SamyGO: Open-Source Firmware for Samsung TVs (2011) | Hacker News Reader

SamyGO: Open-Source Firmware for Samsung TVs (2011)

samygo.tv

255 pointspabs372 comments

Except this doesn't appear to be an open-source firmware. From my reading of their wiki, it's a series of hacks and patches to make small changes to the operating environment. All of Samsung's code is still in there, unless I'm missing something.

Also this should have a [2012] or something in the title. Most of it is very stale and applies to models no longer sold or popular.

Isn't this pretty much exactly how the Canon DSLR MagicLantern works? The microcode on the chip is not modified in any way. The ML firmware just provides a different method of using the existing instructions on the chip. Remove the card with the ML code, and the camera returns to the original operational mode.

You can make magic lantern permanent and not require a card.

Same in some old samsung TVs, you could flash hacked fw with special cable

I have an older (2015?) model I’ve rooted via SamyGO - your assessment is pretty spot on. Still, it does have it’s uses - by rooting I’ve been able to start diagnosing compatibility issues with DLNA servers, for example.

I have a 2013 Samsung smart TV, ut it hasn't had any updates for 3 years.

What benefits could I expect by using SammyGo? Would official apps, like BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime continue to work?

Agree. I donated few years ago and gained access to newer bits but they're for older firmwares with no further updates. And it's usually just a "download this VM and do these things for a semi working TV root". Not an organized effort at all, probably for legitimate legal reasons.

LG TVs are based on WebOS, which is based on OpenEmbedded. Has anyone tried modifying LG TV firmware?

https://www.webosose.org/

https://github.com/webosose

>... HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. For web app development, you can use Enact, a React-based application framework optimized for webOS OSE, as well as other modern web application frameworks ...native technologies including Qt ... architecture based on Node.js and Luna Bus

> In addition to the openness as an open community to developers, webOS OSE also pursues openness to other technologies, especially open source ones, such as Qt, Chromium, and Yocto ... now taking a step further to other verticals targeting smart and connected products, such as robot, smart home, and automotive

The project looks really dead, but it would be nice to have either a revival, or a new alternative. I'd like to get a new TV, but I don't want the junk proprietary stack that it comes with.

Ideas?

If I ever buy a TV, my plan is to simply use it as a big HDMI monitor. Slit open the side of the HDMI cable and cut the Ethernet wires therein. Never connect it to my wifi. If other wireless networks are ubiquitous by that time, open it up and neuter their transceivers too.

Any internet functionality will come from a device I trust and control, with only the display portion handed to Spysung.

Hang on - HDMI can do Ethernet? That was news to me.

Yes, almost every HDMI cable now brags that it includes ethernet, which is carried on a formerly-unused* pair within the HDMI connector.

Many older cables didn't connect it, or grounded one of the pins (*because it had been used as a plug-detect pin), but since devices started actually using it, cable vendors started wiring it. The extra pair doesn't make the cable much stiffer, but leaving it out had made them ever so slightly more flexible.

Many devices don't support it, but some newer video cards install an Ethernet device when you load the driver, so they do. And some TVs do, of course. So if such a card and such a TV are connected with such a cable, voila! An connection you might not even realize is there. Your formerly-isolated TV is no longer isolated, assuming the video card driver installer did something like enable bridging to that ethernet interface.

There are a few ways to avoid it. First, don't install that driver if your video card prompts for it, or disable the device. Second, use a cable tester to verify that you're using a cable which doesn't connect the pins, which is gonna get harder if you need a newer cable that's tested to a higher bandwidth spec. Or third, open up the cable and bite the wires in half. It's tricky to know which pins those are; I plan to do it with an inductive "toner" probe connected to a breakout adapter.

(Unrelated: Some Ethernet switches used HDMI cables to connect each other for "stacking". This is just because the connectors are cheap, the cables are cheap, and they have a lot of high-bandwidth pairs. The switch makers could run more-or-less full backplane speeds over a short HDMI cable more cheaply than they could over a custom stacking cable. But the signals on the wires are not HDMI, they're more-or-less Ethernet on whatever inter-switch-chip format, probably QSFP or something, that needs a bunch of length-matched pairs.)

I was trying to find an "HDMI condom" (equivalent to the usb ones [1]) but came up dry. Does such a thing exist yet, or is there just no market?

Is it possible to use something such as an HDMI splitter to accomplish the same thing, or can those pass Ethernet as well, and how would you be able to tell?

[1] https://int3.cc/products/usbcondoms

You could maybe try an old hdmi splitter not compatible with latest dhcp (that supports ethernet)

There are virtually no devices that actually support it, at least as of about a year ago.

Yup, been in the spec for a while. Video cards try to install drivers for it now days. I always stop that garbage.

Some network switches actually used HDMI to connect between switches.

Only the cable, not the protocol.

