3 ms·

My main TV is a Philips OLED TV, which has some weird Android derivative baked in, but I've never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can

My main TV is a Philips OLED TV, which has some weird Android derivative baked in, but I've never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can't phone home and it can't trash my local WiFi network with these sort of shenanigans. Most "smart" devices are utter garbage. I found a seller of non-smart TVs, which manufacture here in the UK, which made me particularly interested - Cello: https://celloelectronics.com/model/televisions/ https://celloelectronics.com/model/televisions/ (you can filter for non-smart TVs). The problem? The picture quality and sound of the one I got (TBF, the cheapest medium-sized TV they sell) is not great. Fine for a spare bedroom for occasional use so a guest can watch something short, or in an office where I might want the news on, fine. But I couldn't watch a film on it, and it's nowhere near the level of my main TV. Given that no smart TV manufacturer is ever going to get a single byte of data from me they can sell, I guess the joke is on them? I wish I didn't have to do this dance though: give me a smart TV where I can get the apps I choose, but the manufacturer is not ramming it full of spyware... that would be amazing.

matja 3y ago
> never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can't phone home Well, you're lucky that your equipment doesn't use the Ethernet channel in HDMI 1.4 then :) you can put a piece of Kapton tape over the HEC pin to make sure that doesn't happen.
- saltminer 3y ago
  If you do this, keep in mind that ARC (audio return channel) is an alternate configuration for the HEC pins. If the cable is going to a sound system, you cannot cover those pins (unless you have another audio-out cable, like TOSLINK, in which case you wouldn't connect to the sound system via HDMI to begin with).
jsheard 3y ago
> but I've never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can't phone home Good news! HDMI supports Ethernet backhaul, which isn't widely used, but in theory your TV could access the internet through the HDMI source you have plugged into it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Assuming the source is cooperating. The source would need to act as either an Ethernet switch (if itself connected to Ethernet, or a WDS/4addr-enabled Wi-Fi network), or act as a NAT & DHCP server. That's quite a lot of complexity. In practice, I've never seen it used even for point-to-point links, let alone this kind of bridging/routing/NATing.

matja 3y ago

> never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can't phone home Well, you're lucky that your equipment doesn't use the Ethernet channel in HDMI 1.4 then :) you can put a piece of Kapton tape over the HEC pin to make sure that doesn't happen.

saltminer 3y ago
If you do this, keep in mind that ARC (audio return channel) is an alternate configuration for the HEC pins. If the cable is going to a sound system, you cannot cover those pins (unless you have another audio-out cable, like TOSLINK, in which case you wouldn't connect to the sound system via HDMI to begin with).

jsheard 3y ago

> but I've never connected it up to anything other than a HDMI cable, so it can't phone home Good news! HDMI supports Ethernet backhaul, which isn't widely used, but in theory your TV could access the internet through the HDMI source you have plugged into it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC

Nextgrid 3y ago
Assuming the source is cooperating. The source would need to act as either an Ethernet switch (if itself connected to Ethernet, or a WDS/4addr-enabled Wi-Fi network), or act as a NAT & DHCP server. That's quite a lot of complexity. In practice, I've never seen it used even for point-to-point links, let alone this kind of bridging/routing/NATing.