The reason TV manufacturers want to have connected TVs is not to provide utility to the user, but so that they can monetize a user's data. The "smart" part runs recognition software to identify what content you are watching, how long you watch it, records it, uploads it to the manufacturer's service, and then the manufacturer can aggregate it and sell it off. The Verge interviewed Vizio's CEO [0], who stated
> This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it’s pretty ruthless. You could say it’s self-inflicted, or you could say there’s a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost. And then I need to make money off those TVs.
Apple had to directly fight this when they brought their TV app over to smart TVs. It's also why I will never let a TV on my network, and will always use a separate streaming box.
They need to work on making their products things you really want as opposed to commodities. They do a terrible job of marketing new TVs. When I need a new TV I go to best buy or look online and notice some new models have seeped out onto the market since the last time I checked, each with model numbers that look like an MD5 hash, confusing specs that no one tells me why I should care about them, and seemingly arbitrary price points between makes and models. Compare that to what Apple does with its phones, for example, and you can see why people don't want to pay a lot for a new TV.
I agree, and there are sites out there like RTINGS.com that specialize in being the modern “Consumer Reports” for their particular niche. These sites do the work for you, in the hopes that you will click through their Amazon affiliate links to buy.
Rtings really helped me in my television selection. I ended up getting a great deal that wasn't available through their affiliate link. They really break down important things like lighting and brightness and really try to tailor the best television for you, not for everyone or just enthusiasts.
How much can you sell it for? Really - let's say you have my entire viewing history for a year, let's say I'm from a valuable demographic, how much would that be worth? A dollar? 10 dollars?
I've just bought a tv for thousands of dollars from the company, selling my data doesn't seem very cost effective, especially considering the PR backlash of some scandal that could come out of it.
> How much can you sell it for? Really - let's say you have my entire viewing history for a year, let's say I'm from a valuable demographic, how much would that be worth? A dollar? 10 dollars?
It isn't just what you watch. It means they know when you're home and when you leave. By watching what you're watching they can make guesses as to your race, sex, income, politics, marital status, how old your children are, what your interests are, etc. Not all of that will be 100% accurate, but they don't care. It just has to be accurate enough that companies who buy the data will see an improvement in whatever their aims are. There's no PR backlash to worry about because you aren't allowed to know who they sell your data to, or how much they make off of it.
By watching what you're watching they can make guesses as to your race, sex, income, politics, marital status, how old your children are, what your interests are, etc. Not all of that will be 100% accurate, but they don't care.
Most houses have more than one screen. It shouldn't be too hard to correlate what everyone is watching or playing at any given time, and this would give quite accurate data.
Getting this data aggregated from mobile network providers seems much more accurate. Having the TV on is not the same as being home and it doesn't record if (or how many) people are actually watching. It's certainly worth something but I also doubt it's significant compared to the price of a TV. Online behavior and movement data is much more valuable.
The mobile network providers can say you visit netflix, but it cannot determine what you are watching. This data fills in certain holes in data sets that companies cannot get.
Google makes their billions from exactly this kind of data. Roku makes most of they're money this way now. Amazon literally invests millions to get data like this. It's worth more than gold, the reason being accurate data is the single most important thing you can have, especially when it comes to consumers. You now have the buying metrics, where you are, when you watch, roughly how many people are in the house, which apps you use, most likely what shows you're watching, and information on nearly all the other devices attached to the same network. Once you're in the home you have almost everything. They might even be able to tell your bathroom habits based on when you pause shows. All of this information is valuable to someone. Don't forget that they sell these units and they stay in the house for years all the whole making money using your electricity to do so.
I used to work in the space, here are my two cents. If people use the apps, even once, to control these TVs, the data is literally gold. Having stupidly accurate attribution and 100% certain IDFA/ADID matching would have most advertisers salivating and throwing money at the source. Honestly, I would not be surprised if manufacturers are able to double their margin after one year.
The Skynet Funding round is past. The system goes on-line August 4th. Human decisions are removed from strategic marketing. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, investors try to join its IPO. It decides our fate in a microsecond: It would manipulate everyone into becoming DINK couples, then as we naturally die out, gradually replace us with docile consumer bots.
> How much can you sell it for? A dollar? 10 dollars
When we were a Nielsen family they would include something like $4 in cash in each week's mailing as a gift. That's on top of the cost of producing the surveys, mailing costs, transcribing the viewing records, assembling the results, and then all the marketing efforts to the networks to convince them this data is valuable. It must cost at least $50 per family per month for their viewing data, which has at least a week latency before it can be known, and is probably always inaccurate.
Smart TV viewing data on the other hand is completely accurate and instantaneous. So just for the show viewing data to assemble more accurate ratings it's probably worth more than $10 per week/$520 a year. But that's only one sort of data that is being collected and one sort of service provided. Nielsen doesn't sell information to advertisers about a specific known family's interests, or to allow narrowly targeted ads. But Vizio is able to sell that possibility. Do they make $500 a year off of each connected TV? $1000? Even if only $150, over four years that's $600.
I recently bought a 4K HDR smart TV for $199. It was a significant upgrade to my previous TV. The panel itself costs more than the TV. In fact buying a HDMI monitor of comparable size and resolution, without a receiver or smart functions, runs over $2000. It's possible these TVs are being sold with up to a 90% up front subsidy of the cost because the economic value of voluntarily placing such a powerful surveillance device and accepting the mandatory click through contract is a lot more than $1800. Similar to cell phone economics. I bought a brand new no-contract pay-as-you-go iPhone for $99. It definitely cost more than that to manufacture. How can they sell it for this price? We know. Because if I do use it, it's locked to one carrier and I have to buy refresh cards from them. I have no obligation to ever activate it, but most buyers do so, and the carrier will then in most cases make back their subsidy manyfold. Same for the $10 no-contract Android phone I bought before this. Both are good phones. Both cost way more to make than I paid new, as with the Smart TV.
The "$2000" monitor does not have a BOM anywhere near $2000. The biggest expense, the panel, is the same as the cheap TV, and the PCB isn't that different. You might be paying for calibration and hand-selected panels and likely for being able to sell to businesses as a purpose-built product-- it would look weird to see a TV on your graphic designer's desk next to a new Mac Pro.
The cheapest sets-- the off-off-off brand ones-- are still not smart here. I suspect this is because they're being pitched by bottom-feeder pure-hardware firms-- they don't have the resources to do a software stack (and there's not really an off-the-shelf package with monetization to buy) or the connections to sell the data.
I find it hard to believe that the manufacturer sold it for less than that. Maybe they had to get rid of that unit, but selling that far below cost cannot be profitable.
There have already been scandals, for years. Vizio [0] settled with the FTC in 2017 because they did this without user consent. Roku won't even let you disable this type of data gathering.
> The company provided consumers’ IP addresses to data aggregators, who then matched the address with an individual consumer or household.
For that you'd need good cameras, not microphones. The lack of an audible response says little about the perception of the ad. And even if there is a response, you don't know if people were even watching at that time.
That's a ridiculous accusation. All that article is saying is that when you use the TV's voice control feature, your voice (and any other background noise) gets sent to their third party voice recognition provider (Nuance). That's just the nature of how voice assistants work, it has nothing to do with ads.
Controlling a TV is not hard. I remember software which would run on a Mac Plus which would allow me to control the Mac using my voice. Are you telling me that a TV needs to connect to the internet to do that?
Depends on what sort of commands it supports, how well it needs to handle background noise, and how advanced their on-device voice recognition tech is.
For a company like Samsung, yes they very well may need internet access to do voice recognition at an acceptable level of quality. It's worth noting that both Amazon Alexa and Google Home also implement their voice assistant features that way. Google did recently move to on-device voice recognition on phones in the newest version of Android, but that was only possible to do without sacrificing quality thanks to some new advances in their machine learning tech.
The first Xbox One could control most hardware using the Kinect and simple commands like "Xbox On". The ability to understand language locally has been available since at least 1997 with the Dragon Dictate. The only real reason it's sent remotely is to learn from the data gathered.
Yes, we've had really crappy implementations of voice recognition for decades now. Doing voice recognition _well_ has been a somewhat more recent development (depending on who you ask it's still not good enough), and until very recently, most of the more accurate systems have either required extensive calibration to learn your voice, or been run exclusively server-side. The reason it's done remotely is because that's the easiest way to get accurate results; it's not some grand conspiracy.
I think the biggest improvement is the ability to understand the context of a sentence instead of just listening for keywords. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy because there's just so much data and lot of it probably isn't even useful. However, the recordings are definitely used to improve the ability to recognize the way different people say the same word for the purpose of improving recognition in the future.
voice assistants do not require a network connection. disable wifi and cellular on your phone and “hey siri”, it works. if a company requires this info be sent to a server for processing there’s other reasons besides the device being unable to handle it
It's advertising. There's tons of money to be made. Maybe your data is not worth a lot alone, but viewing data of the entire TV watching population would be huge.
If you don't think there's money to be made in collecting and selling people's data how do you explain facebook and Google?
