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Comment by Night_Thastus | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me.

I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

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Some tv's bother you with popups and notifications and all the other crap related to its "smart features".

And yes, even when not connected to the internet, then they show you popups to connect it to the internet, updates may be waiting, new features may be in a new update, you software has been last updated 726 days ago, click here to troubleshoot the internet connection, etc.

mine used to strobe the light underneath when it lost internet connectivity. used to.

On powering up, my TV often switches to its default "smart features, prepackaged video streaming service integrations" mode from the HDMI input (the only source I ever want, given my AV receiver manages everything). If it weren't a "smart" tv, I doubt it would keep trying to switch from the configured settings. /anecdote

My smart TV is not on wifi and physically unplugged from the internet except for when I deign to upgrade its firmware. Which I've done once since I bought it 5 years ago. I use 0 (zero) smart features and it is unable to report whatever it may have collected. This seems like a good way to handle them to me.

If I have to take defensive maneuvers against an appliance, I don't want the makers of that appliance getting my money.

Sceptre dumb TVs from Walmart's web site. That's the cheat code. If they run out of those, I'll use a large computer monitor. Attach an outboard HTPC or Apple TV and you're set.

5G is in large part designed to fix this. Eventually these devices will only ask for wifi as a formality.

That will last until the TV manufacturers get the phone bill...

They'll more than make up for it by selling user data and serving ads.

My smart TV is more annoying than helpful. When I plug in my steamdeck or raspberry pi it thinks a windows computer is being plugged in an tries to run Samsung dex/windows thing and register the computer. I have to wait 10s for it to finish then press back on the remote.

So annoying and there is no way to remove this or toggle it off. Oh yeah and when I open the menu to scroll the different inputs or apps there are ads. Paid a few thousand for this thing and it still shows me ads.

What counts as funny? Have you connected it to the internet? If so it's probably still spying on you and that is why people care.

To be honest, looking at the PiHole logs the TV itself hasn't tried to do much of anything. The apps on my streaming device (namely Netflix before I uninstalled it) tried, but the PiHole always caught it.

At this point I wouldn’t rely on PiHole DNS logs alone. You’d need to check network traffic from the device in general, it could use DoT/DoH.

And I suppose there’s the even-creeper Amazon Sidewalk: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

I hate sounding like I’m wearing a foil hat but there are a lot of easy ways to get around trying to neuter smart devices now.

And DoT/DoH don't even add new capabilities, it's been possible to use a VPN to a popular shared hosting provider (e.g. AWS) to hide traffic for a long time before DoT & DoH became standards.

You don't use the features, but those features use you. Gobble up all your data to sell to the highest bidder.

Don’t forget about DNS over HTTPS which bypasses PiHole

Is there a way to set up the modem, router, pihole, or any other part of the network to close that loophole?

Yes. Put your TV behind a second router, manually assign IP address and route to your local network, and don't give the router an upstream gateway. Then any packets the TV might send even to a plain IP address will be dropped at its router before reaching your main router.

One can also just run an open source router/firewall software and do this by clicking a few buttons. OPNsense or OpenWRT get the job done wonderfully.

Wait until TVs come with their own cellular modems so they can give the corporate middle finger to people like us.

Someday I'm going to download one of HN data dumps and find the earliest mention of this particular scare story. It must be ten or even fifteen years old by now, ever since Amazon started offering 3G equipped Kindles with an always-on connection.

Sneaky cellular access hasn't happened so far, not because the vendors wouldn't like the capability, but (IMO) because it would introduce enough of its own costs and complications to be unprofitable. It's easier to piggyback on customers' internet and disregard the small fraction of privacy-conscious buyers.

This is the actual reason there was all that hysteria around the "race to 5G" with the dire warnings that we'd be buried by China if we didn't roll out 5G ASAP. The actual reason is that 5G works better with congested cells and large numbers of clients than 4G, so it's a lot easier to put cellular modems in every device and bypass those pesky users.

Except many TV models are already sold at a loss. Throwing a $20/month cellular modem in there isn't going to help any.

The number of users who opt out of connecting their smart TV to Wi-Fi is so damn tiny that it is a rounding error for TV makers. They just don't care.

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