7 ms·

Eh, I’d rather get that ad subsidy and never connect the tv to the internet

dudul 4y ago
Sure, until we reach the point of "always connected" TVs that will work.
teddyh 4y ago
TVs will soon, if not already, come with cell phones; the ad revenue is larger than what they are charged for the cell phone IP traffic. TVs also reportedly use any open WiFi they can see, and use DoH to make DNS-based ad blocking impossible.
- littlecranky67 4y ago
  The "they use any open wifi they can see" myth has been brought up on HN multiple times, and never did anybody provide any credible proof of this rumour (that started as a single reddit comment).
  - teddyh 4y ago
    I would be surprised if modern TVs didn’t connect to open WiFis; there is literally no reason for TVs not to do this, and every incentive to do it. Even if we discount the ads as a motivator, it’s still a simple solution to get people’s stuff configured automatically.
    - littlecranky67 4y ago
      Legal issues aside, there might be loss of company image and also privacy related matter (I can run an open wifi to see the data that my neighbour TV sends). And to add to this: There has been no proof ever that modern TVs do this, and it would be quite easy for anyone/journalists/reviewers to check this (just run an open wifi and monitor it).
    - netsharc 4y ago
      And I would be surprised if they did... the belief in these sorts of tech urban legends/conspiracy theories that some seemingly techie people have is cringeworthy. And no, Facebook/Instagram aren't listening to users either, it would need too much bandwidth/server power to process all those conversations, and if you say "they can do the speech recognition on the users' phones", the majority of users use budget phones that don't have that sort of power.
      - teddyh 4y ago
        This reminds me of the pre-Snowden times, where people often assumed that governments widely recorded internet traffic, since they had both the capability and the motivation, but people like you dismissed it as “urban legends/conspiracy theories” because there wasn’t any hard evidence.
        netsharc 4y ago
        How do you know what I did in regards to the Five Eyes? I wonder what's easier to check and verify, a secret government tapping of the Internet, or if the TVs in millions of people's living rooms are trying to connect to open WiFi networks...
        teddyh 4y ago
        (I did not mention or claim anything about you personally.) You’re right in that this should be easier to find. But I haven’t seen any concerted effort to buy N number of smart TVs and do security analysis on them in order to find something like this.
        netsharc 4y ago
    - smileybarry 4y ago
      Until someone makes a honeypot library that just spams Google Cast/AirPlay 2 streams when it sees a random TV join
    - Datagenerator 4y ago
      Would be surprised if they don't include 5G in order to gain permanent unfiltered access. Sending that sweet telemetry data has priority.
    - BeefWellington 4y ago
      It would be pretty easy to check and validate if that's true.
    - vlunkr 4y ago
      In my sample size of two different brands, this isn’t true.
  - rovr138 4y ago
    How about one that can do 5G? Samsung and Huawei are doing 5G TV, https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to-make-netflix-streaming-faster-than-ever https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to... https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-tv-because-thats-apparently-a-thing-now https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...
    - _23sd 4y ago
      Worth noting that these articles are from 2019 and there hasn't been much talk of 5G TVs since. Aside from plain old 5G hype, SK Telecom wants 5G TVs as part of their envisioned ATSC/5G convergence that would bring more OTT services to broadcast TV (using their 5G network, naturally). This is mostly for the Korean market, since in North America broadcast TV is less popular and 5G networks have less capacity.
- rovr138 4y ago
  Already, https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to-make-netflix-streaming-faster-than-ever https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to... https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-tv-because-thats-apparently-a-thing-now https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...
a4isms 4y ago
For now, this appears to be feasible. And it will probably stay feasible as long as the number of people who do it is relatively miniscule. But economics being economics, we’re freeloading off the customers who hook their smart TVs up to the internet and provide manufacturers with enough revenue that they don’t care about us. But should the practice become widespread and manufacturers notice a material impact on their revenues, or should growth stall and manufacturers start looking to squeeze more revenue out of customers, they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled, and work out deals with wireless carriers to have a private data channel as Amazon does with its kindles. my 4K “smart” TV is the first I ever bought, and I believe the last. By the time I will want to replace it, I believe manufacturers will have closed this “loophole” and it will be impossible to keep a new TV from phoning home.
- littlecranky67 4y ago
  > they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled Open up the TV and solder the antenna to ground. If the TVs refuse to work when there is no Signal, good luck with customer complaints - here in Germany, we have huge black-spots with no reception whatsoever (mostly rural areas, but people still live in those).
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    If the % of people who don't connect their smart TV to internet is small, then the % of people who will go through the trouble of soldering their TV (and voiding their warranty) is essentially 0%.
    - littlecranky67 4y ago
      The whole "void warranty if any changes are made" is mostly not enforcable in Europe and as I understand it in some part in the US. In Germany, you would just have to proof that your change is not the culprit of the damage. I.e. if your OLED panel breaks, you can still claim warranty.
      - 4y ago
smileybarry 4y ago
Some vendors are also just less scummy in turning it off and the extent of ad services. Sony TVs are Google TV-based and explicitly ask for Samba (not SMB) TV analytics (and can be declined), and you can just outright disable the APK in settings. No ads in menus like Samsung (you do get the Google TV "recommendations" but that's a whole other problem).
amelius 4y ago
I recently got a small tuner box from my cable company. It requires both an ethernet connection and an ethernet-enabled HDMI cable ... The nice part is that I can control the tuner with the same remote as the TV. The not so nice part: my TV is now connected to the internet.
dsr_ 4y ago
Bought a cheap HiSense TV for my kid to use as a big monitor. It literally will not work for any input source -- including OTA TV -- until it has been hooked to a network where it can register itself. It appears to work afterwards without a network connection... but I cannot recommend HiSense at all.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Return it as defective. If enough people do that they'll get the message. An internet connection should not be a requirement for buying an appliance.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    This! you see post after post of people complaining about things but doing little about it. Returning products as "defective" is pretty hard on manufacturers as stores do not like this happening.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      The asymmetry between the costs for the returns process and the 'happy path' of sales is such that even a relatively small percentage would throw a giant spanner in the works. You need to sell three more to make up for one return or so.
  - M95D 4y ago
    I have a Philips smart TV. I didn't connect it to the internet. Every week it nags me with a popup message telling me how much I'm missing if I don't connect it. Technically, it's not defective; it still works without the internet. But think about it... What if the nag would pop up daily? Or every hour?