Your viewing history is worthless. The aggregate viewing history and patterns of 50 million viewers though? Seems to be a pretty valuable commodity that networks would be willing to pay for.
> Your viewing history is worthless. The aggregate viewing history and patterns of 50 million viewers though? Seems to be a pretty valuable
there's plenty of value in a single users data. Aggregate stats are fine, but there's good money if you can drill down to specifics and build robust dossiers on individuals. It lets you offer the most targeted data. This isn't just valuable for ads, insurance companies use that kind of data to set rates and politicians use it so they know which houses to carve out of their carefully gerrymandered districts or flood with attacks against their opposition.
I think it would be more accurate to say it's a reason rather than the reason.
People don't like messing with multiple boxes and different remotes. A lot of customers see value in having Netflix, etc. built right into the TV. So TV manufacturers think they can sell more TVs if they build smarts into the TV.
They also can make money by selling data. But it's not as if they want to make money from only that one source. They want to make money both ways.
Can you list a few dumb TVs that are also decent from a watching perspective? In 2015 I could just say $300, and most TVs at that price range were non-smart. Today the struggle is much worse.
> Adding the "Smart" costs the price of the Apple TV last time I checked.
Smart TVs will ultimately be cheaper than dumb TVs. The cost of the more expensive hardware is subsidized by the tracking and advertising that smart TVs allow.
Good one. So far i was only concerned about Facebook privacy issues. And now its everywhere. so as the popular saying goes the moment you connect to internet you privacy is gone
one thing I noticed recently, 4k monitors which do not contain any "smart" features often cost much more than a much larger 4k tv. I suspect all the built in crap that the TVs ship with at least partially account for this price difference.
I run a company that develops Smart TV and OTT apps. When we started around 2010 it was cheaper to buy a Samsung Blu-Ray with the Smart TV platform and an HD/HDMI monitor then to buy a Samsung Smart TV.
Here's another case for not owning a Samsung Smart TV. Mine, which I bought for approximately £1.3k in late 2016 received a firmware "upgrade" in mid-2017 that inserted advertising into the TV's UI.
Upon contacting Samsung to complain they informed me that it was my fault that they were appearing due to applications that I have installed. The ads all originated from applications that were pre-installed that were locked and un-removable.
In the end I had to work out how to block the TV from contacting Samsung's ad servers at the DNS level, although now a PiHole is an easier solution to this problem.
LG TVs also contain ads in the home menu and other places, and there is no official way to opt out. Sony TVs appear to be the most user friendly options if you'd rather not see ads on a premium device.
I've also tried my best to avoid purchasing any Sony products...ever since around 2005 [0]. While i do acknowledged that some of their products historically have been good quality...I've tried my best to use my wallet to vote my conscience.
Thus, the problem with Adam Smith's Invisible Hand in the modern world. I salute you for sticking to your guns, but I think we all could have predicted that Sony wasn't going to suffer any significant consequences from that.
There's 10 major brands of TVs, and 10 attributes by which consumers decide what to buy. Even if you could got 95% of consumers to agree (ha) that one brand is the absolute worst at the most important attribute, it's still going to be the best at something else.
There simply aren't a sufficient number of axes of control here to influence change.
I swore off Sony when my TV got an update to add advertising to the volume slider on the screen, which was the last straw. Weirdly enough, I replaced it with a Samsung, which appears to have ads if configured into any North American country, but if you select any GDPR-included territory, the ads don't appear at all
Thank you Europeans for the GDPR law. The need to click to accept cookies in each site looks like a useless bureaucracy, but now we see the real advantages of the law.
Serious question, has having a smart fridge really helped you in any meaningful way? I'm not sure if I'm just missing something because I've never owned one but they seem useless.
I had one. It was junk. Terrible touchscreen, rebooting several times a day, no compelling reason to even use it. I use a tablet on the counter for recipes and music, much more efficient and a better system.
It is possible to disable this behavior unofficially via the service menu if you are brave enough (its kinda easy to break stuff). Not sure what happens to your warranty though. On mine it is also possible to disable OTA updates there.
Besides the dangers of the service menu, newer Samsung Smart TVs have the newer "smart remotes" that don't have the buttons access those functions. I had to purchase an older BN59-01198Q[0] remote just to get at the service menu.
Samsung does some odd things. I have a 2017ish model...when you turn it on it was silent, until I chose an app. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, there was a new live tv app of sorts in the first position, and the default behavior was that app when you turn the tv on. So now you get some awful commercial blasting every time you turn on the tv...
>“Prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks,”
This reads like an Onion parody article but unfortunately, that security precaution is reality.
To generalize the Samsung example further, this is why I don't believe it's realistic that decentralization can happen via average homeowners owning a "server appliance" that serves up webpages, social media profiles, videos, email, etc. I made a previous comment on how disciplined security practices are too tricky for non-techies.[0]
Yes, a bunch of techies can run personal servers (Raspberry Pis, Freedombox, etc) to run a decentralized Q&A site to replace Stackoverflow. Or maybe run a decentralized discussion forum to replace HN. However, a bunch of grandmothers cannot be expected to maintain their own web appliances to run a decentralized cooking recipes website.
Grandmothers and everyone else already use edge routers/modems that can be centrally managed and updated. Edge servers can be locally or centrally managed. If centrally managed, they can be decoupled from the telco, i.e. competition among "edge server management services" instead of a land-bound monopoly. Techies can optionally enable local management.
More and more routers self update these days, which is absolutely the right choice for 95% of users.
That's something I don't get about the Samsung setup here actually. Just run the scan (from the video it takes about a second?) automatically without the user needing to. Then you don't have to make awful promo videos about users needing to do a scan.
No, but then the HN user set would be posting outraged medium.com blogs about how their TV is stealth-updating behind their back without their approval.
Is there any reason to suppose that such "centralised decentralisation" wouldn't end up with a small number of entities managing the centralised control planes thanks to economies of scale?
Since devices can be owned by the user, a range of business relationships are possible. Some data on the user-owned device can have a different legal status than data owned by a central provider. E2E encryption and separation of ownership can exist alongside capital-fueled consolidation of data.
It's not necessary for edge devices to "win" against centralization, only that they exist and are sustainably funded.
Microsoft, HP and Dell/VMware have device-as-service offerings. There can be many permutations of control planes between local and central, or even regional.
>Grandmothers and everyone else already use edge routers/modems that can be centrally managed and updated.
The cable modems and DVRs run by cable companies are simpler devices that criminals will not target with malware to run cryptocurrency mining, or install fake CA certificates to MITM grandmothers' web browser and online bank transactions. These devices are restricted and constrained.
The type of hardware that decentralized proponents think of would have enough power and sophistication to displace Facebook and Youtube with p2p intelligence. It would be a more complicated server appliance (maybe a Linux base image) that has sophisticated software (Sandstorm.io, distributed apps on Blockstack, etc). The appliance would be more complex than the Samsung TVs of this thread that require owners to run virus scans. This type of advanced appliance is by design -- unrestricted and unconstrained -- to enable itself to evolve with new software capabilities.
>If centrally managed, they can be decoupled from the telco, i.e. competition among "edge server management services" instead of a land-bound monopoly.
Your scenario has 2 extra levels of "economic friction" and those extra costs act as barriers to decentralization:
(1) The hardware for the server appliance is a cost most normal non-techies would not want to pay for.
(2) The ongoing support payments is another cost that normal people would not want to pay for. (ie. sibling's comment of paying $20/month or $240/year is unrealistic.)
Also, the idea of non-techie consumers comparing "edge server management services" is itself a cognitive barrier to decentralization. Today, if we think of grandmothers' laptops as "hardware to be managed by somebody else" -- such as Geek Squad, we see that many don't have the technical knowledge to avoid being scammed.[0] To put the vision of "decentralization hardware" in perspective, it's basically asking millions of non-techies who are susceptible to Geek Squad scams -- to expose their laptop configuration and root access to the world.
>Techies can optionally enable local management.
And this configuration option to enable flexibility is yet another attack vector to trick non-techies into making their devices more vulnerable.
>It's not necessary for edge devices to "win" against centralization, only that they exist and are sustainably funded.
It's true they don't have to "win" but I was talking about the decentralized proponents' "dream scenario" of decentralized being good enough to make centralized services like Facebook/Youtube irrelevant. This can't happen if only a niche group of enthusiastic homeowners run server appliances.
If grandma can "maintain" an iPhone then she can maintain a server... as long as the server OS is designed for actual security instead of blame-the-user.
The problem is that it’s not obvious when you’re behind on security patches. You can only fix what you can see. And without knowledge in security, you can’t see insecure / unpatched software.
That said, maybe something like what Chrome does or what windows does would work ok. Pick a time / heuristic and install security updates automatically out of the box.
If the base of their site was served from an auto updated base, there's no reason why it couldn't be pretty much as secure as a platform.
Say it's a frontend over a Docker image that gets updated upstream for security issues, and the server has a Cron job that keeps it up to date.
Why couldn't that work?
I know there's some centralisation around the Docker image, but that could be open source or provided by someone like Mozilla or Apache or WordPress who we can trust.
