72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #451

hakfoo wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the dominant broadcast standards are still 1080i 60Hz with no extra dynamic range. A large amount of new content is still targeting that. Aside from over-the-air, I suspect that most cable/satellite operators are offering that service level, at least without premium fees. Since the end of the digital-TV transition, the TV industry has been throwing a lot of stuff at the wall trying to find something that stuck. T…

Although the topic was about smart features so it isn't really OTA or cable we care about. Services like Netflix and Disney+ have embraced those new technologies. I don't think technology like 3D was ever embraced to this extent. If you compare setups between a new TV with a few year old Roku, AppleTV, or whatever versus a few year old TV with a brand new streaming device, the setup with the new TV is likely going to…

It's probably about the shape of the curves as well as, if not more than, the rate of advancement.

TV display technology is likely to proceed in plateaus because they tie to agreed upon standards. By the mid 1990s we had the ability to make a 1600x1200 CRT monitor with a 85Hz refresh rate, but even a top-of-the-line TV wouldn't offer much more resolution or higher refresh than a 1965 model-- that's all you could get out of NTSC broadcasts. (Yeah. there were some progressive-scan input formats, but that's still only a token advance)

Introducing external sources (streaming, consoles, etc.) provides a bit of wiggle room to advance the resolution/colour/refresh rate bars, but that's still not going to change the installed base nearly as fast as if they said "here's a new standard format and every local broadcaster starts 8k broadcasts tomorrow."

In contrast, streaming products evolve in a continuous curve. Since there's very minimal, if any, platform standards, they can say "here's 24k resolution", or equally likely "here's a new codec/DRM format/API that old boxes don't support."

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

#492

Post by colinmhayes » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

drewbug01 wrote: post #378

jsnell wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you made a zero effort joke that has been worn to the absolute bone by people repeating it thousands of times per year in HN comments, rather than at least putting in a bit of thought as to what the risk is for this service. Here's a quick attempt: Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. Popularity: It appears to be incredibly widely used; e.g. a research paper from 2013 claimed it was se…

> Track record: 8888 has been running for more than ten years. I understand the point you're trying to make here - but long-lived products are still shut down by Google, fairly often. Here's a list of some Google products that have been / were around for 10 years or more before being killed (or are slated to be killed soon): - Chrome Apps - Cloud Print - Fusion Tables - Youtube Video Annotations - Google Search Appli…

Use your brain. Google kills product because no one uses them because they mostly suck. Google's DNS server serves something like a trillion requests a day. It might be hard to see the business value for google but it is clear. Google makes money when people use the internet. The DNS server exists to make the internet the best it can be. If you have a shitty dns server you can always use googles. That means google is still making money off you. They won't kill something so integral o their basic monetization strategy.

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

#493

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

ArchOversight wrote: post #465

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it’d just block internet access there. I wonder if it’s possible to push a root to an Apple TV

I know that you can install iOS profiles onto the Apple TV, I have done this for 802.1x support, which included a CA root for the 802.1x controller. I would imagine you can use this to push any certificate that you can also push to an iOS/iPadOS/macOS device.

This is what I was thinking about.

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

#494

Post by mataug » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

This is precisely the reason I do not connect my TV to my home network. I use a AppleTV for streaming content.

Once in a while I check the manufacturer's page, and if there's a firmware update, I factory reset my TV to remove any cached info about my usage, and then update the firmware via ethernet, and immediately remove it from the network.

A while ago I noticed that my old Insignia TV refused to use the pi-hole connected to my network, and it was constantly phoning home, that's when I decided that I'm never connecting a TV to the network. Thankfully I've been able to confirm that the Apple TV does not bypass my pi-hole, since it doesn't load anything when the pi-hole is down.

I know at some point I need to trust some entities with my data. I prefer choosing those entities to the best of my ability, rather than leaving that choice upto my TV manufacturer.

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

#495

Post by DoingIsLearning » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #176

scarface74 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which “smart box” would that be? Roku? Where the CEO outright said that they aren’t in the hardware business and they are trying to monetize via ads? Google? Need I say more Amazon Fire devices? See above with Google AppleTV? Sure I have a couple. They aren’t trying to monetize with advertising. But the HN crowd is anti-Apple.

