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Someone on HN recently floated the idea of a company that would make quality, non-smart electronics and appliances that would also be easily serviceable. I wish
by hanklazard 6y ago
Someone on HN recently floated the idea of a company that would make quality, non-smart electronics and appliances that would also be easily serviceable. I wish this existed and would pay significantly more for products like this.
To address your question, I think they’re all “smart” now. I ended up getting a low-end Samsung 4K a few months ago and it’s been good so far. It starts up very quickly, maybe 1-2 seconds. We use it exclusively with an AppleTV because of privacy / advertising concerns that have been raised. I’m just waiting for the day when all TVs require a working internet connection and we have to start hacking their hardware and software to protect our data.
- koolba 6y agoNever add your WiFi credentials you your TV. It doesn’t let you remove them so you’re only option is to create a “dummy” network (ex: phone as a hotspot) and switch to it. Also, watch out for clueless^helpful friends and relatives who try to “fix” your TV’s WiFi.
- gindely 6y ago(ot: should that be clueless^Whelpful, or is there some new convention I'm not aware of? ^ still means "ctrl" right?)
- gkop 6y agoThe parent is using it to mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction
- mywittyname 6y ago^ probably means super-script format in this context. I'd probably say ~helpful~clueless instead though
- castillar76 6y agoIt's an old Unix convention: ^W (Ctrl-w) would remove a word using the Emacs keybindings. So in place of striking out a word, you'd put ^W and the replacement, as you would when typing it out ("clueless...err, no, wait...ctrl-W...HELPFUL").
- Drdrdrq 6y agoGp missed "w".
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoIIUC, you're saying there's no obvious way to make the TV stop using the Wifi network once you tell it the SSID + password. Couldn't you just change the wifi password?
- vetinari 6y agoIt will continue trying to connect to your SSID. Failing of course, but it will still pollute your channel with garbage packets.
- hanklazard 6y agoI really wish I could just remove the wifi chip. I'm tempted to take the rear panel off just to see if it's reasonably accessible.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoOr just snip the antenna
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago<fantasy> Or just keep hitting company officers with a tire iron until they fix it. </fantasy>
- abiogenesis 6y agoPut it in a faraday cage.
- syshum 6y agoThis is why you segment out your WiFi, I have 4 SSID's 1. Normal Traffic 2. Guest 3. Security Devices (Camera's, and other Home Automation) 4. Media Devices (Roku, FireTV, Smart TV's, etc) media devices only have access to my home Plex server and the internet nothing else
- dsl 6y agoI just have a GLiNet travel router I picked up for $20 that is open and not connected to anything. Any "smart" devices get connected to that so they can talk to each other but not the internet.
- hanklazard 6y agoYeah, VLANs work for a TV that is only trying to connect to your network, but doesn't deal with the case of a TV that will connect to any open SSID (a case that at least one other commenter in this thread claims is already occurring). It wouldn't be difficult to have the TV check different open networks if it's not able to reach a server due to a firewall config on the home network. For anyone living in a relatively dense city, this could be a problem.
- grishka 6y ago> It doesn’t let you remove them What about factory reset?
- hanklazard 6y agoMy wife connected it to our wifi the other day ... I almost lost it.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y agoA factory reset should fix that TV right up.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoAlso be aware that some smart TV's have been found to just connect to any open wifi, so even if you don't enter one and think your tv isn't spying, you could be wrong.
- chihuahua 6y agoI had this problem with a Vizio 40" 4K TV once, and was able to solve it using the factory reset function in the menu.
- non-entity 6y ago> Someone on HN recently floated the idea of a company that would make quality, non-smart electronics and appliances that would also be easily serviceable. I wish this existed and would pay significantly more for products like this. You know, I've wanted something like this as well for a while. I know next to nothing about startups or companies, but I wonder how hard it would be to create a hardware startup around this. On one hand, you arent really designing anything new, you're more or less creating a version of an existing product, with existing technologies, except removing undesirable parts. On the other hand, I have mo idea how someone could get started without previous experience in TV design / manufacturing.
- cameronbrown 6y agoDoubt it would work. Hardware is commoditized and low margin. That's why TVs are embedding internet advertising, to make fat stacks from their otherwise barely profitable products.
- lscharen 6y agoWouldn’t that work in _favor_ of the startup idea? If the hardware is a commodity and the market is for a bare-bones, self-serviceable “just a TV”, then the startup should have significantly lower engineering costs and benefit from the low component costs. Given that people on this thread are stating that they would pay a premium for such a product makes it seem even more viable. Maybe other people have different “serviceability” definitions, but I once replaced the main board of a broken Vizio smart TV —- there were only two components —- a power board and the main electronics board. The hardest part was tracking down a replacement board, but $35 and a few screws later and I had a working TV again. That met my definition of self-service.
- tialaramex 6y agoMaybe. There can be a problem with the size of that premium. Suppose end consumers think fixing this is worth $50 but not worth $100. If the outfit selling a "SmartTV" gets $80 lifetime value from the "SmartTV" features like forced advertising and margins are slim you probably find you can't offer this "dumb TV" for $50 extra without losing money, and you have no customers and go out of business. On the other hand, it could go pretty well. We know advertisers see people who buy premium products (which such a "dumb TV" would be since it costs extra) as more valuable in a lot of categories, so maybe you charge $50 extra for the dumb TV and - as it takes off - that undercuts the advertising income of the existing products, so they have to raise prices to remain profitable and that actually improves your affordability compared to the market. Or else they make advertising even more intrusive and pervasive to keep the revenue up, and it makes your $50 premium appear a bargain by comparison for those sick of advertising.