And there's no reason why the user couldn't choose from a whole ecosystem of image providers with a simple enough UI
>served from an auto updated base, there's no reason why it couldn't be pretty much as secure as a platform. [...] Docker image that gets updated upstream for security issues [...] Why couldn't that work?
The update process itself acts as an attack vector. Even the techies like programmers can get pwned with trusted repositories that suddenly became untrusted.[0][1][2]
A decentralized server appliance of powerful sophistication that requires updates will require a baseline level of technical expertise. So far, even the less sophisticated hardware like wifi cameras and Nest devices are leaving unwitting homeowners exposed to criminals and unwanted spying.[3][4]
> this is why I don't believe it's realistic that decentralization can happen via average homeowners owning a "server appliance" that serves up webpages, social media profiles, videos, email, etc.
Which is why they should pay someone. The reason the tech should be open and decentralized is so that Samsung doesn't have control over it, the grandmothers can choose a vendor they trust.
This would also create a lot of low level tech employment, a B2B market for management software, a market for physical support, etc.. I could manage servers for at least 200 grandmothers; 200 grandmothers would probably mean 5-10 calls a day, a quick check of new threats and exploits, a bit of research into new features that my grandmothers might be interested in, a check on their backup status. I might have to call a service to visit one of my grandmothers and make sure that their physical appliance is installed correctly, or to replace it.
I always think that this criticism is due to a lack of imagination. I know how to take care of a home server, and I'm lazy about it. I would be entirely happy to send somebody $20/month to do it for me, as long as that person were my employee, not some massive corporation who works against my interest.
What we should do is pay a small boy to go around town breaking windows, and then grandmas should pay someone to either replace their windows, or to install some sort of decentralized window-protection hardware. This would create a lot of low-level ok I can't keep typing these words anymore.
What we should do is stop cramming processors and networking hardware into everything willy-nilly just so some advertising company can make 1/20th of a cent off my eyeballs.
Your suggestion that the solution to the problem should be handled downstream, out of my grandma's wallet, is frankly insulting.
I don't even understand what this complaint means. Your grandmother doesn't take her garbage to the dump or cut her own lawn, I'm suggesting that she pay someone to handle her computer too.
What I'm not suggesting is that we should pay a little boy to run around shitting on people's lawns and turning over trash cans. In fact, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we not do that.
edit: as far as I can interpret, your argument seems to be that every company using advertising to make money, and making their televisions smart in order to help them to sell more advertising, should just stop. That's not a plan.
The problem of grass growing isn't one that we created, nor is the problem of trash being generated.† The problem of our TVs cramming ads into every conceivable space is. I don't want grandma to pay to solve this problem; I want this problem to fuck off.
† ok, technically incorrect; our putative granny could have a xeriscaped lawn. And our society could get better at packaging.
We the people hold a common understanding that our God given time upon this planet be for the benefit of the almighty, ourselves, family and neighbours, and that surveillance and advertising companies are predatory in nature, disagreeable in behaviour, and hereby forbidden on pain of all directors and shareholders thereof being put in stocks and having rotten fruit threw upon their faces and their abusively gained assets confiscated and distributed amongst the surveiled.
If that's the solution you're willing to deal with you can just not connect to the router in the first place. That's what I did with my new Fire TV but it does kill almost all the smart TV features like streaming and voice controls.
Honesty I just never connected mine to the internet and attached a Roku which I did connect. Smart TVs are anything but that, I rather have a dedicated media player than one bolted onto a screen.
Our smart TV lives on it's own wifi network, I super don't trust it to interact nicely with other devices on our home network. All the other smart home stuff (smart led lights, etc) lives on it's own network as well.
Not really, but unless you are actually using the tuner for something you can get a monitor or commercial display, which is basically a dumb TV minus a TV tuner.
They typically cost more than smart TVs, but if you see them as more valuable because of avoiding unwanted functions, that's perfectly expected.
Conceptually embedded devices shouldn't even have writeable storage for malware to persist. This doesn't require a special operating system or a kernel patch, Linux (which is popular for these types of devices) natively supports read only storage.
You can have a small read/write volume where update bins are placed. Upon reboot, a pre-boot environment checks the bin's cryptographic signature, and if it passses it then extracts the bin, overwriting the the read only filesystem and a second reboot occurs allowing normal boot into the updated OS where the file system is again read only.
This is how e.g. the Playstation works. Amongst several vehicle manufacturer's infotainment units. Even Windows uses a pre-boot environment to write certain "hard lock" files and registry areas. This is not wild "pie in the sky" thinking, this is an industry norm or was.
Why does a smart TV that's meant primarily for streaming content directly from the internet need a R/W file system? Settings? Couldn't that be stored in a micro-volume without execute flag and SELinux limits?
>> Why does a smart TV that's meant primarily for streaming content directly from the internet need a R/W file system?
Downloading Ads. I read that these TVs run their own ads, sometimes via "partner" apps (IIRC something like a TV-network app) that Samsung disclaims responsibility for. For these reasons, my Samsung TV has never been connected to the internet and never will be. TV should be a monitor + tuner, nothing more. If it didn't work without a network connection I would have returned it as defective.
BTW, the 55" curved 4k TV makes an excellent monitor and is cheap at Walmart.
You need persistent storage for OTT applications to store authentication tokens. Without this storage users will have to re-authenticate every time they start an OTT application, usually this means entering their email and password using an on-screen keyboard.
Some streaming devices do come pretty close to what you're proposing, though. One technique is to unpack apps from persistent, (sometimes) read-only storage into a RAM filesystem at boot time, then run the app from there.
Or the device sends a signed request to the third party servers for your app, you verify the request through your account on the server, and your device never needs local storage.
And what if the cryptographic hashes are broken, stolen, or whatever? Once you're in the system, if there's rewriteable storage at all, it can be compromised.
If you want to stream, the apps need to be updated as streaming service providers update their systems from time to time.
> And what if the cryptographic hashes are broken, stolen, or whatever?
You've still improved the scope of exploitation from:
- Need an RCE (remote code execution) in any service on the device for a persistent threat
To:
- You need an RCE in any service on the device
- You also need to be able to generate a cryptographically signed update which will install for persistent threat
That's a win. That's a BIG win. Particularly as regular updates can replace compromised cryptographic credentials.
You're essentially arguing the "if the solution is imperfect, we should do nothing" fallacy. You haven't proposed a better alternative, just argued that no action is better than an action that falls below perfection.
> If you want to stream, the apps need to be updated as streaming service providers update their systems from time to time.
Which may require a reboot. It is unfortunate, but makes the device more secure and less susceptible to hardware originated data corruption (since the volumes can be completely verified for correctness, compared to the source images which can also be verified for correctness via HMAC).
There's no specific set standard for how bin updates work. They can range from complete file system updates to incremental updates.
I really don't get what you're saying. None of your proposals would solve the problem being discussed. Are cryptographic hashes not already completely common-place? That was standard even 10 years ago, if only just to make sure the files are not corrupt.
In actuality, running virus checks is a fine idea, particularly if the process can be automated and updated for newer threats.
This is precisely why my "smart TV" isn't allowed on my network.
Millions of dollars of work to theoretically save the user on a $10 HDMI cable (but, more honestly, just to make consumers buy new TVs every couple of years regardless of whether they need one or not, simply because the "smart" unit is out-of-date). Sometimes this industry needs a boot to the head.
Despite all the trying I have, I cannot get my mom or grandmother to ever understand switching HDMI sources. The SmartTV has most functions built in with a single remote control. This is crazy significant to the appeal.
My cable box has a remote that's able to turn off and on my TV and switch the TV's sources. I haven't taken the TV's remote out of its original packaging.
It's 2019 - this is a solution in search of a problem.
Seems by your posts you're assuming everyone already has a cable box + service since you think the TV saves you a mere HDMI cable.
Meanwhile I'm not sure I've even had roommates or been to someone's house my age (25-40) in the last 5 years that had cable service. It's always the same: everyone just navigates to the TV's built-in Netflix/HBO/Amazon/etc. app and puts something on.
If you think everyone in the world has a cable box, then I understand why you don't understand smart TVs. But your premise is mistaken.
Then you have to program the remote and make sure you are in the right mode. Have you compared the typical cable remote with the Roku remote for smart TVs with Roku built in? Not to mention remote listening where you listen to audio on your phone from your TV.
But part of the purpose of having a smart TV is that you don’t need cable.
It doesn't just save you a cable. It saves you from buying an external apparatus entirely. This is understandably attractive to people.
I don't buy the bit about needing to upgrade the TV on some schedule since there's always the option to buy an external apparatus (like a cable box) which are almost always faster with better UI than the TV anyways.
Roku is built into my smart TV, so going non-smart would cost more money than just an HDMI cable. Some TVs have Steam Link built in, so that is another potential cost savings to the consumer. I already have so much stuff plugged in near my TV, I'm not yearning for more at this moment.
I've had my dumb DLP for nearly a dozen years now. I just replace a <$100 bulb once a year and it's new again. Granted, it's only 1080p, but that's all I need.
