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Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#321

Post by bentcorner »

oblio wrote: post #231
mlok wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if (when ?) the AI chip in each TV in the near future could smartmix© ads with pictures of your family, news, inspirational quotes...

Even better, product placement. Your 5 year old is now magically holding BrandNewKoolAid™ instead of the original Coke. You grandpa has a fishing rod from BobsFishingEquipment®.

Oh god - there's the recent posts I've seen about people losing their social media accounts and then having deepfakes of themselves posting about BTC.

But what happens when the platforms get into it themselves?

Today using a loved one's image in a deepfake advertisement might seem invasive and wrong. But I wonder in the future if this would be seen as something acceptable. I'm sure somewhere there's a social media site that is carefully constructing their T&C's to allow them to do this if they so wish.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#322

Post by thih9 »

foobarian wrote: post #311
Volundr wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sadly not really true. I have an LG that I (thought) I was using this way until one day in the middle of watching some TV I get a prompt about a OnePlus phone trying to control my TV, do I want to accept? Needless to say and didn't, but I was baffled by what happened. Turns out that the stupid TV is controllable via an app over bluetooth, and there is no way to turn bluetooth off. I'm just stuck with my TV con…

> and there is no way to turn bluetooth off Challenge accepted!

Warranty voided?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#323

Post by bryanrasmussen »

beagle3 wrote: post #256
jzymbaluk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the TV phone home if it's not connected to the internet?

Amazon had (perhaps still has) whispernet - a global coverage of cellular networks. It was used to download books to your kindle, essentially anywhere in the world, without having to have a local plan or WiFi. It was 2G iirc, enough for book download. Uploading a perceptive hash of what you are watching - e.g. a frame every few seconds - also fits on 2G speeds.

Ok, so...

TV phones home a lot, with info about stuff, some info big lots of bandwidth.

could there be an attack with buying some tvs and putting them on public WiFi - and could one find a way to increase the amount the tv was sending so it amounted to an attack - but still have plausible deniability.

If tvs were put on public wifi, which I guess there is no reason why you shouldn't put your tv on public wifi, and the tv is using lots of bandwidth, and your tv is popular in a country with lots of free wifi, is that tv manufacturer guilty of an attack on the free wifi infrastructure of that country?

I'm asking for a short story or several I might write some day.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#324

Post by femto113 »

bentcorner wrote: post #310
femto113 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another approach is to look not for things advertised as "monitors" but instead look for "digital signage"[1]. Nowadays most of these contain some networking features but they'll be oriented at local control (i.e. by you via something on your LAN), not some third-party control center accessed via the internet. Anecdotally this is the approach I took ~20 years ago when buying a (then slightly exotic) plasma flatscreen…

Digital signage is good but from my understanding (and I could be wrong) probably over-engineered for home usage. They're intended to be powered on 24x7, and last a long time. Probably more resistant to burn-in too. All of which is good, but if your use case isn't so intensive you could get by with something lower-end. (Especially if you want to eventually replace the device and are looking for an excuse ;) )

My direct experience is somewhat out of date, but from an engineering perspective the unit I have is much simpler than any TV, since it lacks a tuner or any fancy video scaling capability, and has no audio capability of any kind (that was a feature to me, since I use an A/V Receiver for sound). I think in general screens meant for signage are probably brighter than most TVs/monitors, but depending on the room that could be a useful feature as well.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#325

Post by hellojesus »

bogwog wrote: post #282
beagle3 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon had (perhaps still has) whispernet - a global coverage of cellular networks. It was used to download books to your kindle, essentially anywhere in the world, without having to have a local plan or WiFi. It was 2G iirc, enough for book download. Uploading a perceptive hash of what you are watching - e.g. a frame every few seconds - also fits on 2G speeds.

Also maybe I'm mistaken, but don't most modern cars have a built in modem for sending telemetry to the manufacturer as well?

Yes. Toyota seems to like putting the transceiver behind the glove box, forcing you to introduce a bundle of rattles to your newly purchased vehicle to remove. Also, I'm pretty sure removing it disables some of the front speakers, requiring manual wire connecting to get them back. You could maybe leave the device in there but encase it in a Faraday cage, but still rattles are introduced.

Ford, iirc, places it on the floor under or behind some seats making it much easier to deal with.

I think MA just passed a law about not allowing vehicles sold there to sell your telemetry data or something.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#326

Post by cgriswald »

jjoonathan wrote: post #241
WillPostForFood wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vizio, as a public company, now has to share their ad revenue data: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/11/10/22773073/vi...

> from $10.44 to $19.89. Yeah, I thought $3000 sounded silly, and my only mistake was that I thought it was one order of magnitude silly when in fact it was two orders of magnitude silly.

No, that's completely wrong.

That number is specifically for their SmartCast subscriber service. It's not clear what the rate is, but they subsequently talk about Roku making $40/mo; so it's possible that's the monthly rate. Assuming it is monthly, a television lasts for five years, and that is their only other source of revenue from the televisions, that's ~$1200.

The telling part of the article:

> ...[Vizio's] Platform Plus segment that includes advertising and viewer data had a gross profit of $57.3 million. That’s more than twice the amount of profit it made selling devices like TVs, which was $25.6 million, despite those device sales pulling in considerably more revenue.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#327

Post by Firehawke »

monocasa wrote: post #272
10000truths wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t seem like a practical thing for manufacturers to implement. How common are such networks in actuality? Literally the only time I ever encountered unsecured Wi-Fi networks in the past several years were guest networks, and all of those were gated by a capture portal that would have blocked any sort of attempt at telemetry or ad serving.

A deal with comcast and their ubiquitous pseudo public hotspots would simplify that.

xfinitywifi, the comparable similar functionality from CenturyLink, etc, or if you happen to live just a bit too close to a McDonalds or other business that has open WiFi. And of course the possibility of one of your neighbors screwing up his WiFi setup.

There are a lot of ways this can (and has) gone horribly wrong for privacy.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#328

Post by stan_rogers »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #174
tombert wrote: post #109

It's a kind of hackey way of handling this, but what I do is open up the TVs and removing whatever components are required for the WiFi to work. Sometimes you can just remove the network card easily, but usually the easiest thing to do is find and break the antenna. It's inelegant, and of course the smart features are still there , but it at least reduces or eliminates the tracking crap.

I removed the WiFi card from my LG TV before I first turned it on, it's been great since. Apparently some TVs are bad at nagging about missing the hardware, so another suggestion would be to add a load or something to the antenna. I forgot what that's called, and at the time, couldn't really find any details online.

It's literally called a dummy load - to the 'lectrics, it acts like an antenna, but it doesn't radiate or receive.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#329

Post by jonnycoder »

KETpXDDzR wrote: post #258
cronix wrote: post #173

All TV's are dumb tv's if you only use them as an external display/monitor and don't connect them to the net. I have a dedicated computer for a media center and just use HDMI1 input on the TV. Never enter menus. Never update the OS. Never agree to anything. Never let the TV "phone home." Never set up wifi. Never connect a CAT5 to it. Set the input using the remote and forget it. Treat it as a dumb monitor. Computer i…

My Vizio TV's settings can only be changed with a phone app. It comes with a regular remote, but there's no button for entering the settings menu. For the app to work, it requires to be in the same WiFi. I dodged the bullet by setting up a restricted WiFi (no internet), but that shows how TV manufacturers try to force you in connecting your TV to the Internet.

How old is your Vizio? All modern Vizio tvs in the past 6 years have a remote with a Menu button. And they ask for accepting Privacy Policy before you can connect to wifi. You can very easily avoid connecting a Vizio to a network and just use it as a dumb tv.
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