Correct, it wasn’t carrying HDMI signal, rather leveraging a much higher quality cable and terminals, correctly twisted pairs for long distance, high quality shielding (or double), etc.

For any faults, HDMI is a typically good cable.

I bought a medium-sized (42" I think) TV a while ago. My parents had a smart TV, so did friends of mine. I saw no utility but lots of problems (edit: in Germany, none of them even do the most atrocious shit people here complain about like ads or force-connecting to wifi). When I checked dumb-TV roundups there was one model from HISENSE which had pretty decent quality, mediocre sound and no network features at all. I am still happy with it, it has 2 HDMI ports and 2 USB ports and my computer plays sound :)

It has been suggested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660793

... that one could build an "HDMI Condom" that would strip those pins with an adapter. That would be more elegant than cutting the cable open ...

I use a "USB Condom" myself when I want to charge my phone at hotels or when I want to charge from my laptop and don't want to set into motion 150 phone/computer interactions.

I would suggest to get a cheap local brand from South Korea which uses good panel and decent enough compute power to render your desired quality without any smart TV features and use external means for apps/content.

I was coincidentally looking for exactly this through the stores (online or otherwise) in Australia that should in theory stock this, and the only one that was remotely close was Kogan's rebranded bargain-basement LCDs that had middling reviews.

Are there any particular brands I should be looking for?

(Disclaimer: I work for Kogan but probably don’t have actual experience with the TV you were looking at).

Most Kogan TVs can be great dumb screens if you reach out to support for recommended colour settings and you use an external sound device (soundbar).

I currently have a 3 or 4 year old 55" 1080p Kogan panel, and it's decent, albeit a bit laggy at times. I assume they've got better processors in them now these days!

I want a 4K dumb panel, with HDR10 support. I saw the Kogan 55" JU8200, which from my browsing appears to be the latest model, and from my crude understanding of the specs would be decent?

Should I send an email through to support about it? To be honest, Kogan as a brand is so low-touch I didn't even think to contact them haha.

I honestly haven't seen many other Dumb™® TVs to even choose from, so I am sort of leaning towards either picking up the JU8200, or maybe just biting the bullet and getting a Hisense Series X for about twice the price, but with OLED panel.

The "smart" stuff in the Hisense isn't particularly smart from what I read and watched today, and can be mostly disabled, as its less intrusive than Samsung et al. I'd love to know if I'm wrong on that conclusion though!

EDIT: Oh, and I have a Yamaha 2-channel amp that I run the TV into, so no worries on the crappy built in audio of the Kogan TVs haha. Amazingly tinny, my current one!

I’ve got a 2yo 55’ kogan, works great with an Apple TV for all the extras, I’m no wild tv/sound aficionado but works well for me!

Honestly, I think I'll pick it up. It's basically exactly a 4K replacement for my Kogan 55" 1080p "dumb" panel, so its looking like a winner. Found some decent reviews with colour settings and so on to get the most out of it, found a review of a similar AU Optronics panel (they make the actual LCD panel/controller for the JU8200) and it got top marks, so it's worth a gamble.

Worst case I'll put it in my garage electronics/chemistry lab lol

We were originally using it to put a screen up for our business but then shifted office and it wasn’t necessary so I inherited it - works great as a 4K Monitor

About the only thing I'm not sure about is the input lag -- the KU8000 and KU8100 models have approx 40ms input lag according to Kogan's support team (found in a Whingepool thread); this is a different series (JU) and generation (8200), so fingers crossed. The similar panel from AU Optronics had the lowest of the three panels they tested (LG and Samsung), so I'll see I guess!

Good luck!

I agree, however the problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to purchase a "non-smart" tv. At my local stores here in Canada I don't think any exist!

Them being smart isn't an issue if you just don't give them internet access (at least until they start sticking LTE connections into them...)

Another issue is that many ISPs are building WiFi network. For example Spectrum has a lot of access points in my area, if Samsung would make deal with them the result would be equivalent.

At that point I'm pulling the thing apart and wrecking traces as needed. I saw a Youtube video today of someone putting a shorted out ethernet plug, placed into the jack. It disabled the wifi (or, well, appeared to. Without RF analysis I guess you're trusting the software) and stopped hassling him about missing network connections despite the fact it didn't have one!

A while back the Raspberry Pi foundation announced that some NEC displays would support using an RPi Compute Module to drive them, although I just had a look and appears to require a specific adapter which NEC don’t even publish prices for, so who knows how much it would set you back.

It’s a pity more TVs don’t support this as it would be a great combination for me.

Fantastic.

I would love a TV that entirely removes all the app features and retains my ability to network control it. I get why TV manufacturers don't want to release a TV like that, but, open-source replacement firmware seems like a fantastic solution. It could really be amazingly simple and meet my needs.