- myself248 6y agoSpecifically for TVs, you can get a new display driver board for whatever panel is in there. Eats HDMI/DP, spits out eDP or VBO or whatever the panel format is. Often these are pretty basic, with a minimal OSD pasted in by the Shenzhen seller who configures the thing to your order. Personally I'm trying to get my hands on the SDK for the software that runs in the driver chip (does the OSD and the scaling and everything else), because I think there's a lot of potential there. But boy it's like pulling teeth. Similarly, the Exploiteers (née GTVHacker) have done quite a bit of reverse-engineering of the stock boards, so you can just fix the broken-ass firmware they ship with. Ultimately I'm picturing something like the WRT54G, a single modem that the community coalesces around, to the point that a decade later, third-party firmwares have become such a force that manufacturers build hardware specifically to run it.
- nitrogen 6y agoNice. Do any of those support 100+Hz frame rate or Freesync?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> you can get a new display driver board for whatever panel is in there. Eats HDMI/DP, spits out eDP or VBO or whatever the panel format is Do these boards support HDCP?
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoHDCP strippers are a thing now, so this shouldn’t be a concern.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoFor 4K? And are they legal?
- jiggawatts 6y ago> Specifically for TVs, you can get a new display driver board for whatever panel is in there. Is this something that is practical and commonly done, or only theoretically possible? I have an older model Sony 4K TV (pre-Android) that is so slow now after its recent firmware updates that it responds to button presses only after 2-3 seconds. It's unbearable! I'd love to be able to just pop in a new driver board and refresh the TV, but I've never heard of anyone doing this kind of thing before.
- oarsinsync 6y ago> I’m just waiting for the day when all TVs require a working internet connection We're not there yet, but we're on our way. My Philips Ambilight TV pops up a warning every few weeks to remind me that I should connect the TV to the network to benefit from all the smart apps it has bundled. Immensely frustrating.
- jjoonathan 6y agoMy TCL bootloops if it doesn't have an internet connection. It also shows ads on its screensaver. Coincidence? Dunno, but it's sure making TCL money and making me miserable.
- robrtsql 6y agoCan you factory reset it? I have a TCL Roku TV which I've never connected to the Internet and it shows a pretty standard 'logo bouncing around the edges of the screen' screensaver.
- jjoonathan 6y agoI sure can. I can even select a screensaver other than the "city with ads" one. Then it starts to bootloop until I reset it to defaults and connect it to the internet. Yes, I need to do both, or it starts bootlooping again. Support is all too happy to walk me through the process.
- hinkley 6y agoWith ethernet over HDMI being a thing, I've heard reports of TVs tunneling out through a media box without asking first.
- dsl 6y agoEthernet-over-HDMI is so poorly supported in consumer devices that in HDMI 2.1 they dropped in completely and reused the pins for eARC audio.
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- qq11ww22ee33 6y ago> I wish this existed and would pay significantly more for products like this. But the average person wouldn't, and "fickle hacker news user" is not a wide open market.
- nitrogen 6y agoMaybe some day we'll invent the technology to address small markets without being told we're doing something wrong.
- a1a1a1a1a1a1 6y agoI believe a lot of television manufacturers already offer the equivalent of that as "commercial TVs" or "digital signage" they are marketed toward businesses. I think they're typically more expensive because they don't collect and sell data to subsidize cost, but that might be what you're looking for. Here's an example of a Samsung digital signage TV https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd/qe-series/qet-series-50-lh50qetelgcxgo/ https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...
- dsl 6y agoThey are more expensive because they generally have higher quality components and are not made to be disposable, and commercial applications have a higher price tolerance than consumers. Despite the common trope, "selling data" doesn't lower the price of consumer devices. You only see price-less-than-cost plays when companies are trying to buy market share (think Alexa, Google Home, early Kindle, etc).
- djrogers 6y agoUmm, no - this is not just a 'common trope'. The CTO of Vizio has stated in multiple interviews that removing the data collection capabilities of their TVs would increase the prices. Direct quote: "The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost." and "It's not just about data collection. It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV." [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit-vizio-tv-bill-baxter-interview-vergecast-ces-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-advertising-2019-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoRight, but the value of the data pulled from a single TV is probably around $10/yr (how could it be higher?). Over 10 years that’s $100 - sure - but do people keep Vizio TVs around that long?
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- hinkley 6y agoIn my perfect world, controller cards have a standardized physical interface, which SBC makers can target as a repair/customization option. In practice I suspect many of these systems barely function, each is a special snowflake, and that any bad input from controller could result in fire or water damage to your house. So maybe TVs and fridges are a good place to start and we should give washing machines a while to figure it out.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> I’m just waiting for the day when all TVs require a working internet connection and we have to start hacking their hardware and software to protect our data. These days won't come. What will happen instead is TVs will start coming with embedded SIM cards for cellular data connection (prepaid or otherwise negotiated between TV vendors and telcos), and then we won't have any choice in the matter as consumers, short of opening the box up and snipping the antenna (and losing warranty in the process).
- jjoonathan 6y ago> These days won't come. These days are already here. My TCL bootloops if it doesn't have an internet connection to download ads from, and if you call support, they'll happily walk you through getting it connected to the network.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI meant (almost) all TVs, as GP, not a few of them.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoWhat happens if you tell them that you don’t have an internet connection?
- the_pwner224 6y agoIn the US that won't affect your warranty for SIM-unrelated issues. And most other rich countries have stricter consumer protection laws.
- anonymousab 6y agoThe cheaper route they'll go through first is connecting to any open wifi network (many do this now), refusing to work without a connection (some do this), and pulling a connection over HDMI (will be more common with future devices; presumably next gen consoles).