Hacker News Reader

Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

Sadly it's a logical and inevitable consequence of giving up control over our technology.

I think the answer has to be, simply never buy a TV that you wouldn't be completely satisfied with as a dumb HDMI display. Cos even if it's not abuse like this, eventually the built in functionality will break, or become too insecure to keep active on your network.

In fact it goes for just about any appliance these days: whether it's your fridge, microwave, dryer, doorbell or anything else, if it doesn't have a "dumb" offline mode where you are still completely happy with what it does, don't buy it.

View on HN

The problem is is that the "dumb" TVs in any amount of quality or high resolution are absurdly rare, expensive or both.

1. buy smart TV

2. don't connect it to the internet

3. enjoy your "dumb" TV

This will work great up until oh about the mid 2010's when vehicles started getting cellular connections "for free." This will be the next thing that happens with TV's, and you won't be able to turn it off.

Step 4: encase your entire house in a Faraday cage.

Step1: Don't buy their products

Your WiFi won't have to deal with the neighbors interference then either, so that'll be nice.

i bet they will just put a sim card inside the tv, and ota update it.

That's the real promise of 5G.

That's what I do. It works, but there are a couple downsides worth mentioning:

- Firmware updates are more annoying to do. LG has added some new features via firmware updates, like Dolby Vision at 120 Hz, but since I've never updated my firmware I'm behind. I believe I could update via USB but like I said, the downside is it's more annoying to do.

- The TV still wants to be smart. Every time I turn on my LG CX I get a bar of apps that pop up along the bottom of the screen. Half the time this auto-dismisses in a few seconds, but the other half of the time it persists and I have to manually dismiss it. It's a minor inconvenience, but it's one of those annoying reminders that my "dumb" TV isn't dumb enough.

But overall, I'd highly recommend others doing something similar. Though I've heard of some TVs auto-connecting to networks like Amazon Sidewalk, so perhaps this approach won't always work.

I did update the firmware on my lg then immediately deleted the wifi password. Have not seen any negative effects.

Also I bought a service remote for something like $4. With that you can change some hidden settings and make it start faster (I never see the app bar when connecting to my PC, for example).

Modern smart TVs will aggressively connect to the internet themselves without you needing to do it for them. If your neighbor has an open wifi hotspot, or of a local cable monopoly has all the routers acting as hotspots under their control, that's enough. Also, simply including a mobile connection is a possibility - cars do it, TVs can as well if the manufacturer considers the price is worth it.

How can you tell if this is happening? If it's not showing ads, should I even care? It can't tell who I am if I've not logged into it or logged it into my wifi.

It's surely bad for TVs to do this. But I'm not quite sure what the issue is if it has no idea who I am.

Wireshark

I've heard people say this quite a bit but at least with my LG C1 (which I use as a monitor) that doesn't seem to be the case. I connected it to the wifi once to download a firmware update, then deleted the password. It's never complained or attempted to connect, or shown me any kind of advertising.

I also have a TCL tv (didn't buy this one, it was provided by my landlord). It is connected to wifi - it was already connected when I moved in. I use it once a week or so to play Netflix through my laptop. I've never seen adverts on it so I haven't disconnected it.

I have seen people mention that it might depend on the region. But I'm in Vietnam where I don't think there's any amazing level of consumer protection around advertising.

I can't speak for LG, but my anecdata is:

I own a Vizio TV. I put a wifi password on it when I first got it, but took it off later on when my TV started turning on in the middle of the night.

Since then, even through a factory reset, it's somehow automatically downloaded firmware updates and installed them.

They've changed how the power button worked, and other UI changes.

The system menu reports no wifi set up.

Blacklist the MAC.

Some TV sets can grab firmware updates over the cable TV network.

I had a Samsung TV for work related testing that never got connected to the network and it would hang for annoyingly long times whenever you connected an input source because it didn't have a fresh database of signatures to spy on you with.

Connect the tV to a guest network with no access to the internet?

You can still buy a brand which doesn’t do that, had an LG, Phillips and a Sony TV in recent years none of them did that or had any ads.

Brand new LG tvs have ads in the interface that can't be turned off.

Nobody’s gotten there, but I remain convinced this is the future for networks like Tile and Apple’s AirTags. Not the tags themselves, obviously. The idea of having a huge phone/app network that can relay messages for simple embedded devices that don’t themselves have a working Internet connection. Imagine having a $.50 BT chip in your device and any mobile phone that walks near it acts as a messaging relay to the Internet.

Do you have sources for the statement that TVs will auto-connect to open Wi-Fi, even if you don't tell it to? Which brands do this?

> Modern smart TVs will aggressively connect to the internet themselves without you needing to do it for them.

Mine went a step further where you couldn't use it before downloading the app and setting it up with the app. I put up with it because I just go straight into my console as soon as I boot up but man was that the most infuriating experience.

