This. Why would you even connect TV to the network?
It is well known for like 5 years. Smsrt TVs go through your movies library, and upload screenshots and filenames to internet.
Some will start showing ads after firmware upgrade.
It is well known for like 5 years. Smsrt TVs go through your movies library, and upload screenshots and filenames to internet.
Some will start showing ads after firmware upgrade.
They can just start a capture, record to RAM / storage, and retrieve it later when it is reconnected to the network.
Otherwise if it's disconnected, it is still hard to exfiltrate the data somewhere. Maybe they could get creative via Bluetooth, but then you would need a cooperating device in proximity of the device.
Also, wouldn't this be trivial to test by just setting up your own network and seeing if the TV connects?
I happen to have a NAS with family pictures I like to display. I can (and do) firewall that thing, but then you hit other issues like the apps you need to show pictures and movies in the first place not to install/run.
I've yet to hear of a reasonable recipe to isolate and secure such connected TVs. And don't get me started on Chromecast or other Android dongles, I've no reason to expect better treatment from Google. Some open source hacked-together box, then?
If you only care about file playback, bit still care about things like HDR and quality audio I would recommend something like the OSMC Vero V instead.
It's still relatively cheap, and open source, but also let's you playback something like a blu-ray rip without loss of quality.
It has the other bonus of not requiring any real setup or maintenance.
On most devices Dolby Vision, etc get downgraded or support only the streaming profiles (profile 5) . If you want full Atmos, Dolby Vision, etc you have to buy one of only a handful of devices. The Vero V is one of them. There are only a few others.
Mine comes with i5 8500t, 16gb ram and 256gb ssd, and it was like $150.
I chose one over the Apple TV because I knew I wouldn't able to stand any limitations on sideloading. For a while I was running a custom build of Wholphin with patched libmpv/libplacebo to work around a bug before the fix was upstreamed. A device without the freedom to do that sort of thing would drive me nuts.
I've just used an old Intel NUC with Debian stable, a remote mini-keyboard and an automounted Samba share on the network forever. It's no more hacked together than any other computer. I do make the mouse pointer and the fonts real big. No apps required. Don't really need the keyboard except for mplayer hotkey presses - just the touchpad on it; if I need to do something that involves typing other than typing a password, I usually ssh in.
I think people are lowkey addicted to having shit sliding in and out and constantly being advertised to. How do you know what to watch unless somebody is constantly bombarding you with options? If it doesn't look like a star trek control panel, is it really TV?
If you like that, you can install Kodi. I haven't tried it since it was XBMC because I found the interfaces annoying and it had trouble dealing with networks, but I'm sure it's better.
> I've yet to hear of a reasonable recipe to isolate and secure such connected TVs
I don't even try. I overpay for dumb tvs in the present, or underpay for 10 year old tvs pre-Applefication. I've never owned a network capable television, or one with apps. I wouldn't.
edit: if your NAS is a separate box that can sit in proximity to your television, you could probably just run all of this stuff directly from the NAS. They spend most of their time doing nothing at all.
I turn on the device, the app in the upper left is selected and showing some content from that.
The device sits idle, I get drone footage of landscapes.
If I accidentally bump the wrong button on the remote and get sent into the Apple TV (streaming service) app, sure it advertises producte, but in general there are no ads.
In comparison, Google TV's homescreen is giant ads for content on services I don't subscribe to, Roku is at least as bad, Amazon is worse, and Samsung and LG......oof.
I suppose my next device is an Apple TV or some kind of home brew Linux box.
The Shield at launch was an amazing product - premium UX and hardware, premium price point. Google changed the experience to an ad-loaded mess without providing an opt out for those who had spent hundreds of dollars on the Shield.
I was dogfooder, a huge advocate of the product, and someone who had convinced others to buy the Shield and Android TV devices. That UX revamp and how the team treated their customers (internal and external) turned me off the product for life. I tried the various competitors (XBox, Roku, Amazon) before landing on Apple TV. I now own two Apple TV devices - both of which are still getting updates many years after I bought them - and will continue using them for as long as the product line is maintained.
People in this thread have talked about Apple's clean beautiful ad-free UX, but the apps themselves are far better. Apple sets customer-friendly App Store requirements *and enforces them*. That means:
* The back button always works. It will bring you back to the home page of the app and then to the system launcher. It will not get stuck in an endless loop of "are you sure you want to quit?" and just dismissing that dialog like multiple Android apps do
* No loud obtrusive sounds on app startup (YouTube, Netflix)
* The apps are first-class priorities for developers. Circa 2019, the Paramount+ app was an inconsistent mess where subtitles were broken on some platforms. The Plex app wouldn't transcode certain formats on the XBox, and so on. None of these issues are a problem on Apple TV. Not every app is perfect (Dropout, I love your content, but your app is awful), but none of them are worse than on any competing platform.
Apple TV is a truly incredible product and ecosystem and one that feels like a joy to use. That's not the case for Android TV (now Google TV, I think?) even with a custom launcher.
I enable app-only mode on my chromecast and does not see any ads.
https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/09/go...
It's more expensive than a 40€ Chromecast, but also SO MUCH BETTER.
That could of course change. Could be even a nice feature for connecting your TV to the network via your multi media center, if the bandwidth is good.
https://www.techspot.com/news/113031-lg-alienware-monitors-c...
HDMI Ethernet is dead, it's never going to happen in consumer televisions because it has a hard conflict with a feature a lot of people actually use.
Proportion of non-HN users whose TVs don't connect to the internet? Negligible
But yes, support for the ethernet mode as far as I'm aware was never actually implemented in any devices that reached retail availability.
But I guess like an xkcd comic, someone is obligated to raise the issue every time TVs come up.
There's no need for the TV to be anything but a dumb screen that has only "power on", "power off", "volume up", "volume down" and "mute" functions. Most are probably too underpowered anyway to be useful.
> the idea of a modern dumb TV is non-existent.
They're sold as commercial display panels/digital signage and because they're a business product that isn't subsidized by advertising/spyware they cost a good bit more. But the panels and controls are basically identical to high end TVs.
Is there any TV on the market that flat out wont work if it can't see the internet?
"Starting in 2014, Vizio made TVs that automatically tracked what consumers were watching and transmitted that data back to its servers. Vizio even retrofitted older models by installing its tracking software remotely. All of this, the FTC and AG allege, was done without clearly telling consumers or getting their consent.
...
"Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen that it matched to a database of TV, movie, and commercial content
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203 shows LG and Samsung doing something similar
Samsung were openly bragging about this on their website some years ago (for the benefit of their advertising partners) but have recently muddied the waters when I check their site again, couching it in language mentioning privacy and other evasive language:
As far as I know, they don't literally scan your media libraries; they screenshot whatever you're watching through HDMI (most often cable / satellite boxes), as those devices don't provide the telemetry that normal apps do. This info is used for audience measurement (thing Nielsen ratings), as well as showing you ads that are actually likely to match your interests.