First it was HD, then it was Full HD, the next big thing was 3D television that backfired and then, they figured out that device has to be "smart" to successfully produce money; thus, I don't think that smart tvs will disappear anytime soon.
Is it even possible to buy dumb tvs anymore? I have been hanging on to my 2014 model (and will probably try to use it for another decade) because the new tvs I interact with have ruined basic tv interactions. All I want: on/off, input switch, volume control.
Sadly, no. Which is a big problem, since Smart TVs are the most user-hostile thing _ever_.
Auto-play, ads, pre-installed stuff, non-reprogrammable app-shortcut buttons on the remote, user-tracking. And there is no control, no settings, no opt-out.
I have to figure out if I can get an alternative firmware on my Samsungs TV. In theory, Tizen is Open Source.
>since Smart TVs are the most user-hostile thing _ever_.
Disagree - smartphones are far worse. At least I can buy a dumb tv and plug a box into it (for now) - my work requires mobile based 2fa, my bank/credit cards have features available in their apps that aren't available on their websites, my broadband provider only offers tech support through their app.
My smartphone OS was built by an advertising company and probably modified by the manafaxturer. The OS tracks everything I do, everywhere I go, everyone I contact, and the OS maker, my carrier, my phone manufacturer uses that information to sell ads to other people and put them in devices that I pay large prices for.
I have a smart TV that has some kind of integration with Roku, and never had any issues with ads, bad UI, etc. It also has a tangibly better UI than other TVs I've used, with features such as showing on the start-up screen what's being fed into all the HDMI inputs so you don't have to guess which one is connected to the cable box and which one is connected to the Wii. You can easily ignore all the other stuff it does and just use it as a dumb TV without much trouble. Not affiliated in any way, just something to look into if you're trying to avoid adware and the like.
I have one of these Philips and love it, but I was under the impression that shortly after I bought it (10 years ago?) they left the US market. That this link is Irish doesn't give me enough information to doubt that...
Really, everything I watch on the TV is fed to it by another device. I don't need or want a smart TV. I just need it to display the picture. It does seem like one could look into just using a plain monitor for this, since that's all you need now.
Most TVs have quite advanced image and motion enhancement filters that have no use in a computer monitor but make a very visible difference in picture quality. I would guess scaling signals is also looked on more closely on a TV set. If your devices already do enough in this directions it is still somewhat hard to use as you have to find a way to turn the TV on. CEC is most likely not present and the only way to control it and the way its done on computers is not understood by most devices.
Those filters are essentially useless garbage that exist for the purpose of attracting potential buyers on a show floor. If the filters were actually desirable, most could be applied at the content level.
Why do these filters have no place on a computer monitor, but do on a TV? If you ever watch videos on the computer screen, logically it would either also benefit from such filters or they are unnecessary anywhere. What makes the TV special?
It does seem to me like these filters could and should simply be ordinary software, not firmware that is baked into the screen.
The difference is that a TV is intended to be used to watch movies, TV shows etc. (which is why they do these effects in firmware) although a lot of TVs have a "Game mode" or something similar which disables these effects. Computer monitors are used for a lot of things (so - generic usage), and these effects would usually end up being terrible or unnecessary for the experience (do you really need motion enhancement filters for text editing, web browsing or spreadsheets?). If you need to show a video on monitor you can just process the image on the GPU and show it on a monitor, which is exactly how it's done.
These effects add a lot of latency (several pictures) so they are no good for general purpose computing, specifically gaming (hence the "game" or "PC" mode on the TV).
I basically agree with everything you wrote. I was responding to a comment arguing that not having such features built-in in plain monitors is one of the reasons that replacing a smart TV with a (video rendering device, plain monitor) combo was impractical.
Agreed, most of these filters have no place on a TV, and a lot of talk about quality difference between televisions is that quality is judged as bad if these filters are on, and crisp if they aren't.
I suspect the point is that all this image processing adds latency, which is fine when you're watching a movie but not when you're doing something interactive. Same reason I understand these TVs have a "game mode" that disables the fancies to keep latency down.
Buy a decent projector and mount it to the ceiling. Or if you don't need an "entertainment center", just get a large monitor and some speakers. There's really no need to have a specific "TV" device anymore. If you want "TV apps" then get a cheap Roku box, this way you can upgrade it when the tech changes.
No, but it is super easy to just not connect your TV to the internet, which is basically the same thing.
I've recently bought 2 new Samsung TVs and just pressed the SKIP button on the setup wifi screen. Then I disabled the home screen. After this I have a dumb TV as far as I can tell.
In my experience there are still problems: slow to turn on and off, audio/video syncing issues, bugs, terribly designed remotes, and of course you’re paying a much higher cost for hardware and software you don’t use. So it’s still a major problem that only smart tvs are available: they’re just shittier.
We need a linux distribution that could be installed on one of those Intel NUCs (for example) that give you a digital tuner and the applications that you want to have on you TV.
I've always thought that attaching computers to dumb monitors to escape the tyranny of smart tv centralization would establish a good base for more generalized home servers. Why not have my indie smart tv handle my email and PVR stuff, too?
Unless it attempts to aggressively get internet for itself. Those xfinity (eg) hotspots from neighbors come to mind. As does simply waiting for days to get a passive crack on any available wifi. And before anyone cries paranoia, look how much effort and customer ill will the IOT vendors are enduring in order to phone home: there must be a pile of money on the table.
I find that even if you don't use the internet features, you're still left with a massive slow box that takes ages to boot up, has a sluggish UI, and regularly gets video and audio out of sync.
Always on cell modems are eventually going to be installed in most electronics and it kind of terrifies me. I only want a handful of internet connected devices in my home and at some point that won't be possible. I can keep my "smart" TV offline today, but what about when it has a cell connection? Will I need to physically destroy the cell modem on my TV, refrigerator, stove, etc just to maintain some modicum of privacy?
Look for the "Anytyme" brand of 4K TV Monitors - they are only a monitor, no "smart" no built in CPU of any sort, it's just a big, beautiful, dumb mutherfucking 4K monitor - and they cost around $200 US - I have 4 of them.
"Dumb" TVs cost much more than these smart TVs cost, since they are able to amortize the benefit from all their tracking/ads and price the hardware competitively. Its a razor/blades model, only someone else is buying the blades...
That said, the easiest way to make a smart TV into a dumb one is to connect it to your local internet through a Pi-Hole or other gateway, and then block everything but the Netflix/Amazon domains needed to stream content. If the Smart TV can't phone home, it can't leak data.
If you're not into dimming the lights, get a projector that's at least brighter than 3000 lumens. Occasionally, when watching something dark during the day, I'll need to adjust other light sources. Basically the same degree of annoyance as resolving glare issues when watching TV. I've had a projector for a year in an apartment with a floor to ceiling window (that has blinds) in the room where I watch.
Having greater than 1080p quality is the primary compromise, IMO. But that costs more whether getting a TV or projector anyways.
Not for habitual watchers of broadcast TV, sure (I haven't watched broadcast TV in 15 years). But if you use TV for quality series and movies, and the occasional live sports, it's fantastic.
Last time I bought one I looked but couldn't find anything that fitted my requirements, (~55", excellent image quality preferably with HDR, supports ARC and CEC).
If there was a DumbTV that did all those things and was reasonably priced, I'd have bought it there and then.
You can get dumb panels if you look into the b2b offerings. These are ment to be mounted in various business settings (show commercials in the checkout line in the grocery store etc). Often they don't even have any speakers, but the normal builtin speakers are crap anyway. A chromecast or android tv box and a sound system and you have yourself a smart TV setup where each part can be upgraded separately.
The downside is the price and inconvenience (as a consumer they are not easy to find). Buying a consumer grade smart tv is usually cheaper than buying the same panel as a "panel only tv".
It's really hard, and the choices are limited, but it's possible. Insignia, has some non-smart TV options. I've had the 55-inch for a little over a year. It's pretty good, and was cheaper than smart TVs.
They are all pretty dumb if you don't connect them to the network. :) I cable the TV's up to do software updates and then remove the cable and leave them unconnected. I handle streaming with a "less ad invasive" box.
I read months ago here on hacker news that digital signage devices are the way to escape from smart tv because these IIRC are not bundled with any "smart" software but very basic stuff only.
Things like this are why I kind of despise the "smart TV" movement.
I can't blame people for using them, they're convenient as hell, but at some level I have trouble seeing why the TV needs to have the computer built into it. To me, a TV should be a more-or-less "mechanical" device that does one thing and one thing only: display video.
Obviously, though, this only defers the error over to AppleTV or AndroidTV or whatever computer you have plugged in. I guess with the (admittedly awesome) advent of streaming-all-the-things, stuff like viruses are an inevitability.
In my experience, a SmartTV can stream and HAS ONE REMOTE. Every family member who is not an IT professional has struggled deeply with any TV/AV setup where two or three remotes are needed. This same customer is also not going to have an easy time on their own setting up some yet another third party universal remote.
