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Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#191

Post by heavyset_go »

nickthegreek wrote: post #185
heavyset_go wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 2015 anymore, advertisers aren't relying on DNS requests that a Pihole or AdGuard can block.

yes, most are.

Either Google, and other advertisers, put me in the "uses adblockers, be aggressive with ads" pool, or they've moved on to using DoH/DoT/etc in general. I've been able to confirm this by observing Google and other Android apps making TLS connections to known DoH/DoT/etc IPs, and blocking them worked.

At that point, you need more complex routing than what a simple DNS blocklist can provide via Pihole, and if you want good throughput, you're going to want real networking hardware and not a RPi.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#192

Post by squarefoot »

gruez wrote: post #19
RajT88 wrote: post #4

Craigslist an older 1080p TV. People are getting rid of old "dumb" TV's, and sometimes you can get them free. I see seemingly undamaged LCD TV's out by garbage bins all the time. I sourced one such a TV for my wife for $100 a few years ago to use as a monitor - works great. No apps or anything - dumb as they come.

You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.

When those are needed, digital signage displays are the answer. They're more costly unfortunately but can be bought used and are guaranteed to work 12-18-24/24 in much less friendly environments than a living room. They're increasingly making use of Android or WebOS, unfortunately, but being aimed at the professional world they lack all those annoyances and the general crap the industry crams into home TVs.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#193

Post by thrilleratplay »

fragmede wrote: post #109
hamdingers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It disables smart features and many of the settings making it more like a dumb HDMI screen. This may seem like a good thing, but it also usually enables a "vibrant" postprocessing picture mode, motion smoothing, and maximum brightness so the display looks good in a well lit big box store. Unless your viewing environment is similar (or you don't care so much) that's probably not what you want.

It also , in my case, puts up a giant info banner on the screen across the content, about the screen's capabilities, so YMMV.

This occurs on my model as well.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#194

Post by rxyz »

baby_souffle wrote: post #145
paulgerhardt wrote: post #45

Do recommend the LG C series (C5 or C4 are new or the C1 series if you want a deal on classifieds - same hardware as the higher end models but needs a firmware bit flip). The OS is very rootable and it makes a great TV that doubles as a monitor. Supports free sync / g-sync. OLED is nice at this scale. Text is very readable, refresh rate is good. It uses the same panels as the fancier G series in the larger sizes. One…

Another +1 for LG but it's worth mentioning that there are a few things that a TV firmware does that you don't necessarily want in a Monitor. Simple example: most TVs will stay on _forever_ with the "no signal" image bouncing around... but a proper monitor will interpret that as a sign that the PC has gone to sleep so the monitor should, too. I have not looked into hacking the firmware to change this behavior but if…

on Windows, LG TV Companion fixes the sleep issue

Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#195

Post by horsawlarway »

beala wrote: post #138
horsawlarway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTA TV Tuners fill this niche. It's been a bit since I've done this (I'm not watching live TV anymore), but something like HDHomeRun worked fine. It basically pairs an antenna with a small computer to convert to network traffic, then gives you an app on your streaming device to play it back. You do need to be able to run the vendor's app, and you'll get stuck with that UI for live tv (So yeah - totally agree that you…

I have an HDHomeRun box and use it through Plex. I've never installed the HDHomeRun software. Plex immediately recognized it as soon as I plugged it in. There is a noticeable amount of latency between selecting a channel and starting the stream, so channel surfing is pretty cumbersome, but I almost never do that. With the paid version of Plex (Plex Pass), you also get DVR support which automatically removes commercia…

Good to know - At the time I wasn't self-hosting as much so I hadn't explored that.

You're right, though - both Plex and Jellyfin seem to have pretty good support these days, so if you're already running one of those it's a nicer integration.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?

#196

Post by int_19h »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #32
gruez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.

My experience with HDR has been pretty abysmal on a $500 4K TV. Badly tuned HDR is way worse than no HDR at all. I have 20/20 vision, and I really can't tell the difference between 1080p and 4K for video games and movies. I will never do below 4k again on a desktop, but 1080p is more than fine for a TV. Higher framerate makes a far bigger difference than higher resolution for video games too.

It really depends on what you watch. I can easily see it on e.g. this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgp2WNNKmQ
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