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That's sadly not really true. I have an LG that I (thought) I was using this way until one day in the middle of watching some TV I get a prompt about a OnePlus
by Volundr 5y ago
That's sadly not really true. I have an LG that I (thought) I was using this way until one day in the middle of watching some TV I get a prompt about a OnePlus phone trying to control my TV, do I want to accept? Needless to say and didn't, but I was baffled by what happened. Turns out that the stupid TV is controllable via an app over bluetooth, and there is no way to turn bluetooth off. I'm just stuck with my TV constantly advertising it's presence to everything around it.
- goatcode 5y agoIf this is an argument that all TVs are smart TVs, then all TVs with an IR control input device are smart TVs (because universal remotes).
- isoprophlex 5y agoNo of course not. The moment you - possibly accidentally - grant the fucker an internet connection over BT, it starts to rat on you. However briefly. Aything with an IR remote does not betrays it's users like that (through the remote)
- gopalv 5y ago> grant the fucker an internet connection over BT, it starts to rat on you Or it does that by itself, with a mesh network that your neighbours have setup by accident with their Alexa or Ring - Amazon Sidewalk is an amazing end-run around your own firewall rules.
- isoprophlex 5y agoThanks for giving me another invention to be angry about, haha. Makes you wonder about the opportunities for poisoning of Sidewalk networks, just to get some petty revenge.
- clairity 5y agothat's not petty, that's downright patriotic. we have an inalienable right to privacy, security, and liberty, and absolutely no obligation to let companies (or governments) invade or curtail those rights.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> we have an inalienable right to privacy, security, and liberty I assume you’re referring to the US constitution. The rights you’re referring to constrain the government, not companies. You do not have a legal right to privacy w.r.t. your TV spying on you.
- clairity 5y agono, not just the constitution, it's inalienable because it's intrinsic to being civilized people, not because some piece of paper says so. on the contrary, companies have no right to spy on us.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoYet they seem to be able to keep on doing it just fine.
- clairity 5y agoso people still kicking dogs makes it ok? note that a right isn't a passive trait, but an active assertion. every time we give in to what's easy, we lose a little bit of our rights. you maintain rights by speaking out and living by them. we wouldn't need a second amendment were that not the case (n.b., i don't personally own nor desire a gun).
- krustymeathead 5y agoI wonder when home security setups will start including a Faraday cage, at least for certain rooms or areas.
- rightbyte 5y agoIt seems way simpler to short the wifi antenna or something than to redo the walls? Bluetooth is probably harder to fix though, if the TV has that.
- bick_nyers 5y agoIf you build it into all of the exterior facing walls, you can use a cell range extender to tunnel a data connection inside your house, and also similarly with a Wi-Fi AP connected via Ethernet, in the event that you want Wi-Fi signal outside your home as well. Actually, when I build my next house in 5-10 years I think I might do exactly this
- vineyardmike 5y agoNot gunna lie, i'm looking at building/remodelling a home in the next few years, and i'm seriously considering foiling the walls of some rooms just to build a faraday cage.
- snerbles 5y agoIR is line-of-sight, and the receiver can be blocked with a small piece of electrical tape.
- m00x 5y agoSame for bluetooth, just build a faraday cage around your TV and you're good! /s
- kazinator 5y agoOnly if it's grounded, so that's a step up from the tape.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y agoBluetooth can be turned off in the settings.
- Volundr 5y agoIt can't. Which is sort of the point of my comment. If it could I'd have no problem with this feature.
- Volundr 5y agoI mean sure, it's (probably) not an internet connection, but Bluetooth and an IR remote aren't really comparable. Bluetooth exchanges information in both directions, IR does not. Bluetooth works from hundreds of feet away (or more) with no line of site, an IR remote does not. Bluetooth allows for broadcasting arbitrary content to my TV, an IR remote can only change the channel. Given the relative complexities I'm also far more concerned about a security vulnerability existing in the never updated random Bluetooth module/drivers in the TV than an IR receiver that emulates button presses.
- ab_testing 5y agoWell, that was mostly a neighbor who accidentally clicked on your TV's bluetooth broadcast signal. But still if you leave it at that and not let your TV connect via bluetooth, it still remains a dumb TV
- foobarian 5y ago> and there is no way to turn bluetooth off Challenge accepted! <grabs pliers and soldering iron>
- thih9 5y agoWarranty voided?
- kazinator 5y agoA warranty is never voided if nobody knows what you did. The profit margins are quite thin on consumer equipment; they can't afford to investigate into the chassis, having someone look at every chip that might have been tampered with.
- willcipriano 5y agoReturn it to Amazon, you could fill the box with rocks and they will happily ship it on to the next customer.
- rosseloh 5y agoMost electronics warranties on stuff I've bought have been a year, max. Out of that period? Antenna snipping time! ...if there is one to snip, of course.
- amelius 5y agoAlso, HDMI cables support ethernet connections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC
- hrrsn 5y agoSadly - there's basically no hardware support for this. Dead in the water.
- amelius 5y agoThat's what large TV manufacturers want you to believe ;)
- hrrsn 5y agoThe same TV manufacturers that are still shipping 10/100 Ethernet ports on TVs in 2021?