It used to be that the youngest child had an honest job, acting on voice commands and adjusting the controls. It seems like people won't be happy until this experience is fully replicated with automation...
More seriously, I've found that a bluetooth keyboard with built-in pointer is my favorite remote. I treat the TV as a monitor and operate MythTV or Firefox to go to Netflix or Pandora from the couch.
I confess, I do have a second remote to control the audio. I could never tolerate the sound of built-in speakers in any TV. My media computer sends the video to the TV via one HDMI connection and digital audio to the hifi receiver via another HDMI port. So, I change volume as well as other downmix or night-mode options on the receiver, leaving the PC audio settings constant.
I think I read that it is limited to 720p for Firefox on Linux (probably for DRM reasons). For the most part, it looks as good to me as typical 720p or 1080i ATSC over-air broadcasts. And, I'd say both look better than the typical digital cable or satellite TV I've seen elsewhere.
I have a 1080p TV, but the only time I've really cared is certain 1080i PBS shows, with natural landscape scenes deinterlaced via MythTV. Otherwise, 720p seems fine. It feels to me that every provider is optimizing their compression levels for an audience who is less picky than me. Usually, I am bothered more by inconsistent compression than absolute resolution.
You know, that's a pretty fair point. I guess not seeing that as an issue is a consequence of an engineer running AV setup at home. More remotes = more to lose.
None of my stuff seems to do this, but isn't there something for HDMI that allows bidirectional stuff to allow a device to control the volume and whatnot?
CEC. It's nice, but if and only if all of the relevant functions on your device can be controlled from the TV remote. My Sharp dumb TV (actually a Hisense since Sharp quit the US market) has several buttons that ought to be sent to a device but aren't, which limits CEC's usefulness with my Kodi setup. I ended up putting an IR receiver in the box (a Raspberry Pi running OSMC) and using an RC6 remote instead.
And if it does't all work then that is even more cognitive load on the user: "you can use remote A for everything devices A and B do, except functions C-D, for those you need to use remote B, but use A for everything else, got it?"
Having one remote is a huge advantage that a lot of people overlook. Most people don't want to think, "Oh, I'm using the Roku, which remote is that?"
It sounds dumb, but it is a major barrier for both of my parents. I ended up just switching them both to Harmony remotes that I preprogrammed, which is far from ideal and most people won't want to do that.
> To me, a TV should be a more-or-less "mechanical" device that does one thing and one thing only: display video.
Because a lot of regular people don't think of a TV as a "big monitor" (the way HN does), they think of a TV as a the thing that shows Cable / Netflix.
The best thing about Roku TVs, for example, is that a normal person won't accidentally break them most of the time. No more calls from parents about "is it on the right input" or "did I use the right remote" or "which cable goes where" or "how do I get back to the main menu" or "why does this remote have a volume icon, but not actually change the volume".
Fixing all of that is excellent UX for the average person (read: not HN users). And excellent UX is worth money.
Yeah, as I said, I get why the SmartTVs are popular. They serve a purpose, they're hella convenient. I guess the inner-engineer inside of me has problems with close-coupling.
Don't buy a smart TV, don't let your family/friends buy smart TVs. Buy a dumb screen and hook it up to an Apple TV, Chromecast etc. The 'smart' software is a privacy nightmare over which you have very little control. And sure, so is the Chromecast, but I at least have more faith that wherever that data's going it's going there securely and is relatively unlikely to be breached. Also, the software on your smart TV will age much faster than the screen itself.
NEC E series for cheap, P series for the pro grade stuff.
In a past theme park life we setup our outdoor TVs for showing queue line content and they used NEC P430(? It's been years) both outside in a case and inside for digital menu boards in restaurants.
I was thinking about going this route, but the best TVs on the market are OLEDs, the only game in town is LG, and the "sale" price was over $2k. I couldn't imagine what the "commercial display" tax would be.
I ended up just blocking LG's servers on my network.
Actually, commercial displays are not that expensive.
As you see in retail and airport settings, these displays are bought by the thousand and are often configured in 6/9/18 screen "display walls" ... and therefore the purchasers are price-sensitive.
Yes, they are more expensive than a TV from Best Buy, but only about 2x - not 5x.
I purposefully didn't give my Sony tv (android) my wifi password. A few weeks later it prompted me to install a firmware update, and I saw it was connected to my home wifi. How? Best I can guess is another android device shared credentials with the TV.
I blocked that stupid thing at the router. I don't need firmware updates for my TV.
Is there anyone else in your house who might have put in the credentials? That seems like a big security hole if Android will just share wifi credentials with other random Android devices.
Right. The only thing I've ever done using my Sony smart TV's native interface is to go into settings and turn off WiFi. It isn't a dumb TV, but might as well be.
I disagree, I got a nice 3D "smart tv" it has all the goodies that I need (plays mp4, avi, mkv, mp3, etc.)
I just make sure one thing happens. It stays offline :)
When someone asks me if they can watch something from YouTube, I add 5mins in the process, I download it on a USB flash disk on my PC, stick it on the TV, and presto!! YouTube-on-the-TV!
My approach to a smart TV was just to buy a PlayStation. Anything I've wanted to do on my TV was available as an app in the PlayStation store, with the exception being Google Play Music. I had previously tried using a Google Chrome, but eventually got sick of its lack of local storage & native remote.
Unfortunately, the options for non-smart TVs keep getting narrower. Manufacturers want to inject app access into every device they can. You can't even buy a UHD disc player without an app platform coming with it.
Only my purist sensibilities prefer the idea of a TV that doesn't even have apps. But I know I can simply abstain from connecting the TV to the network. Seems like a non-issue.
An entry-level 32" Samsung is $200. I wouldn't be surprised if having "smart" capabilities subsidized the cost because Samsung gets kickbacks from, say, new Netflix subscriptions made from the TV itself, or some services pay for inclusion. In other words I don't even think you'd be avoiding any serious $premium by finding a dumb TV.
The costs are being subsidized by audience measurement tools such as those provided by folks like Inscape and Samba TV which quantify viewing habits by tracking what you watch.
I'm pretty sure my Samsung smart TV has accessed the internet through the hdmi cable connected to a roku device. I never use the built in smart functionality but it definitely tries to insert itself whenever possible. It's very frustrating.
Ironic, given the subject of this thread. Though obviously the point stands that there's no need for execute permissions on an area being used for config settings and media storage.
I try to use PS4 Pro as my "smart TV", but I end up having to use the TV itself (which runs Roku) sometimes because of its larger app base. You can't watch Starz through PS4. You can watch Amazon Prime, but not in 4k.
How about open sourcing the code running on it or at least letting us run our own software?
A lot of apps that came with my TV from Samsung have been removed over the years as they stopped supporting them. For example Skype. So I paid for a TV with Skype, now it has no more Skype.
I have a Panasonic which I had never actually used the apps on before... until I needed to this past week. I discovered almost all of the app icons just grey now, presumably from shuttered services, and you couldn't even reorder them. But Vudu worked. \o/
My parents have a high end 90" TV they bought some years back that had smarts built in. Can't remember the brand off the top of my head, but it may have been Vizio.
Almost all of the apps stopped working long ago, and the manufacturer doesn't even push out updates anymore, but somehow the Vudu app keeps trucking along. They still use it as they prefer the built-in Vudu app to the Vudu app offered on their Xbox One.
I suppose props are in order to Vudu for supporting something so long after even the manufacturer has given up on it.
Vudu is an excellent service for a number of reasons. They absolutely run on anything for one. They're 100% platform agnostic and Wal-Mart doesn't own a tech platform, so they're not favoring any given streaming player or operating system over any other, and nobody's got any reason to block them or play games with them, unlike if you buy from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.
Most of the creative new ways to getting your digital copies started with them like Disc to Digital and Instawatch. Others have dabbled in it, but Vudu really made these things happen and they've continued to be the biggest in these spaces, though Best Buy has recently dabbled with giving out digital codes for preorders in advance of physical releases.
And on the front of digital ownership, they've continued to support issuing UltraViolet rights on every single title they're allowed to do so by the studios, and seem to plan to continue to until the last possible moment (Whereas Fandango voluntarily dropped it for all MA-eligible titles pretty quickly) and were immediate to grab into Movies Anywhere as well. Most digital copy codes for titles that aren't UV or MA are also redeemable on Vudu.
In the buying digital video space, they've really stood out as the safest best to ensure your purchase or digital copy will be available on any device more or less in perpetuity, and that makes them my default for it in the world where video still hasn't won good DRM-free options like music and ebooks have started to.
A lot of TVs have microphones now which I consider to be just as big if not bigger threat to privacy as a camera. This isn't to mention the microphones present in laptops, cellphones, tablets, echos, etc.
It depends. If the TV was advertised with a specific application, which I see often, then the loss of that application is a loss of advertised functionality.
The way I see it, if they used the availability of an app as a direct selling point, that makes them somewhat liable to it's continued functionality. If they didn't secure that contractually or with some level of assurance, they should not have advertised it.
No, you received an implied license for the life of the television to operate it as a television. Samsung reserves the right to modify the software on said television as it so chooses.