Don't forget Amazon Sidewalk. You pretty much have to live on some acreage to be free of this stuff.

Why should I pay for features I'm not going to use?

I believe it’s actually the other way around. Smart tvs are subsidised because they expect to make money off of ads.

This is the correct answer.

This is what infuriates me the most. I keep thinking about replacing my cheap-ass no-name TV that I've been using for the last 8 years, but the only quality options are all smart TVs and I hate it.

I just loathe the idea of having a TV that (1) is going to have a smartphone-class SoC built-in that I won't even use for anything and (2) is going to be yet another computing device I don't control.

I begrudgingly tolerate the fact that my PS4 and my phone are computers I don't control, because at least they offer functionality that's useful to me, but I draw the line at smart TVs because they aren't even useful in the first place. I'm just going to use my PS4 for everything on it anyway, but then I'll have have another device where I have to worry about software updates and shitty anti-consumer practices.

/rant

I was looking at monitors the other day and wondering who buys the large format gaming monitors. Gigabyte has a 48" OLED right now that looks pretty good for about $1100. Philips has a 55" VA panel for $1600. Both are 4k/120Hz and support an HDR standard, and afaict these are just monitors, no smarts.

I'm not sure what you give up with these other than the OS.

> Gigabyte has a 48" OLED right now that looks pretty good for about $1100.

I'd recommend against that one. While it's the same panel as the LG OLED, the software is much worse, with an aggressive backlight limiter that can't be turned off and progressively dims the screen, and a panel refresh cycle that demands turning the monitor off every few hours (and doesn't happen automatically when the panel is turned off by the computer going to sleep).

I'd love to find a high-quality 4k+ OLED (or ideally QD-OLED) panel with no associated "smarts".

My suggestion here is to use either a game console or set top box (Roku, Shield, AppleTV) as the primary interface. My TV likes to show ads and all, but I never see them because as soon as I boot the TV i immediately go to my Xbox and do everything else from there.

Pretty soon though I feel like even this "loophole" will be closed and TV manufacturers will start placing ads even on HDMI outputs.

What happens if you don’t connect them to Wi-Fi?

I hear this parroted on HN every single time a topic re: smart TVs comes up.

They're not exceedingly rare. A tad more expensive, yes, but not hard to find.

The brand is called Sceptre, they sell them at Wal Mart.

Am I missing something? Maybe that brand doesn't exist in the US?

It does exist in the US, and they do sell them at Wal-Mart, although not the full line and (at least in my area) not in-store. The Sceptre website shows everything 'ReStock Soon', so maybe the latter is temporary.

There aren't many reviews of the sets - Consumer Reports doesn't even track a single one right now - and what you can find is mostly mediocre to negative.

Sceptre are 4K but I don’t think they’re high quality.

For a datapoint on Sceptre quality, I've got two 24" Sceptre monitors in front of me that are incredibly annoying because Sceptre cheaped out and doesn't bother to program the monitor serial number into the EDID and instead just use a static placeholder value. This means every time I reconnect my work machine there's a 50/50 chance the display layout will be backwards because MacOS can't seem to use the interface path to differentiate monitors like Linux does.

Thanks for sharing this, I haven't really heard anything negative about Sceptre, but that is mostly due to relative obscurity.

My experience has been mostly fine, although I also had some EDID challenges for awhile which I chalked up to my complicated setup. However I also don't mind things like backlight bleed.

Dumb HDMI is exactly how I use my TV. NO internet access at all. Everything through my Apple TV which has much stronger privacy stance.

If enough people do that they’ll start making them require an internet connection to function.

I'd bet on either hidden cell connections or special subscription incentives.

Or increase their prices by 20$/€ to offset the loss in data/ad revenue.

Paying a fair price for the supplied good or rendered service is my preferred option anyhow.

I wonder if that would run foul of GDPR and related laws in the EU?

I don't quite see the connection between GDPR and requiring Internet to function. Could you elaborate on your thinking here?

Well even with internet they couldn’t legally collect any user data without an explicit permission let alone sell it to third parties.

You mean just like websites need to ask for consent for nonessential data processing and about a hundred and fifty different ad networks are forced enabled as legitimate interest in the consent screen?

Seems to me that GDPR wasn't strong enough to actually beat adtech

> Sadly it's a logical and inevitable consequence of giving up control over our technology.

Personally i dont think it's 100% certain that all consumerized technical products start abusing their customers.

Personally it feels really early in on this one. The free hand in this product segment is just exploring what it can do what it can get away with. Markets are conversations. I expect this one is not, like you podit, at an end, but rather just beginning. Perhaps this move survives but seems like it'll be hard to keep going, to defend.

It’s more a function of pricing. A manufacturer can complete more competitively by doing this.

And when a market is limited to only a few players, that means that the only relief will be whatever is provided by government rule making.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com