- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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I would resort to violence, Holy shit.
I have a “smart” TV, but it has never been connected to the internet for reasons such as this. Also I don’t want it spying on me, which is a thing society has to deal with now for some reason, and we just let it happen.
We should be burning the corporate headquarters for these places down when they try shit like this.
“I didn’t do anything wrong”, says man who doesn’t understand the concept of consent or ownership.
Ohh it’s not wrongdoing and when we refuse to buy anything from them, they’re getting what they gave.
I reminds me I should start writing my clickbait “(Millennials/GenZ/GenA or whatever) are killing TV manufactureres” article
I’m genX, but now that you mention it, My kids refuse to watch anything not on a tablet or phone, so there’s that…
Fuck that. heh.
I use a TV for my computer monitor and it’s perfect. I do not use any of the TV features. And it pisses me off when something happens to lose my signal and it switches over into TV mode because it autoplays some free channel that spouts fascist nonsense. I have to poke around for the remote (which is always around but never close because I only need it every month or few months) so I can cut that shit off as soon as possible. heh
Any video I need to watch happens via my computer, thanks, where I’m in control.
I find myself wondering just how complicated TVS could actually be before it’s no longer possible to hijack the display signal that’s fed to the display
Unlike with cars, TVS seem simple enough that a sufficiently motivated novice could modify a cheap TV to circumvent these bullshit features. If they ever started requiring internet connections to start or use these, i think enough people would be bothered by it that there would probably be a secondary market of modified hardware
As with most enshitifications, the question will ultimately be one of complacency of the average consumer.
The basic thing is to get some product that YOU control and never allow the TV to be connected to the internet.
Time to tear the thing apart and patch the firmware.
changing the TV’s DNS servers or disconnecting it from the internet entirely.
Chiming in as an Australian budget VIDAA owner.
I spotted that this TV attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings. I implemented a port 53 (DNS) redirect so those queries get resolved by my local server.
I also figured out which servers are serving up ads/tracking. I fired an email to Pete and got them added to his list. You’re welcome. I’m guessing a pi-hole would work with it.
https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php
I didn’t install the latest update, and probably never will. My TV contacts the unruly ACR servers, but the later firmware probably contacts nexxen.
People like you help to make the internet a better place — which matters a lot to me, because one of my most desperately held beliefs is that it is possible to take the hopefulness of the early internet and combine it with the wisdom of the last few decades to produce a more robust kind of hope
attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings.
Streaming box / stream app makers have been working around local DNS for a long time. Sometimes of course they’re assholes that want to do shitty things and do this to make interdiction harder. But sometimes there are legitimate reasons. Ones I remember… users who don’t really understand what they’re doing can be overly aggressive with blocking and block things that are necessary for a particular service (causing support problems). Sometimes the ISPs DNS servers have shit performance, and using a well known commercial provider like cloudflare or google can improve performance at scale. It’s not always evil.
Thank you for this. I will check later today on my own tv to see what its pulling in the background.
For other readers here is a tutorial to do DNS capture into a pihole server or other DNS
I fear the day these fucks figure out DOH or something. Not sure there’s any way to suppress or intercept that, short of just blocking all external traffic to the TV.
You need plain DNS to resolve the DoH server. Just block that.
Setting up DoH, I already provide the expected name AND an IP. No need for plain DNS at any step. There’s no reason a corporate TV can’t do that either.
A hardcoded IP is even easier to block.
I had a 65" Hisense TV for just over a year, and a firmware update bricked it. It was stone dead, and Hisense wouldn’t even try to repair it. So I spent a little extra money and got a Samsung instead. And once it was set up, I turned off its wifi…just in case.
Hisense can eat a bag o’ dicks.
I haven’t bought a TV in a decade. What kind of setup is required? Why would it need internet access for that?
I let my Vizio TV connect for firmware updates as it has an issue that they’ve improved but I immediately turn off wifi and wipe the connection details right after.
LG work out the box without internet.
I don’t think internet was required for setup, but in each case I did want to get the latest firmware in case there were fixes to the UI or whatever. But I never use the built-in apps or anything, I have a media box for that stuff.
My first 4K TV was a Samsung. The last update broke eARC making the Samsung home theater in a box thing I had much more inconvenient.
My 2nd (free in a raffle) Samsung 4K TV connected to my WiFi without a password when a guest in the house casted a video to it despite on setup refusing to consent to any web things due to privacy concerns. Kinda interesting and concerning.
Yikes… I’m definitely not turning the wifi back on after reading that!
I blocked the TVs MAC address on my router after a factory reset.
It completely ignored my privacy preferences just because someone pressed “cast” on their phone.
So far, I haven’t seen any of this with my Hisense TV. I have a Pihole but I believe smart TV’s, at least this brand, has a hard-coded dns so it can dial home without going through my default dns.