I think without trying this opinion before a court, you have no idea.
Samsung may have reserved the right to modify the software, but I've literally seen smart tvs from Samsung that have a "Netflix" button on the physical remote.
They have shipped tv boxes that clearly and prominently display the Netflix app on the tv.
If the Netflix button on the remote no longer works, the tv is not doing what the user bought it to do and what it was advertised as being capable of.
I know you're just using Netflix as an example, but has anyone actually had that app pulled from their TV? I have an old 32 inch Vizio smart tv that I bought back in 2011 and all my big apps still work on it, albeit kind of slowly. Netflix, Prime, Vudu, all still available.
A future where the world is largely a privacy-scarce melting pot of competition where individuals vie for leverage over each other based on the scraps of information they can gather, barter for, or source through a myriad of insecure networks which provide some base level of value to users (like, say, a third-party piece of software that runs on a television after the user grants it permission, accidentally or otherwise).
Meanwhile, VCs and technology experts have long seen this coming and retreated to countryside enclaves where electronics are banned, and news of the world is relayed via one-time-pad-over-horseback to ensure that the next level of marginal gain for the elite is collaborated upon in safety from reprisal.
That's the context at least; many possible plots from there. Basically Elysium except that the elite eschew technology because technology security is so flawed that it unintentionally sells them out every time.
I simply do not want a "smart" TV. No internet access, no apps - just a lot of HDMI inputs, CEC, and a display. Sadly, this is getting harder and harder to find. When I went to buy last time, Costco didn't have any "dumb" TVs, so all I did was refuse to hook it up to the internet.
I got a Roku and a Chromecast. Those provide better "smart" functionality than any TV ever could.
So you don’t want a smart TV but you’re okay with Roku - whose CEO said on an interview that their entire business model is selling user data, half the home screen has an ad, and the hard coded buttons on the remote go to highest bidder?
Chromecast is sold by a business whose entire model is collecting user data and selling advertising.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my TCL Roku TVs - I have three. But let’s call a spade a spade. Also, my main one is setup to go directly to the HDMI port used by my AppleTV.
There are a plethora of reasons to reject smart tvs outside of the privacy infringing angle. Roku devices can be found for well under $100. You can choose not to use your Roku, disconnect it, or buy a different device for small financial hit in comparison to buying a new TV. Back when we had TV-VCR combos, a significant segment of the population was educated enough to opt for the TV sets with fewer features, because we knew that when the VCR stops working, the TV stops working. When you want to upgrade the VCR, well then now you either get a new TV or have a redundant VCR you can't physically get rid of.
Similarities apply with the Smart TV situation but the reasonable "non-smart" options are quickly being drowned out by the "smart" devices.
For what it's worth, my setup is a dumb Samsung TV and an attached Apple TV. One HDMI slot is left open for the occasional thing I want to plug in that can't be streamed or mirrored (e.g. a playstation). I haven't used that other slot in over a year and it's nice not being forced to do so. I'll keep using this TV for years with the comfort of knowing that, a few years from now, I won't have to wade through menus of streaming services I don't use in order to watch something on an 5-8 year old under-resourced, internet-connected OS with a half-assed UX that stopped receiving software and firmware updates after its first or second year.
I don't think it's really about the data collection or whatever. The problem is that today, right now, you will get a much better experience with a dumb TV and a smart appliance than a smart TV.
Like the software quality is better, you can mix and match devices, you get feature and security updates, the apps are better, you get support, the apps don't EOL when next year's model comes out.
I don't really care if TV's bundle their software stack into the device -- clearly some people like them. It's the TVs that put ads on the input selection menu that go straight to my shitlist.
I agree. I wouldn’t get any smart TV besides one with Roku built in. As much as I despise the ads, Roku has a long history of supporting their devices as long as feasible.
Given that it's easily possible to simply not use the "smart" features as you describe, what's the advantage to these manufactures spending extra money/resources maintaining the "dumb" SKUs? Wouldn't it be a better value for everyone involved to just make sure the "smart" features can be turned off?
If the smart features can be turned off, then they won't be able to force ads onto you [1,2], or spy on you [3]. They are antifeatures, taking control of your TV so they may extract more money from you, one way or another. Being able to turn them off would completely defeat that.
Although troubling, I don't think this is something for which smart TV technology itself is at fault. Plenty of smart TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable.
I agree, it's not the technology itself. I think it's due to the industry maturing and consolidating, and simply optimizing - they look for new avenues of profit, and they happened to have found user-hostile ones.
But be careful with "TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable" - 'profitable' won't stop them if adding ads means they could be more profitable.
TCLs are 'dumb' tv's with a Roku built in. They're quite popular so I might be missing why these are to be avoided and/or network disabled and Roku over HDMI is preferred?
I have a Vizio and a TCL tv right next to each other in my living room. The Vizio is the main TV and is connected to a sound system with ARC and all that. The TCL is off to the side and mostly used for gaming.
If I turn on my PS4 with the controller, it turns on the Vizio TV and the Yamaha receiver, and sets it to the correct inputs.
If I turn on the PS4 on the TCL, the TV does turn on even though CEC is enabled. I have to turn on the TV manually. A dumb tv would go back to the input I left it on, but the TCL goes to the home screen. I have to go and pick the PS4 input every time I turn on the TV.
So I have just wanted dumb TVs before. When setup properly and everything works properly, they're great. But there has also been a time when turning the PS4 on in the main setup would turn everything on, but then put it on the wrong input (ARC is on 1, PS4 is on 5, it would switch to ARC whenever the PS4 home button was pushed). There is a big blurry line between smart and dumb which is more inconvenient than either.
They're superior to a standalone Roku for ease of use, at least until the hardware goes unsupported which will be a while.
One annoyance with mine using the RokuTV speakers is that speakers drop out and don't maintain a consistent volume level whenever the WAN connection is lost. Something is taking up too much processor time trying to connect to the outside world. The speakers are unfortunately the only way to get AGC in a stereo system because the TV itself can't do it for whatever reason.
My issue with my TCL is that with Roku built in to the TV it is able to track what I watch even outside of Roku "channels". If I plug in a Roku over HDMI it can only track how I use the Roku, not the rest of the TV.
Last time I checked their privacy policy they admit to using content ID systems on their TVs, but I'm on mobile and don't have a citation on that at the moment.
I managed to get a dumb TCL off Amazon in December 2018. I think you might still be able to get one. It was the 2017 model. The TV is fine enough. The display ghosts if you're playing any quick video games though. It's not the worst ghosting I've seen, but it's not great.
Very true. But given the choice between "tracking and secure enough that I don't have to care about it", and "tracking and leaky as a sieve", I'll choose the former.
At least a Chromecast is cheap and replaceable with a de-googled AndroidTV box without having to toss the whole TV.
I agree; I bought a Vizio TV a few months back. It had all this smart crap built in, but it was pathetic compared to even some of the cheaper AndroidTV boxes you could buy on Amazon or Walmart for ~$40.
New Vizio's are pretty much dumb TVs with built in Chromecasts. Which is exactly what I want. Every Smart TV interface I've used is worse than using my phone as a remote, or Google Home voice commands to control my TV. The experience isn't perfect, but it's pretty good.
I use my Vizio TV for my computer monitor. That's all it ever does is be a monitor. Except when my computer breaks and I have to repair it. For a day or two, that built in netflix app is a wonder :)
I'm not even sure multiple inputs are all that desirable at this point. Better to just get a nice AV receiver unit that can handle all that for you and has the interface stuff you want.
Of course, the same argument applies to this as to the smart TV features— if the cost to include extra ports is small and many people still use them, it's easier for the manufacturer to just include them everywhere than maintain a product variant.
> I'm not even sure multiple inputs are all that desirable at this point. Better to just get a nice AV receiver unit that can handle all that for you and has the interface stuff you want
Multiple inputs on the TV can be nice for temporary things. Rather than keep my SNES Classic, NES Classic, and Switch all hooked up all the time, I'd rather keep them in a closet, and just plug then in when I actually want to play a game.
My receiver inputs are in the back, and the receiver is on a shelf below the TV. It's a pain to get to them, requiring moving some stuff out of the way and sliding the stand out. The TV inputs are on the back of the TV but near the edge, and are pretty easy to get to without having to move anything.
On the other hand, hooking things up to the receiver directly means no issues getting sound to work. For the longest time, I just could not get ARC to work to get sound from the TV to the receiver.
Eventually, I noticed that the receiver manual specifically said that to use ARC the device had to be connected with a "Standard HDMI cable with Ethernet" or "High Speed HDMI cable with Ethernet". So I swapped out my regular HDMI cable for one "with Ethernet", and ARC immediately started working.
This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. To quote HDMI.org, the people that are in charge of HDMI, "All HDMI cables will support Audio Return Channel functionality when connected to Audio Return Channel-enabled devices. You can use your existing HDMI cables or choose a different cable type" [1].
