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72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

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Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart TVs often cost less than dumb TVs. If you don't connect your TV to the internet then you are being subsidized by all the people that do.

And frankly that’s all you need to know about the business model. If they’re making money from me using their free service, then I’m the product.

While it could be that your usage data is collected and worth that much to them; the far simpler reason is simply both how competitive the "normal" TV market is, and how much you benefit from economies of scale. Even if your usage were worthless, a smart TV would likely be considerably cheaper.

Also, don't overestimate the bill of materials for a smart TV. Even a "dumb" TV almost certainly has silicon brain simply for controlling the settings UI and various other functions - that's cheaper than buttons, and remotes need something to talk to, so really, a smart TV simply means "a slightly fancier chip" - but still a chip that's several generations old by smartphone standards. It's not going to be a significant extra investment for the producer.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

They’re more expensive because they need to make up the lost revenue from advertising and the likes. Or something like that. Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

Yeah, I think its primarily market segmentation. Or, you can charge these people more money because they have it. They probably segment based on durability guarantees, these tv's maybe are slightly more durable / last longer in weird temperatures because consumer tv's can cut corners to make the sale, but commercial applications want something that lasts a long time and make fewer sales.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#393
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What DNS do you hardcode? Google's? Or do you advice the use to set it up himself? I am very suspicious of the push for https and the like. I feel it is mainly about hiding the payload from me not any third party.

DNS over secure channels is actually good - it limits bad behavior by ISPs. The problem of shitty devices on your private network is a different one.

Should be done by your host/gateway/router, not each client app.. Same goes for SSL SNI filtering if that ever gets accepted... router should know where requests are going...

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#394
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own several smart TVs but use none of the smart functionality. They don’t even have internet. TV makers are horrible software developers, for the same reasons that mobile manufacturers were horrible mobile OS developers until Android came along. We have similar solutions for televisions in the form of Apple TV and Chromecast. I honestly feel I’m wasting my money when I’m buying a smart TV these days, but you just n…

We have an LG with WebOS. Quite good actually, the remote is also very good, the browser is good, the apps work well.

The magic pointer ROCKS

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

They’re more expensive because they need to make up the lost revenue from advertising and the likes. Or something like that. Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

> Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

That "no reason" is usually a combination of the following:

1) Support avenues - commercial customers want rapid support in case something breaks, including overnight / on-site repair. That infrastructure costs more money compared to consumer appliances where the customers have to ship stuff to a central repair place.

2) Quality. Consumers are used to stuff failing after 3 years and get the next new hot thing, commercial customers want a decade or more in life span with as few maintenance calls as possible - and especially they don't want to redesign enclosures when the model is no longer available so they demand longer shipping times - again, on the order of 10 years or more. Also, these displays generally have to work in a wide variety of environments - directly in sunlight/heat/cold, vibrating/otherwise moving. Higher quality components cost a lot more money. Add more money for certifications required for medical or military deployments.

3) Spare parts. Again, the longer availability terms mean more costs for the support infrastructure - while for ordinary TVs the parts stock can be emptied out after 3-5 years, stock has to be kept around for way longer for commercial TVs, and that includes buying up spare parts when a supplier EOLs a part.

4) Features. Commercial TVs tend to have more selection of (rare) inputs, e.g. BNC or SDI (the latter to drive an array of screens around a spread-out location from a single signal source, you can't do that with HDMI).

5) Firmware. After three to four years no manufacturer except Apple gives a flying f..k about the firmware, which means security holes go unpatched. Commercial customers demand longer update cycles (and better validated ones), again that costs more money.

6) Vandalism and elements protection. This one is huge and ties into the quality part. While your home TV won't need to be protected much against anything, vandals will go and attack anything without mercy - with anything from graffiti over hammer blows to hydrofluoric acid. Add to that nature: bird crap, vomit, tree sap, pollen, drunkards stumbling into your digital signage... or humidity/harsh rain.

7) Loss of revenue from advertising, as you mentioned.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#396

Do DNS have a specific protocol? Is it possible to block any DNS query on my network that doesn’t ask my pihole?

Look at the link here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25313776

More specifically, https://labzilla.io/blog/force-dns-pihole#force-all-dns-quer...

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#397

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. And that along with DoH is contributing to making my life a pain in the butt. How exactly do you folks who avoid our DHCP's DNS expect us to comply with legal filtering requirements? Also, what happens when your hard coded DNS servers are shutdown?

> How exactly do you folks who avoid our DHCP's DNS expect us to comply with legal filtering requirements?

I would argue that this is more a problem with the legal requirements than with the equipment - the law(maker) has expectations you can’t reasonably fulfill.

Doesn’t make your situation any better of course, the law is the law even when it’s impossible

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#398
post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

Disagree. My 75 yo parents still have a dumb tv. They have different remotes for cable, sound, blue ray player ( some smart apps), fire tv, and apple tv. Their life is not easier because of this, they don't watch what they want when they want because it takes minutes to get to a different source. I know what I'm getting them for Christmas

The right way to fix this is one single smart device, which is the only device connected to the dumb TV. The best of these types don't have a remote. They're controlled by a phone.

If the intelligence is built into the TV then it cannot be updated or replaced -- so either there will again be multiple devices, or the TV will need to be replaced on a frequent basis.

A smart TV makes the problem you describe even worse

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice sentiment, but hard to deliver. You have a dishwasher and a fridge, right? They've been running firmware you don't get to inspect for a couple of decades already. Luckily they don't have network access.

How many years is 'decades'? About 4 or 5 years ago I took apart a freezer that was about 10 years old. The compressor seemed to be switched by a thermostat; I found nothing that would have firmware.

That freezer is 1.5 decades.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#400
post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

Disagree. My 75 yo parents still have a dumb tv. They have different remotes for cable, sound, blue ray player ( some smart apps), fire tv, and apple tv. Their life is not easier because of this, they don't watch what they want when they want because it takes minutes to get to a different source. I know what I'm getting them for Christmas

Get them an nvidia shield to attach to the dumb tv. Best of both worlds.
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