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I've sort of dumbified 2 smart TVs by coupling them with cheap small computers with ethernet or WiFI in and HDMI out. I don't know absolutely that the TV's are
by jgbmlg 6y ago
I've sort of dumbified 2 smart TVs by coupling them with cheap small computers with ethernet or WiFI in and HDMI out. I don't know absolutely that the TV's are not spying on us, but I can get to the internet going around the TVs not through them.
- input_sh 6y agoIf you're already down that route, why have your TVs connected to your WiFi at all?
- ddalex 6y agoHow do you know the TVs don't connect to any open WiFi network, or simply get shipped with embedded 4G radios ?
- mcny 6y agoI used to think that would be too expensive but then I saw smartphones sell new for USD 20 on Black Friday and I also see one year of 200 MB a month data plans selling for USD 30. That’s retail. I have changed my mind on this: if you were selling a million televisions a month, you could absolutely make it work from a money standpoint. They don’t need to send back tons of data and they don’t need to do it particularly fast.
- foobiekr 6y agoA 3g module was $2.50 COGS in 2013 when I was looking into an IoT startup.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoAnd data and devices will be even cheaper in another 12-18 months once LoRa is rolled out nationwide in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
- mikepurvis 6y agoI expect with a lot of these kinds of use cases you could get absolutely rock bottom volume m2m prices by promising to only use it during designated quiet periods when the network is underutilized.
- rusk 6y agoI think you vastly overestimate how progressive telcos are with this kind of thing ...
- mikepurvis 6y agoMaybe, but I feel like there'd be a pretty easy calculus on it at scale— like "your competitor is cheaper. We're going with them unless you can cut your rate in half. One way you can do that is by giving us SIMs that only unlock for an hour once every 24 hours, and you can decide when that hour is, as long as we see our devices at least once a day." This should be pretty easy to implement on the telco side and it would let them monetize the dead time in the network, same as TOU pricing for electricity.
- o-__-o 6y agoIf you ship a device with a SIM card you then need to follow regulations to ship it. This means you, the buyer, can find out from the FCC what spectrums it speaks on. I don’t think mobile connectivity is a much needed option on TVs so you won’t find it. Connecting to open WiFi hotspots is a completely different beast and doesn’t leave behind a tell-tale trace
- rusk 6y agoYou would think it would be easy to implement ... technically ... but one has to remember that as well as being businesses many Telcos are large hulking great slow moving monsters draped with red tape and politics - anything that changes the existing ways of doing things is often a Herculean act and that strips any dynamism in the market. Don’t misunderstand me there are many discussions in the industry around realising the kind of utopian vision you espouse but these are all bound up in committees with a typical lifespan of > 10 years ...
- samastur 6y agoYou don't, but connecting them to a WiFi won't solve that problem because they can (and probably do) switch to radio if they can't reach their servers through Wifi connection.
- 0942v8653 6y agoIf there's a cellular radio. it has to be declared to the FCC. You can look up your TV's FCC ID to verify that it doesn't have one. I'm not aware of any TV that has an embedded cellular radio.