Android boxes" rather than a praise of builtin TV applications. The latter are still barely usable and quickly become obsolete (with updates stopping 1-2 years down the line), compare that to a good Android box like Nvidia Shield.

> Why have a seperate device and two remotes when you don't have to? I'm convinced that the marketshare for these external media devices will flatline and steadily decline.

You may be right long term but it's been years since we've had "Smart TVs" and they are still far from being as good as decent media boxes. That to me means there's an underlying reason, probably a misalignment of incentives.

And btw, depending on your needs you can use a single remote just fine (I use an Fire TV stick bluetooth remote, connected to the Nvidia Shield, for controlling the Shield, the Sony TV and the Yamaha amplifier through HDMI-CEC). With such a combination of different parts from different manufacturers I'm surprised how well it all works.

Are the cellular providers going to give free cellular access to these manufacturers or something? Consumers aren't going to pay for that. No one's going to buy a TV that requires an additional $30/month for a data plan.

Never mind that all backdoors work more or less the same.

Edit: I guess I was mistaken. They were not caught doing that yet.

If your neighbor, for example, has a syndicated WIFI like Fios or Xfinity, your TV can try those. Also, it has 24/7 free time to sit there and break passwords, if needed. Even a slow CPU would score some eventually. And finally, the room is probably full of other devices which themselves may have connections; a TV can communicate ultrasonically with those to exfiltrate your data.

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/113502/how-to-p...

https://www.aircrack-ng.org

https://www.securityweek.com/stealthy-data-exfiltration-poss...

A big selling point (for better or worse) is not requiring you to buy more boxes or hook up wires. Just as you see with cheap IP cameras which neglect to steer users toward secure setup and only tout the "easy wireless setup! Just point to the picture on your iPhone screen!" It's the flip side of the ubiquitous marketing bullet points: Easy! No wires! Apps!

The FBI issuing a warning about this is helpful. It may help create a market for dumb TVs that cost more than smart TVs.

Apple TV?

Most TVs include speakers. Even the non-smart ones. By adding networking and apps, that TV can be used stand-alone.

For people starting out with their first home theater setup, they can get started with just the TV. With a dumb TV, they'd need the TV, and a receiver/speakers setup or a soundbar, and something to provide content like a Blu-ray player or cable box or Roku.

By making the TV smart, the TV maker has a better chance of having people start out with a higher end stand-alone TV and then adding other components later. I presume that the TV maker would rather have the consumer spend all of their initial budget on the TV, instead of splitting it between TV, receiver, and Blu-ray player.

For people with existing home theater setups, a similar thing goes on with upgrades. For example, I have a Denon AVR-1913 receiver, a Comcast X1 DVR, and a Sony Blu-ray player, and a Samsung TV.

It was a smart TV but I never used it as anything other than a dumb monitor. I used apps, not but on the TV. The Blu-ray player had a full set of streaming apps, and so does the X1. The Denon receiver has an internet radio app, and also supports Spotify Connect, and supports Airplay. So there was never any need to use an app on the TV. (Also, when I tried it once out of curiosity I could not get ARC to work to send sound back to the Denon receiver).

But then the TV died. I ended up getting another Samsung, but this new one is 4K UHD.

None of my other components are 4K. I didn't want to upgrade the rest to 4K at that time, so for things I wanted to watch in 4K I used apps on the TV [1].

With dumb TVs, I probably would not have bought a 4K TV. I would have waited until my other components were 4K, and that could have taken quite a while. I tend to keep receivers until they die.

In summary, with smart TVs, the TV can meet the needs of a wider class of consumer. As long as they don't make it so you have to give the TV network access or use its smart features, it can meet the needs of almost every class of consumer. That's attractive to the manufacturers.

[1] ...which meant that I did need to figure out ARC. As with the old Samsung, it just did not seem to want to work. Then I noticed something in the Denon manual:

> When the ARC function is used, connect a device with a "Standard HDMI cable with Ethernet" or "High Speed HDMI cable with Ethernet" for HDMI.

I made sure to use such a cable...and it worked, which makes no sense. It would make sense if we were talking eARC, but with plain ARC--which is all my 6 or 7 years old Denon supports--it should work with any regular old HDMI cable.

Unless you run Netflix in MS Edge (or the netflix windows store app, which wraps MS Edge) and use a Skylake or newer CPU with a secure enclave / AMD PSP, Netflix won't stream you their highest-quality content.

Or they will happily deliver it to whatever Android device or smart TV that you like.

(also, PC support for HDR content is... "lacking", shall we say)

So a smart TV is nothing more than an LCD with Arm SoC. Of course that SoC it's completely locked down and there are no specs outside of NDA's.

It got me thinking, how hard would it be to go to a big manufacturer that makes these smart TV's for chains like best buy and contract them to make the same set without the proprietary garbage hardware board? Instead a board built around an open SoC and software ecosystem is installed so the ethernet and USB ports do what they're supposed to do. That or pick a very common TV model, figure out the LCD interface and build a retrofit board. All of this is easier said than done.