All the panels mentioned are LCD. I think nowadays the right tech is OLED. Is there any non smart OLED assembler? Also the dimension is a problem because I cannot find anything smaller than 55’’, and all are smart :-( As a monitor I think OLED is (also) better for your eyes. Am I wrong? Sorry for bad English

I thought OLED was more susceptible to burn-in

In some circumstances, yes.

The fear of it seems overblown but desktop use is quite likely to be one of those circumstances, unfortunately :/

The average consumer wants the smart features.

They can keep selling their "smart" trash to the average consumer. I'll pay extra for a purposely dumb skew.

All I want from a TV is a good panel, at least one modern video input (latest HDMI or DisplayPort), and a nice-enough housing to hold it all together. Speakers are nice but not necessary since I'll probably just use something external. I'll even get a separate box to handle all the inputs.

No apps. No internet. No voice commands. No virtual assistant. No cameras. No ads. Just a freaking display, please. I will pay extra and I doubt I'm the only one.

I often read statements on HN in reaction to articles like this, saying “I’d willingly pay more for a TV that doesn’t do this...”.

Those TVs do exist: Loewe make really nice TVs which don’t depend on internet connectivity to work[1]. And depending on how seriously the “pay more” part is meant, the Danish company Bang & Olufsen[2] make enormously expensive TVs that won’t spy on you, or insert advertisements into your films.

[1] https://www.loewe.tv/int

[2] https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/televisions

NEC industrial/commercial displays make good and dumb lcd displays as well.

https://www.necdisplay.com/

Almost any comercial / digital signage display can be dumb enough, and probably don’t have the user spyware, even the Samsung ones.

I've never heard of them. Thanks! I'll check them out for my next TV.

I still wish mainstream, highly accessable brands would provide the option, though.

They might want the features but be unaware of the price they're paying. That spyware is a revenue stream that pays the manufacturer dividends as long as the TV is used. All the major brands claim TVs are discounted due to these marketing-included features. They don't actually reveal the discount nor their profit. And most modern TVs have antipatterns that try to bypass consumer choice or punish the consumer for opting out.

I'm not disagreeing with you as much as saying the "smart features" moniker papers over things the consumer might use to make an informed choice but those things are definitely in small print or essentially mandatory EULAs. Consumers may want the features but given the choice they might not choose to pay that price.

My LG OLED has optional EULAs. You can disagree to them and it will handicap or remove the associated functionality.

I have no idea what happens if you refuse them all, but selective activation has worked fine for me so far.

You can't refuse ALL of them, only the ones related to data sharing. I have all of the optional ones off and the TV works fine for what I need. I'm obviously not using any of the smart apps at all.

I agree (and even said so in my comment).

I wish I had better options.

Basically I can pay a lot more for a less good panel.

To the webmaster: Here are a few notes on the copy that might help it read more clearly.

> SamyGO is a project for legal reverse engineering and research on Samsung Television firmwares which is Open Sourced, partially. We try to fix problems that in the firmware. We don't want money from you. We make this modifications for us and ourself but you are allowed to join us.

SamyGO is a project to legally reverse engineer and research Samsung TV firmwares. We try to fix the problems that exist in the stock firmware.

This project is free and open source. We don't want money from you. Instead, we make these modifications for ourselves, and encourage you to join us by contributing further improvements.

This feels like a bad translationparty(if that even still exists). The last sentences in particular make it feel scammy.

On that note, I don't understand what pride foreign companies take in writing their own English. I'm an engineer, not great at English even, and would do it for free likely. I can't imagine it could be that expensive.

Here's how I would word it:

SamyGO is a project that allows anyone to legally research and reverse engineer Samsung TV firmware. We will try our best to fix problems submitted to us that are found to exist in the stock firmware.

This project is completely free and open source. We encourage you to join us by contributing your findings and improvements.

> We try to fix problems that in the firmware.

What?

Enable deduction mode.

Clearly, these (minor) grammar issues are predicated on an ESL background. This package is very respectable and relevant to the #1 post on HN as of this morning [1]. Why disrespect the OP in the light of legitimate engineering?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899491

Nice beginners page here:

https://wiki.samygo.tv/index.php?title=SamyGO_for_DUMMIES

This looks awesome and I can't wait to try it out on my TV.

Well, this is right on time given the discussion of Samsung screens phoning home ;)

If anyone wants a truly dumb modern 4K TV, without going through weird hoops to get one, I would recommend the Dell C5519Q [1]. You can get it for under 1K USD at CDW.

[1] https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-55-4k-conference-room-m...

Sorry to say, but looking at these specs and price, this is not even in the same ballpark as the image quality offered by modern flagship TVs — which you will get (and should expect in 2020) in this price and size range, and also have the ability to be used as non-smart TVs for the privacy-conscious[1].