If we were talking about eARC, this would make sense. eARC requires a "with Ethernet" cable to get the bandwidth it needs. But that's an HDMI 2.1 thing, released at the end of 2017. My receiver is from 2011, long before 2.1 was even on the horizon. (The TV is also too old for eARC).
Get a good A/V receiver or soundbar (TV speakers were always second-rate, and flat-screen speakers are uniformly terrible) that can handle HDMI switching and powering your TV on & off, and get a display marketed as "commercial signage". Commercial signage displays are usually more expensive (and are rated for more screen-hours), and lack the smart junk that this article is talking about.
I own a Samsung TV. It works great. There were apps, I used to use them but slowly by slowly they bitrotted until the TV is simply an HDMI monitor at this point.
It still supports legacy broadcast TV over coax etc. but anything "modern" has rotted away. Which makes me think I simply don't want any smart at all in the TV.
This is both true and not true — yes, a great many apps have been abandoned, but the big ones (Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO, premium sports apps, etc.) are well maintained. The built-in apps are by far the easiest way to watch 4K HDR video (which Amazon has lots of).
But yeah, all that said, the “smart TV” functionality would be better off in an external box. I trust that Netflix will update its app because I pay them every month. I don’t trust Samsung will update the TV software for the 10-year life of the TV because I paid them all up front. Such is life in the modern world :)
Oh, I totally agree that a lot of smaller services (including most of the cable / TV companies) stopped building apps. IMO it’s only worth it for global services because smart TV apps are far more heavily used in Asia and Europe.
The client I worked for (a big US cable provider) killed all their smart TV apps when they realized they were spending ~$500k a year on a bunch of apps that were being used by maybe 3,000 people a month. They do continue to support apps for external devices like Roku and Fire TV.
TV software developers are probably learning from HTML/JS developers who support only whatever version of Safari they have on their macbook. Their sites also don't work in browsers released in 2013.
Not news to this crowd... but I think it is pretty significant that a major consumer electronics manufacturer would come out and say this to the mainstream public.
What can a hacked tv do besides relay viewing information or connect to Hoolinet? Clearly it could be added to a botnet, but would Samsung be liable for that? Do the TVs have microphones or cameras... that would open Samsung up for a lawsuit.
It could serve as a launching point for further attacks - it's already inside the network, which is sometimes relevant especially in a corporate environment.
It could display ads or install ransomware "send us $10 of bitcoin to be able to watch TV again."
This is why I believe in metered data plans. Certainly not ridiculously expensive ones, but not "unlimited" access either.
If your IoT devices become open relay DDoS machines, it should show up on your bill. I'm convinced it's the only solution that aligns incentives correctly.
So, people shouldn't have ''unlimited'' access to the Internet, because they've had IoT garbage forced upon them and its their ''responsibility'' to manage it, when they usually can't actually control it anyway?
Not only that, but a DDoS is usually only an issue for a large central location that is perhaps part of this manner of problem, anyway.
Nobody has had IoT garbage forced upon them. They bought it and connected it to the network, therefore it's their responsibility to manage it. Ignorance of basic network security is no more a defense against allowing malicious code on your network than ignorance of the law is a defense in court.
Some people have though, there are flats and houses rented and sold that come with all these things. Either by having smart blinds, lights and fridges already coming pre installed.
Seems like a bit of a silly solution. Personally, I wouldn’t need financial incentive not to have devices on my network be associated with illegal activity.
I guess it would be too difficult for Samsung to have the TV run it's own checks? They could be run while the TV was off to avoid impacting the user experience.
But honestly if it's anything like PC antivirus software those scans are useless. If you don't intercept the virus before or while it is installing it's too late. Once it's in there it can hide from regular AV software all day long.
Having a manual virus scan button on a TV is ridiculous. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if it doesn't do anything useful at all and is purely a placebo. If a signature-based virus scan tailored to TVs is available, it should just run in the background, requiring manual interaction is entirely insane.
Securing the TVs well in the first place would be the best option, but that is unlikely to happen.
"A better solution would be for Samsung to automatically update its operating system for you."
An even better solution is to stop making unnecessary appliances "smart" and not handing bad actors a surface area to attack when companies aren't willing to invest in security
But of course this runs contrary to the bread-and-circuses mode of operation that dominates tech "innovation" nowadays. Nobody is content making a really good TV anymore; now they've been infected by the same featureitis that corrupted software development decades ago
I wish there was a company selling TVs without any “smart” software on it. 100% of the time I use my TV through the Apple TV and even the changing of input to switch to a console is done through HomeKit.
I guess it would be way more expensive if they can’t subsidize the price without all the stock apps and ads they ship with it.
We do the same, the AppleTV is really the only device with the right apps here in Denmark. We had to get a SmartTV, but we simply don't use that part, the TV is not allowed on the internet.
The Philips remote have a big ass Netflix button right in the center, but we just use the Netflix app on the AppleTV, because using any of the apps on the TV is an unpleasant experience.
I can sort of understand the idea of a smart TV, but the TV manufactures do not have the organisation, infrastructure, developers nor the hardware to deliver good and up to date apps, so I don't understand why they keep insisting on building smart TVs.
Companies like Samsung must know that their app suck.
Isn't this basically a monitor (with built-in speakers)? A quick look at Newegg suggests you can get a 43" monitor for pretty a pretty reasonable price.
What is TV size material to you? A friend of mine has a 60" TV and it's huge. I really can't imagine that most people have TVs that big. You can go even bigger with monitors, but the selection is thinner so it's hard to tell if it's really economical.
The whole point of my comment is that average size aside, they really don't seem to be different use cases at all for a lot of people.
My point is that most monitors are not made to be TVs and in the size of a TV also not competitive based on the price. I’m also not sure there’s a lot of OLED monitors in that size but I haven’t done much research on that as I’m not in the market right now.
By TV sized I’m taking about 50+, right now I’m using a LG OLED in 55” and I’m pretty happy with it. With HomeKit and Apple TV I never see the ads and the rest of the smart garbage.
No because just like Windows PCs. They operate on small margins and make money by bundling software in the case of consumer Windows PCs or selling viewing data in the case of TVs.
I buy these. I'm pretty easy to please, their 1080p is great, a little bright at the corners but I truly don't care, it looks great when watching actual shows/movies.
At this point, don't most people primarily use their dumb-TVs either by hooking up a cable box, game console, etc? A quick look a Newegg suggests that plain old LCD monitors can be had up to 43" for quick reasonable prices.
Chase bank has one of these as well. Pretty awesome to get a canned response (then ignored all weekend) when you get locked out of your bank while in a different country.
aka the need to let others know that you were right about something no matter how little they care. If there was a word for that, I feel like we'd already be seeing it daily on HN.
I'm sad that the next TV I buy will probably have to be a "smart" TV. I went out of my way to find a dumb one the last time around, and I had to settle for a lower end model because all the higher end ones have a "smart" component. All my apps are via an attached Apple TV.
Oh well. As long as it works without being connected to my network I guess it's fine.
Given that we do everything via HDMI and use a Chromecast for anything fancy, what would people recommend if someone doesn't need these doodads? Computer monitor plus a soundbar or something? Or does anyone in the UK know of a non-smart TV that can do FreeView and nothing else, but has a decent spec panel?
Had a similar thought before recently buying a new TV. I had heard of Samsung ads, LG's slow interface so was looking for something else. I do use a PiHole in the house, but didn't want to rely on it.
Ended up finding the Philips 50PUS6753/12 50in 4k - the previous version got What Hi-Fi's TV of year award and does a much better job than a PC monitor. Under £400 on Amazon atm. In-built sound is, for me, enough to avoid the soundbar. Also the Ambilight is a nice touch, sort of extending the picture beyond the screen. Responds to screen, audio or custom colour.
Main thing though is there are no ads that I've noticed and it's a fast enough interface. Currently using the TV itself for catchup/freeview/youtube and the rpi as a media centre. You can just not plug the TV in too if you want it truly dumb.
Vizio probably still sells lower quality TVs without smart features, and their "premium" lines seem to use a "built in chromecast" instead of some stupid knockoff system.
I recently bought a new TV. After reading all the messes with smart TVs I just didn't connect mine to my local network. It's just not connected to the network and I don't intend to connect it.
I do every "smart" activity through a Chomecast device or similar devices anyway.
Now that alone could in theory be a security risk as it could be out of date and vulnerable to someone else messing with it in that sense ... but I felt connecting it was the bigger risk / hassle.
I kinda wish there was just a switch to power off the "smart" options and just have it operate in monitor only mode. I feel the same about microphones and cameras on phones. Give me a physical power off switch and led indicator for those things.
I remember reading an obsecure paper hacking a smart TV through the radio antenna after which WiFi could be turned on.
It was a work of art and sounded almost fictional. In the end the attacker would turn on WiFi and control the TV for not just one, any TV in radius, or execute a payload to connect back to a CnC for tvs out of range. It would work even if the TV was in standby.
Patching this particular vuln would have been difficult, though the attacker would have to craft a payload specific to the make and model. It's a nice example where adding features increases attack surface, and protecting against such hacks even for the experienced is near impossible.