- babypuncher 5y agoYou got any evidence to back this up? Hardware that supports this feature is basically nonexistent.
- neltnerb 5y agoI imagine they'll happily let your neighbor accept the terms and conditions you have yet to accept too =P That's a failure mode I hadn't thought about, I didn't realize people tried to control a TV with bluetooth. Why would you do this? Initial configuration but then never again? I can't think of a technical reason it meaningfully helps when you can already type in a wifi password with the remote, so I'm inclined to assume that the feature isn't for the customer but rather because they want you to use their app on your phone because the data on your phone is more valuable than the data on your TV.
- laumars 5y agoI used to quite like BT control of the TV back when my kids were babies. Advance warning though, these are going to be pretty niche use cases… I would feed them and they’d fall asleep in my arms but sometimes I would be terrified to move them in case they woke (and sometimes I’d just enjoy cuddling them as they slept). However the TV remote might have been too far to reach, whereas my phone was always in my pocket. BT became useful again when they became older and started playing with the TV remote. It was always getting lost. Whereas my phone wasn’t.
- neltnerb 5y agoSo that does make sense, for sure, though my thinking was about how once it's connected to your home WiFi surely your phone is too and is less range limited. But in terms of involving installing an app on your phone to emulate a remote, both are the same so it's no different. At least it's for more than just to configure it, mandating a connection to a phone you may or may not have seems like a stretch. At least by making it possible to use your BT for a remote you're expanding the features rather than breaking them.
- kingcharles 5y agoI was given a nice TV with no remote. Used Bluetooth remote app to control TV.
- duderific 5y agoMy LG tv started having an annoying popup message every few seconds, "Unknown device is disconnected", which was caused by a faulty WiFi module, documented here: https://www.theraffon.net/spookcentral/tcp/2019/07/10/lg-smart-tv-unknown-device-is-disconnected-fix https://www.theraffon.net/spookcentral/tcp/2019/07/10/lg-sma... Since I use a Roku stick for streaming, I have no need for the WiFi module in the TV. I was able to follow the instructions in that post, which involve removing the back of the TV and physically disconnecting the Wifi Module, and correct the issue. I suppose that's one way to make sure the TV is not silently connecting to WiFi, although I'm not sure how difficult that operation would be on other manufacturers.
- azinman2 5y agoBe aware that Roku is one of the worst offenders in selling your watching habits.
- behnamoh 5y agoWhat are some better alternatives?
- danielheath 5y agoPlex, if you have a spare machine to run it on. Free if the household share a username/password.
- throwaway81523 5y agoPlex also phones home, I thought. I could never understand why anyone uses it. What is wrong with mplayer running purely on a local client?
- kitsunesoba 5y agoLocal playback is fine, but greatly restricts your options for media boxes. The top end Apple TV 4K for example only has 64GB of storage, and the Nvidia Shield TV caps out at a paltry 16GB. The Apple TV would fit a few shows if you were willing to rotate them out, but wouldn’t be able to provide a “library” experience. The Shield supports external storage, but who wants an external HD or NAS taking up space on their TV stand? So local playback implies something more like a mini-ITX PC or SBC running some flavor of Linux. That’s fine, but it’s not going to be terribly couch-friendly since it’s going to have a bog standard desktop UI. So the most popular option is to put all your media on a server in the closet (usually an old laptop or raspi or something), with a client on your streaming box like Plex, Kodi, Infuse, etc connecting to your server.
- laumars 5y agoWhich model have you got? I have a few LG TVs and there’s various options across the different firmwares that might disable that. Eg LG Connect Apps I’ve also often wondered if “store mode” disabled all of the radios because that’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t want enabled in a store.
- Volundr 5y agoIt's an LG OLED55C9PUA. FWIW I went though all the menus, as well as searching the internet, and couldn't find any way to turn it off, nor as far as I could tell could anyone else who discovered this "feature".
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoBluetooth on a phone can be disabled. I only turn on bluetooth when it is needed. Wired headsets and wired keyboards will work with some of today's phones.
- antiframe 5y agoThat doesn't sound like a great user experience. "I have this TV that I want to use as a monitor, but I have to turn of a feature on my unrelated device which I want to use with a headset, keyboard, etc". I would rather buy a dumb TV that didn't require me to lose phone features.
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- Volundr 5y agoIt wasn't my phone trying to connect to the TV.
- gh0std3v 5y agoFor anyone with LG TVs, iirc there’s a project called OpenLGTV which is working to reverse engineer LG software. Maybe it could help disable some of these “smart” features?
- dtgriscom 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338658
- Zircom 5y agoWe have a pretty bad relationship with one of my neighbors. Not gonna get into specifics, but they're quite immature and petty and vindictive, and just generally not pleasant people. Anyhow, late one night we saw something popup in the list when I was pairing my headphones. "$crappyneighbor's TV". And we saw an opportunity to be a little petty back for once. We connected my phone, and apparently their TV model features no confirmation because it went right through, and started blasting Rick Astleys "Never Gonna Give You Up" until my phone disconnected a couple minutes later. Bit of good harmless fun at their expense.
- xyzzy21 5y agoYou can disable bluetooth with some effort - find the BT antenna (inside) and replace it with a load terminator - the radio thinks there's an antenna still but there is nothing that can be broadcast or received.