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Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I have a smart tv. (What other kind exists today?). The remote has a netflix button - which is super useful. But according to my router, the TV sends a trickle of data over WIFI constantly. Even when its "off".

So I've banned the TV from my WIFI network, and I just have a PC plugged into it. Its less convenient this way - we need to pull out a wireless keyboard & mouse to watch netflix. But I think its the right call for sure.

In some ways I think I win on all counts like this. Modern smart tvs are subsidized by creepy advertising. This way I get a cheap TV, and I don't give up any privacy in doing so.

But I worry about a time when TVs ship with cheap 4G modems, and start doing telemetry that way. It might just be a matter of time. I can't be the only one who doesn't connect my tv to wifi; and I bet samsung has run the numbers.

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I run the same setup for the same reasons. I also think having the TV disable itself until given network access (but waiting until after you've thrown the box away) or having prepaid 5G will come soon. It's disgusting but here we are.

I've actually come to appreciate the wireless keyboard though, it is awkward and bulky (even though it's a lightweight slim model) but the kids constantly lose the actual remote whereas the keyboard's size make losing it very difficult.

I think the AirTag thing has kind of changed my subconscious mental model about losing things: reading the bit about losing the remote, I immediately thought to myself "why not have a beeper in the remote that you can ping via a button on the TV or a phone app?"

No comment about the 5G thing though. If that's where consumer is heading you'll find me shopping in the advertising/DOH display panel section and trying my hardest to ignore the irony :D

> need to pull out a wireless keyboard & mouse to watch netflix

I run Kodi on a Raspberry Pi for this exact reason. The Pi's HDMI has CEC support built-in, which means the TV's remote works seamlessly with Kodi's UI. This works great for my Netflix needs.

Unfortunately, most (all?) PC graphics don't do CEC out of the box. I've seen USB adapters that can add this functionality to PCs but I've never tried any of them.

Do you use Raspberry Pi 4? Does it handle 1080p h265? And 4K BluRay rips?

The Pi mk4 can do up to 4k (HDR) with the most recent Kodi updates. Really nice. Mine unfortunately requires a smol fan because otherwise it would randomly reboot, luckily Noctua makes 40mm silent fans. Connected on the GPIO pins for 5V, it's more than enough.

Kodi can do netflix now?

I think there is a plugin for it. Pretty sure its probably just a wrapper around netflix over some browser. Netflix killed their 3rd party API awhile ago and killed support for all the platforms techies would use.

> Its less convenient this way - we need to pull out a wireless keyboard & mouse to watch netflix. But I think its the right call for sure.

There are some wireless keyboards that looks like a remote, but with qwerty keys on the back, a touchpad / air mouse, and IR blaster with programmable key so you can ditch the original tv remote.

There is also an IR module you can hook into homeassistant to act as universal remote, so you can ditch all remotes and use your phone to control everything via homeassistant.

I have a smart tv. (What other kind exists today?)

Monitors. I have a 40" monitor in my living room, connected to the cable company's STB. Not that that's regularly used, most of the time I use my HTPC instead, which runs Kodi.

I suppose... My tv is 55" and as it is, its on the small size for the wall I have it on.

Replacing it with a monitor of a comparable size would be prohibitively expensive.

I have my Samsung TV wired to my network only for remote control with Home Assistant (can turn it off if nothing is playing for example). But I force all of its DNS to use a pihole, blocking all Samsung domains. I think I also have firewall rules to also block all internet access on it except NTP, but I don't remember if I still have that enabled or not (there may have been an issue with it disabling something that I needed for Home Assistant to talk to it).

Do you think it's viable to isolate the data trickle and block it or create fake responses?

Edit: or maybe a pi hole or something like nordvpn cybersec.

Have you ever wondered if your TV has connected itself to one of your neighbors' unprotected wifi networks?

For Netflix, maybe Chromecast or similar stick would do the trick? The stick will surely track you still but at least it isn't Samsung.

At Least my LG TV shows up in the Offline Devices list on my router when it's turned off.

because you can't capture speech without the network being active, and send it later as TTS?

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