Sure, until we reach the point of "always connected" TVs that will work.

TVs will soon, if not already, come with cell phones; the ad revenue is larger than what they are charged for the cell phone IP traffic. TVs also reportedly use any open WiFi they can see, and use DoH to make DNS-based ad blocking impossible.

littlecranky67 4y ago
The "they use any open wifi they can see" myth has been brought up on HN multiple times, and never did anybody provide any credible proof of this rumour (that started as a single reddit comment).
- teddyh 4y ago
  I would be surprised if modern TVs didn’t connect to open WiFis; there is literally no reason for TVs not to do this, and every incentive to do it. Even if we discount the ads as a motivator, it’s still a simple solution to get people’s stuff configured automatically.
  - littlecranky67 4y ago
    Legal issues aside, there might be loss of company image and also privacy related matter (I can run an open wifi to see the data that my neighbour TV sends). And to add to this: There has been no proof ever that modern TVs do this, and it would be quite easy for anyone/journalists/reviewers to check this (just run an open wifi and monitor it).
  - netsharc 4y ago
    And I would be surprised if they did... the belief in these sorts of tech urban legends/conspiracy theories that some seemingly techie people have is cringeworthy. And no, Facebook/Instagram aren't listening to users either, it would need too much bandwidth/server power to process all those conversations, and if you say "they can do the speech recognition on the users' phones", the majority of users use budget phones that don't have that sort of power.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      This reminds me of the pre-Snowden times, where people often assumed that governments widely recorded internet traffic, since they had both the capability and the motivation, but people like you dismissed it as “urban legends/conspiracy theories” because there wasn’t any hard evidence.
      - netsharc 4y ago
        How do you know what I did in regards to the Five Eyes? I wonder what's easier to check and verify, a secret government tapping of the Internet, or if the TVs in millions of people's living rooms are trying to connect to open WiFi networks...
        teddyh 4y ago
        (I did not mention or claim anything about you personally.) You’re right in that this should be easier to find. But I haven’t seen any concerted effort to buy N number of smart TVs and do security analysis on them in order to find something like this.
        netsharc 4y ago
  - smileybarry 4y ago
    Until someone makes a honeypot library that just spams Google Cast/AirPlay 2 streams when it sees a random TV join
  - Datagenerator 4y ago
    Would be surprised if they don't include 5G in order to gain permanent unfiltered access. Sending that sweet telemetry data has priority.
  - BeefWellington 4y ago
    It would be pretty easy to check and validate if that's true.
  - vlunkr 4y ago
    In my sample size of two different brands, this isn’t true.
- rovr138 4y ago
  How about one that can do 5G? Samsung and Huawei are doing 5G TV, https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to-make-netflix-streaming-faster-than-ever https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to... https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-tv-because-thats-apparently-a-thing-now https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...
  - _23sd 4y ago
    Worth noting that these articles are from 2019 and there hasn't been much talk of 5G TVs since. Aside from plain old 5G hype, SK Telecom wants 5G TVs as part of their envisioned ATSC/5G convergence that would bring more OTT services to broadcast TV (using their 5G network, naturally). This is mostly for the Korean market, since in North America broadcast TV is less popular and 5G networks have less capacity.
rovr138 4y ago
Already, https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to-make-netflix-streaming-faster-than-ever https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to... https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-tv-because-thats-apparently-a-thing-now https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...

