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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

#381

Post by johnhenry »

ouid wrote: post #373
duncan_bayne wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered a cease and desist? I think the name is sufficiently similar to cause confusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement >"Infringement may occur when one party, the 'infringer', uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers" this basically means that in order to have an infringement case, you need to show tha…

Might be along shot, but both seem to be relevant in the whole "watching digital video" space.

(I'm imagining an a scenario in which an elderly version of myself becomes confused...

Me: "Honey, I think we should watch a movie over the samba!".

My elderly wife: "Did you mean the samba on the smart TV, or the samba on the PC?"

Me: Dag Nabbit!)

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

#382

Post by beezle »

kstrauser wrote: post #314
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…

> If you have a "Smart TV" from any brand ...you should turn that crap off and replace it with a Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, or anything else external. The Amazon app on our Vizio was so out of date that it literally couldn't connect to Amazon's API. Later updates fixed Amazon but enabled some flat-out 1984 level spying: https://consumerist.com/2015/11/09/vizio-smart-tvs-are-watch... . That's when I hard reset the TV, b…

I really do not know why you (and other commenters later) place such great faith in the add on devices, Roku in particular.

Just from a couple months ago: "And that’s where streaming TV company Roku comes in. Today, the company is introducing a new measurement suite called Roku Ad Insights that lets brands and agencies measure how effective their marketing is on OTT in four ways."

You really should assume that any app you run on any device is gathering data about what you are doing. Could be used in house and/or sold to third parties.

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

#383

Post by CrystalLangUser »

ouid wrote: post #373
duncan_bayne wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered a cease and desist? I think the name is sufficiently similar to cause confusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement >"Infringement may occur when one party, the 'infringer', uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers" this basically means that in order to have an infringement case, you need to show tha…

I was sorely confused as I thought Samba was legitimately doing this at first. It's literally Samba's name with .tv appended, and one can play files using sambda + VLC..

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

#384

Post by abritinthebay »

jakobegger wrote: post #304
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #116

I would like to see a TV with the following attributes: 1. 8 Inputs, with at least four HDMI and one HDMI accessible from the front panel. The remaining inputs would have at least two composite inputs. There would be no cable input since most cable companies, around here anyway, require a set-top box anyway. 2. An optical audio output, for those who wish to hook up a proper audio system. Those who don’t would get ok-…

Regarding point 3: Most USB ports don't provide enough power for a Raspberry. You're going to need a separate power supply.

That’s because they often are not USB 3+, just 1 or 2.

USB3.1 supports a power draw up up to 3A, tho 1.5A is the more common implementation. Either will power a rPi just fine.

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

#385

Post by mr_toad »

ryandrake wrote: post #368

It’s funny sitting here on HN reading about this, with many HN readers outraged and disappointed that a company would do such anti-user stuff in their products. HN readers, quite a few of whom, are likely complicit software engineers at companies doing similar anti-user things. You ask when these practices are going to end? They will not end while we quietly implement them! You look for who to blame? As a profession…

Software engineers aren’t all clones. There are probably more who don’t care about privacy than those who do.

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

#387

Post by sokoloff »

mr_toad wrote: post #370
buro9 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends how disconnected it really is. If it's doing some kind of "always scan WiFi in the background" shenanigans then it's still a computer slowly going out of date without security updates and occasionally exposing itself to the local area. I wish I could take a "smart" TV and flip a switch and have it gracefully fall back to "dumb" TV where the Android device is physically disabled.

Don’t give it the Wifi password?

Not giving it your WiFi password doesn’t make it immune from a nearby open/Mifi/phone access point that may allow the TV to exfiltrate data or become exposed.

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

#388

Post by _audakel »

> run it on a different network than your NAS and other computers. And that all other devices best require passwords to connect to them. Ideally you run a TV on a different VLAN.

Very important. I used to have no password on any of my internal network devices, then changed to all the same pw. I need to put them all different, because threats seem more likely to come from internal "trusted" sources that we bring in

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

#389

Post by nfoz »

I have a 4K 55" "dumb" TV. You typically need to look for the "Business" line of products to find them.

http://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-display/displays-tv...

The downsides are that it doesn't do HDR (that's typical for the pricepoint anyway, but I'm not sure they make their nicer lines as dumb-TVs "for business" if you wanted it). And it only has two HDMI inputs (which is fine for me, or I might get a separate splitter if I want to expand later).

The upsides: the TV just works, works fast, and never gets in my way. The remote-control is simple.

I'll avoid Smart TVs as long as I possibly can.

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

#390

Post by tjoff »

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…

1. How is this in any sense even a fraction of how bad facebook is?

2. I can not fathom why anyone would connect their "smart" TV to the network at all.

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