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Comment by myrandomcomment | Hacker News Reader

I just bought the TV I wanted and never connected it to the internet, never ran the "setup". I use an AppleTV 4K which has all the streaming apps you want (Netflix, Amazon, BBC, Pluto, etc.). For local media I use an application called MrMC ($6.99) which is a Kodi port to the AppleTV that allows you to mount Samba/NFS (https://mrmc.tv). MrMC even supports using a SQL backend for keeping track of your media (like Kodi). I just run it in on a jail in my TrueNAS setup. Every TV is the same, every time someone starts MrMC everything is in sync. Nice and simple.

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>never connected it to the internet

Which is all fine and dandy but if you've bought a fancy new TV with bleeding edge features for use with your next-gen console, like low-latency gaming mode, HDMI 2.1 4K/120Hz, dolby atmos, etc, it can all comes apart when you realize you need a firmware update that fixes a bug with said bleeding edge features, since a lot of consumer HW these days is rushed out the factory door with their firmware partly unfinished and the expectation that a day-one patch will be available once the HW gets to consumers and the manufacturer has had more time for testing.

What then?

Even on TVs from over 10 years ago you could update the FW offline by plugging in a USB drive with the FW binary you would download from the manufacturer's website but now your only option is to keep the TV online and have it pull the updates itself, often unencrypted from some often unsecure CDN server while it sends telemetry data back to the mothership about your usage patterns.

I know I'll have to miss out on the next-gen features for a while but you can count me out from the shit-show that is smart TVs.

well, with the "white-label" TVs mentioned in the article you don't have this problem, because they don't even have these features.

Said that, the advertised brand just looks like the usual bottom of the barrel chinese TV set. And these usually have substantially worse specs than what you get from NEC and Co. for around 25% more than the equivalent TV (viewing angles, coating and brightness come to mind in a conference room application).

Connect it, update the firmware, disconnect it.

It’s useful to a separate SSID for smart-TV like devices. You can randomly update the passwords (to execute the disconnect it step) without annoying everyone else in the house.

>Connect it, update the firmware, disconnect it.

If your original intent of having it air-gapped in the first place was for privacy and security then doing what you said would be like saying:

remove condom, have intercourse, put back condom :D

My main reason is to neuter ad delivery.

The problem with this approach is that once you hook it up online for the first time, ads can be cookied and still displayed once it goes offline.

I mean.....I have the top of the line LG CX TV and it can be updated from a USB stick. I honestly have no idea why you'd leave it unplugged though, the OS is super fast, starts up instantly and it has all the apps I need, plugging in another device just to watch Netflix seems super wasteful.

There are 2 paths:

1. Connect it, allow it to update, disconnect it. If any local “ads” pop up, do a factory reset which will wipe all the cached data.

2. Most devices allow you to update firmware from a file via USB. Just get the file which is only the firmware and update that way.

FWIW, one of the majors complaints is that many of these devices will actively, without prompting search for and connect to open wifi.

I’ve heard this mentioned on HN a few times; is there any documented case of this actually happening?

Some stuff a year ago. It was confirmed by others at the time (after testing) though didn’t seem to get picked up by news outlets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

Anecdotally I have 6 Samsung TVs hung on my office wall for monitoring, which run the Tizen OS and the nag screens about connecting to a network and accepting the ToS make the units a little annoying to work with. (But it’s not as bad as to say I wouldn’t use the thing). It wouldn’t surprise me if they were scanning for open Wi-Fi. I might test it out, but we’re surrounded by free Wi-Fi which has captive portals, so it’s effectively black holed.

This Reddit post is not proof as no one has been able to replicate this. This internet lore until there is repeatable proof.

Hmm, weird, I use a 50" Samsung 4k TV as my "monitor" (I'm not much of a gamer so a lower refresh rate is fine for coding and watching YouTube), and I never set up my WiFi and I don't think I accepted any Terms of Service, and it doesn't nag me, but granted literally the only video data that's been displayed on the TV has been an HDMI input and the color-correction menu. Maybe different models of Samsung TVs do things differently?

Or firmware versions

Crack open the set and ground the antenna? Idk, I’m tempted to find a nice model and figure out an adapter to go from eDP to the panel’s actual interface.

I'm a bit worried about the TV having some kind of internal clock set in the factory configured to throw an undismissible prompt after a year or two because your firmware 'expired' and you need security updates to keep your internet connected device that is not connected to the internet safe.

You won't know if the TV has such a feature until someone encounters it years after the device is first sold.

Couldn’t you just change the date back a few years in that case? Why do you need an accurate date on the TV?

How would you change the date if you can't get around the prompt?

Sorry, I missed the part about the dialog being undismissable. I assumed they were talking about a nag screen.

I don’t think a non-dismissable dialog would be legal unless they clearly sold the TV as “Internet connection required”.

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