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My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

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Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#291

Post by dreamcompiler »

buro9 wrote: post #76
pwg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: don't ever purchase a smart TV. Preferably, no one would ever purchase a smart TV. When smart TV sales go to zero, the makers would get the message. Sadly, too many folks don't know, or if they do know, they don't care.

Try it. I did. I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV. The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.

My intention -- the next time I buy a TV -- is simply to never tell it my wifi password. Do these things refuse to work without internet access?

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#292

Post by pwg »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #282
buro9 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try it. I did. I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV. The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.

I bought a Vizio P65-C1, excited to have found a modern TV without smart features. Then, a couple months later, an OTA update made it smart. I had to read the fine print to realize that this came with some bullshit "feature" where Vizio auto recognizes whatever I'm watching. I disabled it deep within some totally nonintuitive menu.

> I disabled it deep within some totally nonintuitive menu.

Have you monitored it's network activity?

If not, how can you be certain the "disable menu" was not actually a placebo?

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#293

Post by e12e »

ReverseCold wrote: post #238
drewmol wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've run into: the buggy software that's 3-6-9 months+ out of date by the time you get it out of box. Offline sofware update is not always an option. Maybe update once and then disconnect? As someone mentioned, only until they have autoconnect built in through partnership with mobile providers

Does open smart TV software exist?

In theory Android is open-ish. So lineageos or something might work.

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#294

Post by cachecade »

One of the few bright sides of Sony's smart TVs is that since they run android, its not a big deal to connect to the TV via adb and delete whichever apps you don't want to run. the xdc forums have a pretty good starting point on things to get rid of:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-player/general/sony-a...

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#295

Post by nbsd4life »

skrebbel wrote: post #156
buro9 wrote: post #55

I'm the author and linking to my tweets is a bad idea because they auto-delete after 14 days. For future HN context, as the author I'm reproducing them here in full: My @Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app from https://samba.tv and boy oh boy... this is worse than recent @facebook stuff. From their own privacy policy: https://samba.tv/legal/privacy-policy/ … they track what you w…

Can someone explain this tweet to me? > But when @netflix and other content providers decline the use of their apps outside of integrated devices this is the hell we live in. I don't understand. I can just open a web browser on a little media center PC, connect it by HDMI, point it to Netflix and play a movie, right? (Admittedly I haven't tried because our Panasonic has Netflix and no ads or spy apps that I've notice…

Netflix uses DRM so they control the hardware and software it runs on.

I'm specifying hardware too because of HDCP - you can't just connect it to some random monitor because it might not support 'DRM for monitors'.

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#296

Post by poizan42 »

ddalex wrote: post #229
zeep wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of them automatically connect to open wifi networks or maybe cellular networks?

> maybe cellular networks Now you're getting me paranoid.

That would probably cost too much. At least I hope so.

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#297

Post by pwg »

EpicEng wrote: post #248
pwg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: don't ever purchase a smart TV. Preferably, no one would ever purchase a smart TV. When smart TV sales go to zero, the makers would get the message. Sadly, too many folks don't know, or if they do know, they don't care.

> Solution: don't ever purchase a smart TV. Not much of a solution since it will never happen. The best TV's are "smart", and people like nice things, myself included. You're much better of simply never connecting them to the internet. They get the same message and you don't limit yourself to a small set of poor options.

> They get the same message

If by "they" you mean the manufacturers, no they don't get the "same message".

The message they (makers) got was: "A smart TV sold". They interpret that to mean "purchaser wanted a smart TV".

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#299

Post by ricardobeat »

userbinator wrote: post #228
buro9 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try it. I did. I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV. The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.

The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all. I wonder how big the market is for "dumb" TVs priced lower than smart ones --- given that the development costs, if any, for one would be much lower since you're basically ju…

I doubt that would be any cheaper. Something like that would already have an ARM processor inside for all the digital housekeeping, the cost to bump specs a bit and make it run an embedded OS and GUI are likely extremely low.

The boot time is something that has irked me forever, and it seems the culprit is the HDMI protocol itself, so that wouldn't be improved either.

Re: My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app

#300

Post by lotyrin »

squarefoot wrote: post #64

"I really wish that @Google provided a TV box that was the full Android TV, but that was vanilla Google with the ability to install @netflix, @BBCiPlayer, @mubi as apps. That I could just plug this into any display panel, including dumb displays." He is basically asking to be spied in a different way, just like his cellphone does.

While I'd love the option not to be spied on, If I don't have that option, I'd rather the spies be fewer and more competent.

The doomsday scenario is if we have tons of little pop-up 3rd party data collectors that fail at infosec and produce datasets that become public knowledge via leaks and can be cross-referenced for all eternity.

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