HN not liking something doesn't make it a bad choice. Kodi running on a Pi or some other low power computer is probably HN-friendly, although the usability isn't even close to as good as the Apple TV.

In terms of usability OSMC is in my opinion a lot better than all the smart tv UI's I've seen (and you can definitely run it from even older pi hardware)

You can also chromecast and airplay pretty smoothly as well.

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

#496

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

Bud wrote: 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.

A TV is not a monitor. it probably has an antenna connector, and because TV signals are digital nowadays, it has to decode the radio signal and support a variety of compression algorithms. Most TVs also have all sorts of image processing algorithms. At least a scaler, but most have other, sometimes questionable features. Plus overlays, recording, picture-in-picture, or whatever the manufacturer thinks will improve sales... TVs are already "smart" to begin with. You can just thing of internet connectivity as the antenna connector of modern times.

Thankfully, I don't know of any TV that requires internet access yet. AFAIK, they all can be used as dumb monitors. If you really want a dumb monitor, you can either buy a PC monitor or a commercial one, like those used in shops to display ads and stuff like that. Some are even as dumb as a monitor can be (like the one I am using right now), with only a single input, a single resolution, no OSD, and only an on-off switch and two buttons to control brightness (which is just a dimmer for the backlight).

But dumb monitor tend do be more expensive. First, they tend to be of higher quality, and second, "smart" features are often a profit for the manufacturer. For example, if your TV supports Netflix, Netflix most likely paid for it, and the amount is most likely more than what it cost the manufacturer to implement that feature. It results in a lower purchase price for the end user, the idea being that whatever partner will make up in subscriptions.

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

#497

Post by 153791098c » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

skinkestek wrote: post #211

syshum wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point Mozilla is just the Non-profit Arm of Google, They do what google tells them.... and DoH is absolutely designed to get around network based security and filtering, both for Ad's and other reasons.

> At this point Mozilla is just the Non-profit Arm of Google, They do what google tells them.... As someone who has used (and still use Firefox) continously since around 2005 it surely feels that way sometimes and some of the decisions I see would make much more sense to me if I knew top management was somehow in Googles pocket. (That said 1. for my workflows I still consider Firefox the best browser. 2. switching wo…

> 3. I always hope something will change and Firefox will become really really great again or someone will fork it.

Abrowser (from trisquel) is what firefox should have been. Best fork out there imo.

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

#498

Post by ant6n » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

verisimilidude wrote: post #288

brandonr49 wrote: post #208

Is there a reason no group has popped up to jailbreak the few major TV "OSes"? Given how prevalant this issue is it seems like a reasonable use of time akin to jailbreaking/rooting cell phones.

I imagine most people capable of rooting a TV would already have better alternatives at hand: an Apple TV, an Nvidia Shield, a PlayStation, etc. There’s not much daily incentive to tinker.

All of these still require a Display.

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

#499

Post by jon-wood » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #91

jon-wood wrote: post #10

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…

How come you don't specify that it be configurable?

Because no one has asked for it. The people who care are redirecting port 53, which the devices cope fine with, because if you’re doing that you probably have same resolvers upstream. The people who don’t care are never going to decide they’d like to change the DNS resolvers.

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

#500

Post by seandoe » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

mataug wrote: post #494

This is precisely the reason I do not connect my TV to my home network. I use a AppleTV for streaming content. Once in a while I check the manufacturer's page, and if there's a firmware update, I factory reset my TV to remove any cached info about my usage, and then update the firmware via ethernet, and immediately remove it from the network. A while ago I noticed that my old Insignia TV refused to use the pi-hole co…

Yea, I just use my tv like a monitor for a Linux box I have in the living room. I like the bluetooth keyboard with track pad a lot better than any remote clicker. We use vlc and a browser for all our video entertainment. It's nice to have all sorts of desktop apps as well... Spotify, transmission, etc.