391–400 of 524 posts
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Unscrew the back of your TV, the internal Wi-Fi antennas may well be be easily identified and disconnected. e.g. https://emfaction.userecho.com/communities/1/topics/124-disa...
Fun fact: If the signal is reasonably strong, Wi-Fi will sometimes still work even with the antenna disconnected.
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Five years from now, 5G will be widely deployed, with a connection density of 1M/sqkm, 1000 times larger than 4G. The TV will connect directly to the 5G network without asking for permission. For your convenience [TM].
At which point I hope there will be websites describing how to take the TV apart and disable the 5G modem. Or somebody will invent a small short-range backhaul-less 5G spoof microcell you can put next to the TV that will confuse the TV's modem into connecting to nothing. Or just wrap the TV in a Faraday cage. But keeping the screen visible might make that tricky.
I would love to update my 10 year old 1080p Philips non-smart TV to a 55" or so 4K HDR screen but I don't want any of the smart features. Does anyone know of any manufacturers selling high end "dumb" TVs? For now I'm comfortable using my appleTV but I like the fact that I can disconnect it at any time. I want a TV that will simply display whatever signal it receives without any connectivity required.
This cheap SBC comes to mind, there's a very similar one from OrangePI too. https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&...
It would be nice having say a version for traveling with laptops etc if we don't trust the hotel connection and one to protect from being spied by the SmartTVs, where changing from one to the other requires nothing more than swapping an SD and reboot.
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The article cites things like location, IP addresses, and the content being watched. That's a far cry from relaying an audio recording of a surgical conference containing HIPAA-sensitive data.
No, the above comment (not article) mentions screenshots. If I have an x-ray of someone on my screen along with patient name then how is that not personal information that could be screen shotted and sent to some endpoint?
Insurance might be interested, for one party. Or parents. Or pimps.
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How much do they make per user? I would have have thought it was in the $10-$20 range and not enough to trigger any price sensitivity. I'm a tightass with an aldi TV but wouldn't have cared if it cost $10 more.
Not entirely related, but I remember thinking when Hulu was talking about an ad-free version of their streaming library that “this will clearly cost a lot more per month because my eyeballs are worth A LOT!!” Imagine my surprise when it turned out only being $4 a month to remove commercials. It almost hurts my feelings knowing how little I’m worth to advertisers...
This is a pretty open secret within the industry. Geographic data can be provided via setup (a lot of TV's ask for a zip code on setup) or usually simply via GeoIP lookup. Dig a bit deeper and you get into service provided by Samba TV and or Inscape and you can find that they're sending back frames of video in a lot of cases to track what you're watching. This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sale…
How do Doctor's that use TVs like this in meeting rooms get around HIPAA? or other places with PII, etc? With so much stuff being thrown to TVs now, a lot of times they are inheriently monitors, and there are very few people who think taking a screenshot of a monitor is not invasive.
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Not even a secret. A TV manufacturer publicly said a while ago that a TV without "smart" features is more expensive for the company (even if sold at the same retail price) because they cannot make any money from selling usage data.
As long as I can keep the TV offline to operate it I'm fine with it. The day it needs to be online to work is where I'll be seriously pissed enough that I'll return it without hesitation.
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>This data is becoming a huge mechanism for subsidizing TV sales and the interactivity is being looked at as a huge opportunity to recoup some of the ad spend being lost via streaming and fewer 30 second spots So what are the options for a consumer willing to pay for privacy? Will console manufacturers be more respectful for example? (I've considered a console to serve as a bluray player / host OS for streaming apps…
I was watching a ripped Spiderman years ago on my PS3 and the PlayStation refused to play it after 10 mins with an antipiracy message. This was via a network video server. Don't see why Sony would have rolled back that feature since.
> If a "theatrical release" watermark is detected in a consumer Blu-ray Disc audio track, the accompanying video is deemed to have been sourced from a "cam" recording. If the "AACS watermark" is present in the audio tracks, but no accompanying and matching AACS key is found on the disc, then it is deemed to have been a "rip" made by copying to a second blank Blu-ray Disc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
Edit: that same page says its now a requirement for all consumer bluray players to use this tech. But I don't remember seeing those messages for years. The pirates must be winning with their methods of changing the signatures.
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Don’t let your TV access the internet at all. Smart TV interfaces are almost uniformly worse than set top boxes (one or more of: bad UI, slow CPU, weird quirks, few updates) so you should avoid it anyway. The current Apple TV (which I cite only because of familiarity) has a great UI, every major app, and robust HDMI-CEC support so you might never have to touch your TV’s remote again. And Apple respects your privacy.
In the past I would have agreed with you on the poor quality of smart TVs. My Roku TV shatters all those expectations however, its fantastic. Great UI, plenty fast, no quirks I have found, and updates regularly. I specifically bought a smart TV with Roku instead of whatever software Samsung/Sony is doing for these reasons.