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Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You

propublica.org

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Re: Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You

#4

Post by yuhong »

This was on Ars a while ago. I mentioned how even today's "non-smart" TVs have to decode digital ATSC signals from the antenna (unlike the TVs of decades ago) in one of the comments, and how today's "monitors" are not that different besides lacking this decoder/tuner and a few other things like the IR sensor/remote.

Re: Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You

#6

Post by McGlockenshire »

yuhong wrote: post #4

This was on Ars a while ago. I mentioned how even today's "non-smart" TVs have to decode digital ATSC signals from the antenna (unlike the TVs of decades ago) in one of the comments, and how today's "monitors" are not that different besides lacking this decoder/tuner and a few other things like the IR sensor/remote.

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen any tuners on a stick, given the increasing trend of things that directly connect to HDMI ports. On the other hand, most "dumb" monitors don't seem to often include multiple HDMI inputs, so that might explain that.

Re: Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You

#8

Post by windexh8er »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #6
yuhong wrote: post #4

This was on Ars a while ago. I mentioned how even today's "non-smart" TVs have to decode digital ATSC signals from the antenna (unlike the TVs of decades ago) in one of the comments, and how today's "monitors" are not that different besides lacking this decoder/tuner and a few other things like the IR sensor/remote.

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen any tuners on a stick, given the increasing trend of things that directly connect to HDMI ports. On the other hand, most "dumb" monitors don't seem to often include multiple HDMI inputs, so that might explain that.

Tuners on a stick have been around for well over a decade (Hauppauge was probably one of the first consumer focused brands and still sells a myriad of tuners). The problem is CableCard (out of CableLabs, which is run by a consortium of all the providers) and it's amazingly restrictive licensing. This is part of the reason why you can't really get a tuner for things like MythTV... Well, you can - but even though things were relaxed for CableCards (since it was such a craptastic solution for everyone but the cable cabal as a whole) the providers still control the DRM. And so having a cable card on Linux without a relationship with the powers that be results in the bulk of non-public broadcast to be useless even with an "approved" CableCard on Linux.

Re: Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You

#10

Post by yuhong »

windexh8er wrote: post #8
McGlockenshire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen any tuners on a stick, given the increasing trend of things that directly connect to HDMI ports. On the other hand, most "dumb" monitors don't seem to often include multiple HDMI inputs, so that might explain that.

Tuners on a stick have been around for well over a decade (Hauppauge was probably one of the first consumer focused brands and still sells a myriad of tuners). The problem is CableCard (out of CableLabs, which is run by a consortium of all the providers) and it's amazingly restrictive licensing. This is part of the reason why you can't really get a tuner for things like MythTV... Well, you can - but even though thing…

I am talking about OTA ATSC tuners.
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