a4isms 4y ago

For now, this appears to be feasible. And it will probably stay feasible as long as the number of people who do it is relatively miniscule. But economics being economics, we’re freeloading off the customers who hook their smart TVs up to the internet and provide manufacturers with enough revenue that they don’t care about us. But should the practice become widespread and manufacturers notice a material impact on their revenues, or should growth stall and manufacturers start looking to squeeze more revenue out of customers, they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled, and work out deals with wireless carriers to have a private data channel as Amazon does with its kindles. my 4K “smart” TV is the first I ever bought, and I believe the last. By the time I will want to replace it, I believe manufacturers will have closed this “loophole” and it will be impossible to keep a new TV from phoning home.

littlecranky67 4y ago
> they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled Open up the TV and solder the antenna to ground. If the TVs refuse to work when there is no Signal, good luck with customer complaints - here in Germany, we have huge black-spots with no reception whatsoever (mostly rural areas, but people still live in those).
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  If the % of people who don't connect their smart TV to internet is small, then the % of people who will go through the trouble of soldering their TV (and voiding their warranty) is essentially 0%.
  - littlecranky67 4y ago
    The whole "void warranty if any changes are made" is mostly not enforcable in Europe and as I understand it in some part in the US. In Germany, you would just have to proof that your change is not the culprit of the damage. I.e. if your OLED panel breaks, you can still claim warranty.
    - 4y ago

smileybarry 4y ago

Some vendors are also just less scummy in turning it off and the extent of ad services. Sony TVs are Google TV-based and explicitly ask for Samba (not SMB) TV analytics (and can be declined), and you can just outright disable the APK in settings. No ads in menus like Samsung (you do get the Google TV "recommendations" but that's a whole other problem).

amelius 4y ago

I recently got a small tuner box from my cable company. It requires both an ethernet connection and an ethernet-enabled HDMI cable ... The nice part is that I can control the tuner with the same remote as the TV. The not so nice part: my TV is now connected to the internet.

dsr_ 4y ago

Bought a cheap HiSense TV for my kid to use as a big monitor. It literally will not work for any input source -- including OTA TV -- until it has been hooked to a network where it can register itself. It appears to work afterwards without a network connection... but I cannot recommend HiSense at all.

jacquesm 4y ago
Return it as defective. If enough people do that they'll get the message. An internet connection should not be a requirement for buying an appliance.
- kennend3 4y ago
  This! you see post after post of people complaining about things but doing little about it. Returning products as "defective" is pretty hard on manufacturers as stores do not like this happening.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    The asymmetry between the costs for the returns process and the 'happy path' of sales is such that even a relatively small percentage would throw a giant spanner in the works. You need to sell three more to make up for one return or so.
- M95D 4y ago
  I have a Philips smart TV. I didn't connect it to the internet. Every week it nags me with a popup message telling me how much I'm missing if I don't connect it. Technically, it's not defective; it still works without the internet. But think about it... What if the nag would pop up daily? Or every hour?