Also insane is that there is no “disconnect and forget” option for the WiFi on these TVs. The only method I’ve found that works is to trick the TV into joining a different network and then turning off that other network.
I have discovered the same thing, had to factory reset the one TV I connected before I realized this. Now I have a "dummy" SSID I start up anytime I do want IoT devices to connect to the internet.
Slightly unrelated, but maybe we should start calling TVs with cameras "telescreens"? Like, "don't forget to check your telescreen for viruses every several days".
Our Samsung TV isn't allowed to speak to the internet. Hopefully, by the time we are in the market for another TV, there will have been a swing in the market away from Smart TVs.
If we could somehow standardise on the panel cable, like the one used in LG OLED Thin and Samsung. Then the panel maker concentrate on making better panel. While we get a choice and more competition of "Smart".
I bought a samsung SmatTV in 2017 in Costco. The tv is ridden with software bug: it would turn off itself randomly or cannot turn on the tv unless I remove the remote batteries and reinstall them. The ui is really slow. I also owned a series of samsung Android phones since the S2 to S5, a samsung security camera. They are all ridden with a lot of bugs. I have vowed not to buy a single samsung product anymore.
Last year my teenage daughter decided to trip over the cord of a perfectly good TCL television, ruining it, so we ended up buying a Samsung TV. It has a slightly bigger screen and sturdier legs that wouldn't trip over so easily, but man, it's an exercise in software disaster.
Simply starting Youtube is an exercise in frustration with six or seven arrow keys, and it comes with a dozen built-in advertisement channels that will start auto-playing when powered on. After I finally got fed up, I looked up how to disable them, and turns out I have to click each channel individually to disable them. Also, I don't know if it's the fault of Samsung, Youtube app, or my phone (made by Samsung, haha), but trying to cast a Youtube video from my phone is a total shitfest - sometimes it takes a minute and the streaming still doesn't start. (Come on, you guys are sitting next to each other!)
It's sad to see such a great brand being ruined for shitty software, but I've had enough. My next TV won't be Samsung. Maybe it will have a slightly smaller viewing angle, but who cares.
That's frustrating. My LG smart TV is one click away from Netflix and Amazon, and I've got mapped buttons to YouTube and google play - it's a half second away, and there are no built in advertising channels. The worst we have is occasionally we need to exit out of whatever Netflix or Amazon stream we're on and go back in.
My TV (Finlux) has an undocumented API, that allows anyone to pull information about what I'm watching at the moment. That same API can be used to launch a telnet daemon which can then be used to log in as root without using a password. Needless to say I've disabled wifi on it and I don't intend to ever connect it again.
But hey, the TV runs Linux, which is nice I guess.
The biggest issue is lack of software/security updates.
They treat those products as dumb TVs. they've compiled an OS build ("firmware") and you'd might get a year of updates and that's it.
Any Smart TV will eventually become a security hazard.
meaning "dumb" TV with an AppleTV or a reasonable modern streaming device is safer :)
This comes from the same company that pushed advertisements through their notification system and when called out they denied it like crazy until some news articles came out. Also the same company that was injecting ads into plex.
Basically, don't connect your Samsung (or any tv) to the internet.
I think this makes the case for not owning ANY smart TV.
Are there ANY manufacturers that have a strong track record of out-of-the-box configs that aren't total swiss cheese, combined with years of prompt updates to address issues discovered later, going out to the lifespan of a typical dumb TV?
This is what drove me off Windows (in the 1990s* ): having to spend too large a proportion of time managing my computer rather than using it (AV, disk optimizers etc). Although I love writing code and designing hardware I didn't like the "computer" experience.
Nowadays nobody sysadmins their phone and barely their tablet. And TV users want to do even less maintenance. In the quest to "add value" these TV guys have lost the plot.
* I assume things have improved dramatically since then. No slur against Windows implied by my comment, it's merely how things were.
Somewhat tangential and not workable in all situations, but the best "TV" I've found is a projector bolted to the ceiling. It's out of the way. There's no "black mirror" taking up space or pulling on your gaze. Project against a white wall and it's like having a magic wall that turns into a cinema on demand. The fact that it doesn't work well in daylight is a forcing function to keep from watching TV / movies during the day. I have an Apple TV plugged into it, wedged into the ceiling mount, bluetooth audio to the stereo, no wires anywhere. I love it.
Samsung TVs should not be online: it’s proven you can’t trust them. It phones home and reports your usage - even every time you press the volume button.
Login to Smartthings and you can see some of the data it collects.
I have a Samsung TV but I've never thought of scanning it for viruses. So, thank you for this piece of news. Looks like we should take care of ourselves; at least, thanks to Samsung for warning.
I don’t understood with how cheap chromecast/Apple TV/whatever streaming machines are these days why people don’t use one of those and just not hook the TVs to the network? Is there something specific on the tv that’s not available on these other platforms?
I worked for a large network company at one time as a contractor. I was pretty horrified at some parts of their security. That being said they had a great attitude towards security I haven’t encountered since, so maybe they’ve improved. But still very little stopping even a small determined country like say Monaco from hiring 2-3 decent sysadmins and hacking them to pieces.
Anyway it would surprise me if the TV companies even had bare minimum acceptable security, because even the net security guys are struggling.
My TV is a 42" 1080p LG TV I've had for almost ten years now and I fear the day it gives up the ghost. I don't really care about 4K or the thinner bezels (although having a physically lighter, as in less heavy, TV would be nice). But the last thing I want is a "smart" TV. I just want a dumb box that pushes the pixels I give it. Are there any of those left out there? Will I have to sacrifice quality otherwise just so my TV doesn't spy on me or get viruses?
Why would you have a scan-based security approach? Why not just enforce code-signing of all executables like on iOS? It shouldn't be too hard for a closed, embedded platform.
Many of the comments here say that you can just not give your TV access to your network and you'll be OK. This may not actually be true thanks to Ethernet over HDMI(1), which could let your Roku/Fire Stick/Apple TV give your TV internet access over the HDMI cable.
As far as I know, no Roku device has ever implemented Ethernet over HDMI. It's too poorly supported by devices to spend money on implementing, and WiFi just works better.
Recently I did some research to choose a new TV. I plan to use it as a regular one, with HDMI input and don't need any smart stuff. Unfortunately, most models are smart and there is no information about their behavior when disconnected. It may still show popups to make an account or connect to the network. Choosing a smart TV feels like choosing a blind box with crap. Perhaps I'd spend more and buy a commercial monitor instead.
I am willing to pay additional 30% mark up on top of the current price of Samsung SmartTV for an Apple TV Set.
Benedict Evans has been saying TV market has slim margin, and long replacement cycle. I doubt the HomePod addressable market is any bigger than TV, and likely has similar long circle. Why not TV? Clearly there is something the Apple could bring value to the TV market. ( Although he has been right every time I disagree with him )
The thing is, that monitor is actually compared to Reference Monitor, and as far as the initial preview from those who have seen it, most can't believe a LCD could be as good if not even better than the OLED. And if the spec is actually as good as they say ( Apple has always been very conservative in Spec listing ) may be they are really targeting Reference Monitor?
If so, then a normal monitor / tv would not cannibalise it, since they are completely different segment.
Years ago I switched to a dumb short throw projector. Now I get a huge clear picture connected to an Apple TV and a decent set of speakers. I do not regret my decision. No crappy smart software. Just on and off.
I feel glad I own a "stupid" TCL TV. If I feel the need to have "smart" features, a Raspberry PI running Kodi/OSMC connected by HDMI is more than enough.
Or else what? Not exactly the end of the world if my TV is pwned as long as I can still, you know, use it.
The ability to move laterally in my home network is about as valuable to anyone sophisticated enough to use it as walking around my apartment complex would be to a real life Danny Ocean. Could Danny get into my house and take my PII? Sure, but like, why the fuck would he?
It's not wonderful to potentially be contributing to some botnet, but that's on Samsung not me.
One consequence is having your accounts compromised if you choose to login to Netflix, YouTube, etc on the device. That could be especially problematic if there are marketplaces involved, such as on-demand video (scams like this where the attackers operate a selling account https://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/10/amazon-third-party-sel...)
You do you? I would lose that ridiculous phrase. It's super condescending and not needed. No one needs your permission to be themself, or even a 'reminder'.
I've never heard of a single person in this specific scenario getting into any legal trouble whatsoever, let alone enough people for me to reasonably worry about the likelihood being high enough to register on the list of things that could actually happen to me.
Why not? Again, the people who could make use of this are the very people who don't fit into my threat model.
Is there some rash of private recordings being used as blackmail via compromised devices that hasn't hit the news yet?
I'm worried about actualized threats -- I'm willing to gamble that I won't be the very first target of an entirely new kind of attack, and that I'll have time to respond if such a thing ever does actually come to pass.
> This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it’s pretty ruthless. You could say it’s self-inflicted, or you could say there’s a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost. And then I need to make money off those TVs.
Apple had to directly fight this when they brought their TV app over to smart TVs. It's also why I will never let a TV on my network, and will always use a separate streaming box.
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit...