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Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

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Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#61

Post by acheron »

dewey wrote: post #21
doublerabbit wrote: post #20

Walked past a TV and it was advertising a security guard. Why does a TV need security software?

Because most people (HN is not a representative sample set) are not willing to pay the real price of a TV if it wouldn't be subsidized by adtech.

TVs were unsubsidized by ad tech up until 10 years ago, and I’m pretty sure most people bought TVs back then.

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#63

Post by afavour »

gruez wrote: post #50
lbotos wrote: post #47

I'll get on my high horse and say you can get solid "DID/Commercial" TVs for not that much more: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1788343-REG/samsung_q... I got this a few months ago -- 4k, solid brightness, and ok color. Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. I use it with an apple TV with CEC on the TV -- I turn on the apple tv, TV turns on straight to apple interface. I tu…

>Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. Why not just get a (presumably subsidized) smart TV instead, and skipping the premium? It'd also be not disconnected from the internet, and despite vague HN/reddit speculation that TVs have cell modems in them, that has yet to be confirmed.

I have a TCL Roku TV that I use disconnected and with an Apple TV. It still has annoyances here and there, like pausing for three seconds or so on every startup before it switches inputs. I’d pay a mild premium to not have that.

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#65

Post by lysace »

rustcleaner wrote: post #44

Never ever connect your "Smart"-TV to your network, or if you have an incurable impulse to then make sure it's on a firewalled gateway-less VLAN. Take the money you save buying the thing (compared to what a profitable "dumb" version would cost) and buy a surplus corporate mini-workstation system, and slap LibreELEC/Kodi or whatever on it, and use that device as your "smart" device. No good for you can ever come from…

Surely they will just make it mandatory, at some point?

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#66

Post by wowczarek »

HDBaseT wrote: post #37
mycall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does raise the question if other Smart TVs with the same third party apps have the same issue.

The LG WebOS Store is a different beast. Just browsing the list of apps raises eyebrows for even the most non-tech audiences. 99% of it is spam, with maybe 1% being well known apps like YouTube. The rest are weird IPTV Players, Wallpaper apps. It feels like a portal into 2009 apps, but its not.

2009 indeed. Their app store was an absolute cesspit even in the early, pre-WebOS days and it hasn't changed much since, like, who would install any of this and why? Even the "official" app selection isn't the best. OS aside, they are pretty good TVs and quite popular, so I find this mind-boggling.

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#67

Post by initramfs »

gruez wrote: post #50
lbotos wrote: post #47

I'll get on my high horse and say you can get solid "DID/Commercial" TVs for not that much more: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1788343-REG/samsung_q... I got this a few months ago -- 4k, solid brightness, and ok color. Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. I use it with an apple TV with CEC on the TV -- I turn on the apple tv, TV turns on straight to apple interface. I tu…

>Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. Why not just get a (presumably subsidized) smart TV instead, and skipping the premium? It'd also be not disconnected from the internet, and despite vague HN/reddit speculation that TVs have cell modems in them, that has yet to be confirmed.

I use HDMI on my Smart TV and just disabled wifi because I realized it was downloading more than half my bandwidth (a small amount, in fact). It could have been doing an update but I found no reason to leave it on. Occasionally I'll use YT or Prime since it doesn't have to be tethered to a PC, but overall it's nicer as a monitor than a streaming app.

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#68

Post by initramfs »

afavour wrote: post #63
gruez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. Why not just get a (presumably subsidized) smart TV instead, and skipping the premium? It'd also be not disconnected from the internet, and despite vague HN/reddit speculation that TVs have cell modems in them, that has yet to be confirmed.

I have a TCL Roku TV that I use disconnected and with an Apple TV. It still has annoyances here and there, like pausing for three seconds or so on every startup before it switches inputs. I’d pay a mild premium to not have that.

I've noticed that older TCLs are a bit laggier than Samsung smart tvs. Nice to have one that actually has a fast response to the remote. There was an app that was super slow on it- one of the less popular streaming apps. Although when the firmware updated, it might have erased the entire account and started anew. The Google Play store manages the apps, so I would imagine they get purged when they aren't up to the latest requirements. I am not sure how long the Android/Google OS version would get supports though).

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#69

Post by hoherd »

lbotos wrote: post #47

I'll get on my high horse and say you can get solid "DID/Commercial" TVs for not that much more: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1788343-REG/samsung_q... I got this a few months ago -- 4k, solid brightness, and ok color. Is it the OMG BEST? no. But I Disabled wifi, and even the channel display. I use it with an apple TV with CEC on the TV -- I turn on the apple tv, TV turns on straight to apple interface. I tu…

That looks like The Frame from Samsung. Does it have a matte surface? What version of Tizen is it running? Does it have API access?

Re: Nearly half of LG smart TV apps contain residential proxy SDKs

#70

Post by drnick1 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #41
andai wrote: post #4

I've always have a deep, instinctive revulsion for smart TVs, but every year I read of some new mandmade horrors beyond comprehension, and it escalates by a few more points.

Same, but for "smart" anything in the home that requires an internet connection and does not let me set it up or run it LAN only. People forget the reasons TVs got cheaper is because smart TVs are heavily subsidized with ads and your watch data. I have the most "low tech" home of any of my peers, intentionally.

This. The only "smart" things allowed in my home are those under my control. This means devices that work over Zigbee, or that that run free firmware natively (like ESP32-based devices), or that can be hacked to run free firmware. Everything is orchestrated via Home Assistant and in its own VLAN. It's surprising how far you can get. For example, I recently set up a voice assistant by wiring together a few Home Assistant components and a small local LLM (Qwen 4B). Response times are basically on par with commercial solutions like Alexa, and all processing is done locally.
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