For the same price, you can buy the latest brand new 55” OLED TV from LG, which has absolutely spectacular picture quality in every respect (including fantastic color calibration capabilities), raw pixel response times better than any “PC gaming monitor”, and even input lag (overall end-to-end latency) rivaling or beating many gaming monitors today[2]. Nothing else even comes close, aside from Sony models (also in this price range) which also use LG’s OLED panels.

So rather than hacking your Samsung or buying an inferior Dell monitor meant for PowerPoint presentations, a far better solution is to just stop buying Samsung TVs. In addition to their deceptive marketing and other issues like intentionally bad (over saturated) color calibration out of box, they are designed to be impossible to correctly calibrate due to always-on tone mapping. They do this because they think it makes their TVs look better, and they’re fighting a losing battle against OLED TVs which Samsung does not have any answer to at the moment[3]. Tone mapping that cannot be turned off is a cheap software trick that compromises the accuracy of the source material in hopes of making their TVs have a higher contrast appearance than their hardware is actually capable of (but it does cause artifacts and other downsides, even in regular streaming content).

[1] If you’re really concerned about privacy, LG’s TVs allow you to decline all the terms of service and still use them as “old fashioned TVs” with just the non-smart inputs like HDMI. I’ve tested this on my new LG C9, and it works great.

[2] Objective measurements of the LG C9 OLED series: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/c9-oled

[3] Samsung (and everyone else) is way behind LG’s OLED tech, until they manage to get micro-LED technology to scale up and reach affordable prices. Micro-LED will be superior even to OLED, but right now it is not a production reality, and exists only as multimillion dollar display tech demo prototypes. One other possible alternate to OLED is dual layer LCD, but I don’t think anyone is seriously pursuing that for consumer TV use due to their power and heat issues.

I'm sorry but the LG TV you linked doesn't even come close to gaming monitors input lag. The link you posted measured 13ms while good gaming monitors have input lag of a about a millisecond [1]. That is an order of magnitude better.

[1] https://turbofuture.com/computers/Top-Gaming-Monitor

The article you linked is in error — plain and simple. The top budget pick, for example, is claimed to have 0.7ms input lag and 1.0ms gray to gray response time, which is obviously wrong — how can total input lag possibly be less than the time it takes for pixels to physically change state?

So I looked the model up on rtings (who does their own objective measurements — a much more reputable source than some random blog post / sponsored link ad) and their tests show it’s not much different from the LG C9: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/asus/vg248qe

At best, the Asus VG248QE achieves 5.1ms input lag, with 2.1ms 80% transition response time.

At the same resolution (1440p) but lower refresh rate (120hz vs 144hz) the LG C9 achieves 6.6ms input lag, with 0.2ms 80% transition response time.

The LG input lag time you quoted is when running 4K at 60hz, which is a fantastic input lag for that mode, and as far as I know about as good as any 4K gaming monitor out there. The C9 is actually capable of variable refresh rate though at 4K via HDMI 2.1 as well, but no current video cards or drivers are yet capable of this — but when they are, the expectation is that the LG C9 will be a serious contender vs even many dedicated gaming monitors.

Be very careful when comparing specs between different sources, combining different measurement methods, or comparing input lag numbers when the displays are configured at different refresh rates and screen resolutions.

Pretty sure newer Samsung TVs run Tizen.

Edit: Yep, Samsung TVs released sometime after 2015 ship with Tizen[1]

[1] https://developer.samsung.com/tv/develop/specifications/tv-m...

Is it just me, or is this site now gone? I can see some content in Google Cache, but I am wondering if this site has been taken down by a DMCA request. If so, it's a bogus request because no "circumvention" has occurred, just reverse-engineering and alternative (and free) firmware.

Works for me.

A bit off topic: Any idea about how to install apps from two countries in your Samsung tizen TV. As a expat I want to see TV from my home and host country. If I change the country from my TV all the apps are uninstalled :(

Ah, I hate the stupid "convenient" localization. I remember reading an American being angry that Google's homepage came up Arabic because he was in Kuwait.

Recently I was in a foreign country looking up hotels in my home country, and even though I earn money there and was planning to spend it in that country, Google Maps was showing me hotel prices in the foreign currency. I was even logged in and had defined where Home and Work in Google Maps...

Are there any open source alternatives to Tizen?

Also anyone attempted to reverse engineer the new Samsung 4k uhd TVs? I have constant network issues + obvious privacy concerns

Tizen is open source and backed by the Linux Foundation. I think what you really want is a way of installing the OSS version onto the TV.

That is indeed what I really want

If I remember correctly you need to make a donation to access some firmwares, but I cannot tell whether you can access the source after the donation.

maybe something like https://pi-hole.net and/or some firewall rules could be used to stop all the offending traffic ?

Sounds easier than cutting physical lines..

Anybody using this and having success ?

Ha! A very well timed article.

Only 8 years between the two!

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