171–180 of 727 posts
This technology was used for good this time, but there's nothing stopping it from being used for evil next time. The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.
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This is not to firmware though. Is there an OSS firmware that can be used to replace whatever crap Samsung has on these devices?
It is quite pointless to fight hardware vendors for FOSS support if they don't want to and you don't have to. Why spend effort to crack their platform when you can buy from competitors, which you do a disservice for fixing Samsungs TVs. Then again I don't know if there are any 'dumb' or open software competitor TVs left on the market ...
How different is this from IMEI blacklisting of stolen phones? The secondary market for stolen phones has kind of disappeared despite cost of phones increasing. EDIT: I think there is plenty of reason to want an open source tv os. They are terrible, ad ridden, bloated commodities. But this seems to be only valid use of DRM I can think of.
I don't anybody who stores private information on the Smart TV so when stolen Smart TVs start to circulate on the market no private information can be acquired or accessed(besides maybe your login credentials and a credit card) unlike with phones which store vast amount of your private content and information.
Idk how IMEI blacklisting works but if they can block at least your private phone number from the network that's good because rogue user can abuse your private phone number and cause havoc because your personal phone number is attached to your identity in numerous databases and records.
I'm on the fence here, I sort of like the premise that looters don't get their booty. I do agree though I don't like the idea that a corporation can remotely disable a piece of hardware I bought.
"Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more information" Fuck off. This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.
Heh, firey take.
Personally my want is for systems like Netflix's Discovery and Launch[1] to take off. TV's can present themselves on the network, and phones or other devices can tell them to start running certain activities, & control them from afar.
There's been some good work to try to modernize these early protocols, & to build a more robust, fully featured, competent standard. That work has been happening at Open Screen Protocol[2] spec, which recently went Draft.
Alas, of course, Apple seems like they're going to do everything they can to prevent open standards from succeeding. They have a couple dozen patents vaguely in the field, most of which seem farcially ridiculously generic & obvious, and the bulk of these patents don't start expiring till 2024. They've disclaimed these to the working group[3] and while it doesn't prevent the standard from being worked on, as far as I know, it means there's almost no chance of it being supported or shipped until ~2028 or latter.
This is a spec that seems enormously pure & good, based on simple, obvious, straightforward ideas. I'd expect a random pick of Senior Engineer I's to come up with a design real similar to what is presented here- little of it feels novel or interesting. It's so damning, so sad that this world feels so obstructed, so road blocked, from doing the right thing, from the good & easy paths. And Apple being the sinister juggernaut preventing the good just feels so typical to me, locking us in to specific narrow means, controlling how we connect, how we think. It's been very hard days for me hearing Apple set us back like this. And I have no hope any kind of Fair Reasonable and Non-discriminatory licensing will ever be set up, no confidence we could try to find a legal route, even if we wanted to. Humanity is occluded by the largest, vastest, highest tech entity on the planet, held back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch
[2] https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/8973 https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/WD-openscreenprotocol-20210318/
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Pa...
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> This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny. Why does the TV have to be smart? Having the smarts integrated into the TV requires that 2 components be replaced if either no longer meets the user's needs. Lets make a really nice large format display with no smarts or connectivity and then let the user choose an Apple TV, Roku, Fire, Android, or what…
This! I'm never buying any kind of smart TV again. I currently have one those TCL TVs with Roku built in and it sucks. All of the apps on it are slow, the menu/home/OS is slow. This could just be a overall Roku thing but I'll never buy either a Roku or a "smart tv" again. I mainly use Apple TV and PS4 to access all of the streaming services. They are slick, fast, and responsive.
I haven't been able to figure how to "sticky" YT TV for example to either the main screen or early in the "Video" section.
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> greatly inconvenience people who bought the TV from the bandits It’s stolen property. The subsequent buyers cannot legally own it.
Under Dutch law: sure they can. As long as you had no reason to suspect it was a stolen TV (super low price, no receipt even though it was basically new, stuff like that) a party that bought the TV second hand is now the legal owner even if the initial owner gets ahold of the current owner. Under Dutch law the most common thing this applies to is second hand bicycles. If you bought it off a junkie at the train statio…
Under Danish law even if you were in good faith you will still loose the merchandise. If you were in bad faith you can be punished with a fine or even prison in the most severe cases.
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Oh the tyranny of having to pay…
Obviously that's not the point, here. The fact that Samsung has the ability to brick a TV remotely _at all_ is ridiculous. It's not hard to imagine this being used by an attacker to shut down all Samsung TVs remotely, or for planned obsolescence if you want to be more cynical.
Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them to buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is illegal.
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For now, that works. It's easy to imagine a time when the TV includes it's own 5G modem or that Samsung would make a deal with Amazon or Comcast for access to their wifi mesh networks so the TV can get online without user intervention.
I once moved across the ocean and newly purchased LG TV refused to work because I am now in the wrong region. Off it went to a landfill, this perfect piece of hardware :-(