A hard coded DNS means nothing when it’s not connected to the internet
Or, the PiHole can spoof whatever hardcoded IP. Sooo… Things change with DNSSec, but chances are they are not bothering with that in embedded devices.
Anyway, learned something new today; note to self: fron now on, always make sure that a TV works off-line before buying.
We’re all going to be buying computer monitors to watch TV soon.
They’re becoming “smart” as well, unfortunately.
Genuine question, is there a downside to a HTPC?
Storage management.
Stremio/Kodi exists though.
I mean… good luck finding a 65 inch PC monitor.
That does seem like a bit of a downside.
I mean, 30-something is more than sufficient for my needs, and you can get monitors in that range.
The line between TV and PC Monitor is pretty thin. I’ve got my computer hooked up to my LG via HDMI and if there’s a difference between that and my office monitors, I can’t find it.
The difference is the LG TV has a computer already in it. Otherwise the panels are pretty similar.
But some types (and especially sizes) of panels are hard to find in “dumb” PC monitors and vice versa. You can (maybe) find a 42 inch TV, but I’m not aware of a 65 inch display without TV features, let alone any larger sizes.
And projectors, many are still “dumb”
Bought a new TV and this is precisely the reason why it will never be connected to the Internet. I miss out on the built-in AirPlay which is annoying but I’ll live.
They can’t force me if I don’t connect it to the internet
I can imagine future TVs refusing to work without an always-on internet connection.
It’s going right back to the shop, if that’s the case. Not accepting an HDMI input means it’s not fit for purpose.
Or having prebaked fallback ads.
Getting outdated ads crammed down your throat for companies or products that no longer exist is a special kind of trolling.
I can imagine them shipping TVs with built in cellular data just for ads
SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP don’t let them hear this!
…what am I saying? And idea like that they’ve had, just waiting for the price to be right. heh
… and exactly 2 weeks later modders will have figured out how to get their hands on the yummy free unlimited data inside it.
I saw an unboxing for a TV for a Chinese market and it refused to start until the owner paired it with a Chinese phone otp for “age verification” 😉
🙈
Bet there are children that need protecting!
We need openWrt for TVs :(
I believe some custom firmware for TVs exist, the issue is that they are relatively new pieces of tech, while routers have existed for a comparatively long time.
Based on the limited experience with a few devices (LG), the SoC in TVs are not new pieces of tech. At all. They seem old and underpowered crap. Similar to DVB-T sticks available for the price of 2 pizzas and a pack of gum on AliExpress.
cfw on smart TVs would be difficult in the first place due to the TVs’ heavily TiVo-ized nature (pun not intended)
This. Have played with similar devices in the past and I was surprised how many of these devices are running standard Linux kernel with some custom engineered distros. Projects like Buildroot, OpenWRT, Busybox and a few others are what the vendors use to roll their own builds.
A few of them agressively lock down the bootloaders in an attempt to (try to) prevent people from owning the device they’ve paid retail price for. Many don’t really bother. The good news is, that such measures are relatively easy for experts to circumvent and break down. This, of course, is not cheap, but needs to happen only once, often for more than a single model. Some kind of bounty-based system could provide incentive and financing for such efforts.
Retail price or rental price lol
I bought my last TV about 7 years ago. I got a “small” 38" TV. As I was checking out, the cashier asked me if I’d rather upgrade to a larger model from the same brand with smart features for 10 dollars less. I flat out told him ‘no’ and that was probably the best decision I made that year.
If you don’t connect a smart TV to the internet, it’s functionally the same as a dumb TV.
Sadly more and more TV’s will now require you to connect to the Internet, even when you just use HDMI
My new LG didn’t require it, but the settings menu and ‘home’ screen nag about lack of connectivity.
“Why did you buy a smart TV if you didn’t want the smart features” brother, it was the best tv in that price range and few true dumb ones exist in that range. IMO the smart features should be considered optional but I guess these companies don’t agree
Well that’s just a day one return then and an openbox discount for the next person
Which cause I haven’t come across any that do that.
Ive had LG, Vizio, TCL, and Samsung TVs (still have all but Vizio) and haven’t ran into one that requires internet yet, not to say that some manufacturers haven’t/wouldn’t do this at some point.
Yes, and no. For example, my Samsung TV makes me wait while it tries to recognize whatever I have plugged into the HDMI port, as opposed, oh I don’t know, just displaying the fucking signal being fed to it. Annoying as hell.
Wait for how long? HDMI devices need to handshake with the TV so there is always a delay unfortunately. It’s not just a good ol’ video signal anymore.
The delay in a monitor may be milliseconds to a couple of seconds
It’s at least 30 seconds. It’s possibly trying to phone home and hitting a timeout, though there’s no Ethernet or Wi-Fi, so not sure why it would bother.
