Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 197 posts

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

#21

Post by patrickk »

colangelod wrote: post #9

If you just want it for the HDMI input to use as an aux screen for what ever computer your running than anything with an HDMI input in the size range you want should work. I run all the TV's in my house like this; connected to mac mini's instead of futzing with the onboard software mostly because I despise typing one letter at a time with a tv remote. Honestly all the onboard TV OS stuff I have interacted with in the…

This, this, this.

Just never, ever connect the TV to the internet. Connect up an Nvidia shield, or a mini-PC/raspberry pi configured with whatever apps you desire, hidden behind a pi-hole. Connect a steam deck if gaming/linux desktop usage is your thing. I only touch the TV remote to switch on the TV, and even that could be automatable with home assistant+CEC if that's of interest.

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

#22

Post by MisterTea »

I mentioned in another post here that I opened a friends TV and found just 3 PCB's: Power, LCD interface, and Video SoC. The video SoC is an Arm SoC for TVs that runs Android complete with video input switching matrix and processing. The SoC board had Wifi, bluetooth, Ethernet and USB. It's all there.

My dream is to hack that SoC to boot whatever OS. Though good luck getting the datasheets...

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

#23

Post by gruez »

MisterTea wrote: post #17
gdulli wrote: post #5

What does hackable mean in this context, and what's the downside of any old smart TV not connected to the internet and the input left on your laptop, where you'd never see anything having to with the manufacturer's app OS?

Most TV's today are actually giant Android computers. I opened a friends TV a few years back to try and examine a back light issue and to my surprise there were just 3 small PCB's in the TV: Power supply, LCD driver/interface, and the video input board that contains an Arm SoC. The PSU had a small harness that ran to the other two boards and the SoC board had a ribbon cable to the LCD panel. The Arm SoC is the real i…

>If we could get our hands on the SoC datasheet then its possible we could flash that SoC to run whatever OS we want and actually have a Smart TV instead of a spyware and malware vector

Surely it's more straightforward to buy a SBC yourself and plug that into your TV? Even if you could flash it, dealing with random SoC/hardware seems not worth the hassle compared to shelling out $50-200 for a SBC that you picked and can be carried between TVs? Flashing third party ROMs like lineageos makes sense because there's no real alternative for smartphone hardware, but the same isn't true for smart TVs.

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

#24

Post by hamdingers »

mongol wrote: post #12
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

I bought a Hisense model from Costco and set it to "store mode". For all practical purposes, it is just a dumb HDMI display attached to my computer.

What does store mode do?

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.

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

#26

Post by twostorytower »

hamdingers wrote: post #24
mongol wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does store mode do?

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.

Motion smoothing is awful.

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

#28

Post by PenguinCoder »

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.

Good. Some of us don't need or want those things.
Post reply on HN