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Comment by netr0ute | Hacker News Reader

That's why you never connect any smart TV to your network and instead use a standalone device combined with a PiHole.

This only works until every "smart" device has a cellular modem built in.

Who pays for the cellular plans?

Amazon put a cellular chip in a Kindle over a decade ago. And that was for a device that cost less than $100. One year of advertising and analytics would easily cover the cost in a larger purchase like a TV.

We do as part of the device cost. 5G makes it pretty cheap so a manufacturer adding in a radio ups their cost by a dollar or two. The revenue from surveillance is marginally profitable including data costs.

You can come up with other fun conspiracies by realizing that the HDMI spec can share internet connections. Plugging in your "fire cast", or whatever external television device you use, could provide your TV an internet connection, but it doesn't seem to be widely used yet.

This is, it seems, just untrue. It was posted before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24668736) and I was curious about this attack vector so looked it up [0]

Simply put, it seems that this never took off and would require the entire hdmi chain to support it (tv, cable, and device) - none of which do currently, so for the medium future it doesn't seem to be a concern.

Plenty of concern elsewhere, just not necessarily here.

[0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/325215/appletv-eth...

It's definitely real. A/V receivers are the typical devices to support HEC, so you can run one Ethernet cable to the receiver and use a smart TV with the HDMI audio return channel, with one HDMI cable.

Interesting! You're suggesting that the A/V would bridge the ethernet connection over the HDMI cable audio signal?

That's the intent, and it's still in the latest HDMI spec, so I think those threads about HEC being dead were premature. I haven't used it myself.

> A/V receivers are the typical devices to support HEC

Then you surely can name a few models that support Ethernet over HDMI? (Somehow people keep claiming that this is totally a thing, but nobody ever can confirm a single device)

Not one of these says anything about HEC being discontinued: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hdmi+with+ethernet

Can you name a manufacturer of devices or chips that has committed to never implementing Ethernet over HDMI? The same wires are used for the audio return channel, so they have to be present in cables. The HDMI consortium website still refers to cables as "HDMI with Ethernet".

If you claim that receivers are "the typical devices" to implement something, you should really be able to at least show one or two models that support it. No, it's never been formally declared dead, but it de-facto is by virtue of not existing in practice.

Which is where things like Amazon Sidewalk or even just a 3g/4g sim come in... I'm glad the current state of TVs isn't using this (that I know up) but I fear it's right around the corner. I just want a dumb TV that I hook my Xbox and Apple TV up to.

> Amazon Sidewalk or even just a 3g/4g sim

The fix for these is in this video: https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA

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