Then imagine how fun it would be to hack your TV to do whatever because it's a regular computer? Of course the big issue that stands in the way is the HDMI and DRM burdens.

(cue someone replying with: just don't connect the smart TV to the internet and hook up a raspberry pi.)

I'm looking to add a TV, large computer monitor, or similar to our living room for PC gaming, XBox gaming, and movies.

I assumed that a projector would be washed out whenever the room's lights were on. Which would be a hassle for people who wanted to be in the living room at the time but were doing other activities.

I throw cult movie nights and recently ditched the projector for a 42” screen - by the time there were 15-20 people in my living room, the heat of the projector made us keep windows open in Canadian winter.

Not to mention the usability issues during daylight, which make a projector (there’s a lot of light in my living room) mostly useless 50% of the time.

The large black rectangle has its own use - it clearly defines where the screen is occupying space, something you’ve gotta configure for a projector.

Unless you are privileged af enough to have a room you can dedicate to a home theatre setup - (in which case, good for you, housing/rent prices here in Toronto make that out of reach for me even as a low triple digit salary individual, four times higher than most of my similarly aged friends) - a projector’s disadvantages far outweigh its benefits.

Even if visibility wasn’t a glaring issue, the heat is practically unbearable. Worst idea I’d had was to try it in my bedroom as a TV replacement. :P

I went through several models of projectors in an attempt to see if any of them would be tolerable, but no.

Large TV’s emit heat as it is; but it’s really like a small heater in a room on low, instead of an industrial scale heater.

>Perhaps the best April Fools’ joke of the (Youth) Journal [a Dutch news program] came in 1969. Special cars would drive around with scanners to track down television owners who hadn’t paid the license fee [it’s like in the UK, where you have to pay a fee to the BBC]. But if you wrapped the TV in aluminum foil, you could fool the scanners. Before long there was no foil to be found in stores. http://business.time.com/2007/08/21/why_dutch_people_wrapped...

Then we'll see the manufacturers include SIM cards, at least in countries where it's affordable.

For now, I've settled for buying a smart TV and not connecting it to the Internet. Until they come up with a way to phone home without my Wi-Fi, I think I should be safe from spying and vulnerabilities..

I'd imagine Verizon or ATT wouldn't charge too much since they'd be sending logs, voice snippets, and maybe a few images. If the TV companies offered to share the data, they could probably get cell companies to do it for free.

You can see a hardware comparison chart at https://developer.roku.com/docs/specs/hardware.md -- Liberty was the platform name of that first generation of Roku TVs.

I guess if we were talking about possible features rather than actual one's: the ability to use the tv's tuner to stream to other devices would be another intranet feature that could be on someone's wishlist.

I agree the equivalent of cyongenmod/LineageOS for smart tv's would be great.

It's an "ok" TV. The picture is pretty decent, but not great. The sound is fine. The refresh rate is usually ok, but isn't suitable for fast paced games.

I'm assuming the disaster is being bought by Google. What is needed is some sort of regulation that prevents the new owner to use the newly acquired data in a way that the user did not originally agree to. If the original agreement stated that the data would not be sold, then the new owner just can't go off and sell the data. This is what the regulation needs to protect, as well as the new company cannot retrospectively remove the option either.

you beat this by setting a MAC and then doing macsec ( swithcport security by MAC address ) on that switch port the TV is connected to.

video chat (many models had Skype a while back, as far as I remember that was shut down though)

If it's an interesting topic find a trustworthy source to post.

Everyone knows that news articles can be selective in how they choose to report, and that therefore they should rely on multiple sources. This is bad but not a fatal error. If a news agency completely invents quotes that destroys the fundamental trust that makes it possible to build on flawed sourcing.

> The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint against the Daily Mail

> The [incorrect] article ...was live for 90 seconds

> [The incorrect article] included quotes attributed to the prosecutors apparently reacting to the guilty verdict, and the description of the reaction in the courtroom to the news, stating that Knox "sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears"

> It further stated that the family of Meredith Kercher "remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family".

> The newspaper apologised for the mistake. It said that it was standard practice in such high-profile cases for two alternative stories (plus supporting quotes) to be prepared in advance

> It had published an online apology and explanation to readers; published the correct verdict in print the following day; launched an immediate internal inquiry (and subsequently changed its practices regarding such 'set and hold' stories); and also disciplined the person responsible for the error.

> Although the PCC recognised that the newspaper had acted swiftly and proportionately to correct the breach of the editors' code - and acknowledged that the story had only been live for a short period of time - it nonetheless remained "particularly concerned" about other aspects of the report, most particularly the fictitious account of what had happened in the courtroom.

> The attempt to present contemporaneous reporting of events in such a manner was "clearly not acceptable".

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/09/pcc...

Many of the younger people I know may not fully understand the vector they create for network penetration, but they often joke about it always listening. For whatever reason, the older the person is (in my experience), they don’t have one inkling of internet security.

My point is that I’ve worked with too many people, roughly 40 and above, who have no regard for their internet security. I know for a fact someone with malicious intent could steal their identity and assets in a matter of hours.