Manufacturers make recurring revenue by invading the privacy of "dumb" users with their "smart" TVs.
It's probably only a matter of time before TV manufacturers establish their own ad networks.
Why? Because they can. They have the ability to fully control *their* "smart TV" (that you paid for) and show you ads that they control --- independent of any programming.
“If you do not agree to this EULA, you do not have the right to use the Television or the Software. If you are within the allowable time period for returns under the applicable return policy, you may return the Television to your seller for a refund, subject to the terms of such return policy. You should perform a factory reset before you return it to erase data that may be stored on the Television.”
That being said, this is the first time I've ever seen an EULA be this brazen and predatory. Claiming that I'm not allowed to use the entire device because I don't agree to some post-sale contract? In writing? Are you sure you want to do that TCL?!?!?
It may depend on your jurisdiction but here in the USA, I'm pretty sure it's legal because they offer a full refund if you chose not to accept.
There are alternative ways to coerce users into playing along. For example, simply store/retrieve TV configuration in the cloud. Without connectivity configured, the TV starts over from scratch in device setup on every power up.
And connectivity obviously opens the possibility for other uses.
The reason why it's unenforceable is probably unconscionability. There is no value that the contract provides that wouldn't exist if there was no contract. You have a right to use hardware you own and the software that comes with it, just because you bought the device. It's not the EULA that allows you to use the TV and software, simply having it in your legal posession means you have the right to use it.
> I'm pretty sure it's legal because they offer a full refund if you chose not to accept.
They offer you the opportunity to get a refund from the retailer, subject to that retailer's return policies, which may mean "open box" restocking fees, time limitations or similar.
TCL is the same, as are likely every brand of TV. The smart tv hate is overhyped. All my TVs are dumb because they were smart but never got WiFi access.
They are not all the same --- even within the same manufacturer.
A lot of newer firmwares will launch into setup every time you power up if access is not configured. The TV configuration data is most likely being saved/retrieved from their cloud. This serves as their connectivity test.
Without wifi setup, my new Hisense 4k "budget" model does this *unless* you run it in "store" mode.
Dealing with setup on every power up is possible --- but obviously highly annoying over time --- and this is by design.
The manufacturers desperately want the data collection $. It's the only way some of them make money.
I think this is the way, just don’t give it wifi access!
Fun story, my sony has android tv and can play MKV files off a flash drive (eg. a non-streaming tv show), but the built in player is horrible (drops frames?). Turns out I was able to find the right version of VLC player and adb the apk over the Ethernet port! Really worked a treat.
This avoided connecting it to wifi, but I still got what I wanted out of it.
I heard that some 2024 models refuse to go through the setup wizard without internet access. Not sure what happens if you disconnect it after setup though. But my Amazon Fire Stick already refuses to do anything without internet even though I could stream locally with vlc.
I wonder if this is a market specific thing, that is to say if it is turned on or off depending on which market you're in. For example I wonder if there are pertinent regulations applying in EU, if so I would expect it were turned off in EU.
My money’s on a joint venture with Comcast, Cox, Verizon, et al. to use the Wi-Fi access points their routers operate – even if you use your own router and block them, your neighbors almost certainly don’t. Most them already have business ties and would love to have better ad targeting data.
Man, at that point I would open up the back and snip/desolder the antenna itself. I hate ads on my TV, ESPECIALLY when I've already paid for the damn thing!
That's highly speculative, but even if that did end up happening, the smart TVs sold today wouldn't magically gain that capability, especially if you keep it off the network and never update it.
I'm cool with it provided I can use it as a very high quality HDMI display. Then I just got a nicely discounted product.
My worry is if they demand connectivity in order to work as a display. Or worse come with some kind of LTE transceiver to phone home then we're in trouble.
I'm cool with it provided I can use it as a very high quality HDMI display.
Most will work --- but not always *conveniently*.
On power up, a lot them will launch into setup if connectivity is not configured. Some may actually store/retrieve the TV configuration in their cloud.
I'm wondering if HDCP is paradoxically to the rescue here?
So the main concern with keeping it in dumb mode I would think is that they could still snoop in on your streams through the plain old HDMI port.
But if the HDMI is encrypted.....
With their antipiracy standard ....
God that would be amazing.
Also, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a raspberry pi open source project that does what those 20$ Roku fobs do.
Finally ... It kind of shows that hardware hacking is going downhill that there isn't a replacement os for the major brands of smart TVs. It's possible they've locked that down, but also the price points are so low you'd think they don't have the money to keep them out.
This doesn't make sense at all. HDCP doesn't change anything for the TV - either way the TV must be able to decode the signal to display it which means it can also analyze it and/or use subchannels supported by the other side for nefarious means.
So the main concern with keeping it in dumb mode I would think is that they could still snoop in on your streams through the plain old HDMI port.
So they snoop. There's no value to be had in it if they can't report back to the mother ship. Without a line of communication, the "personalized" ads premise fails.
There will always beeoptions without. Some tvs are used in industrial settings to show safety information. If someone dies and the tv was, showing ads instead of safety information there will be big lawsuits.
The more correct term would be Digital Signage displays, eg. [1] - they often run on high voltages though so it's better to be sure when screwing around with them
I've been buying the Samsung QB series at work lately. They're advertised as signage, and do function in more or less "dumb" mode - they work fine with no network connection. But they do run Tizen OS, which is less dumb than I'd like. Also worth mentioning that they're real nice, but also pretty spendy.
There are OLED digital signage displays, which won't have any issue with black levels. Colors might need calibrating but I doubt they use different panels for these from equivalent consumer TVs.
Really?
They've been working hard on a mass surveillance legislation (which would outlaw encryption) for a couple years now, it was thankfully voted down in 2023 because of a successful public outcry, but that didn't stop these gestapo assholes, they're gonna "reword it" and keep pushing it and eventually the public will have fatigued and stopped caring and it will go through.
The EU couldn't fix the EU-US privacy framework even for the third try, and when the previous one have been invalidated by the CJEU, nobody bat an eye and continued to do the same thing.
GDPR is simply ignored by any bigger US company, it took 5 years for NOYB to facebook get fined which was less than 0.3% of their income, basically a small tax, not a huge fine.
Also GDPR is full of inconsistency (face biometric data is special data, but a photo of your face from what anybody can get the biometric data is not) and loopholes (required by law, legitimate interest).
They did something, but I wouldn't call that "a long way".
I work for a very large US company and can assure you that GDPR is something we pay a lot of attention to. This isn't the opinion of my employer, but my personal experience is that the big players take it seriously and meet and exceed all their obligations because it's too risky not to, and they have the necessary local legal teams to understand the law as best as is possible.
I think it's the small/medium companies who are where most of the issues are. Small companies write a non-legalese privacy policy because they think that's better for their users, but in fact have written something legally meaningless that gives their users no protections. Some small companies just don't know their obligations because they think they won't apply as they're not in the EU.
Then there are the companies who are big enough to know better, but small enough to know they can get away with it because all the scrutiny goes to big tech. I was asked by a medium sized advertising network to implement a keylogger on our website at my previous company so that the network could enforce their revenue sharing by detecting all user data input into our site and match it against their records. I laughed them out of the room, but they made it very clear this was how everyone did it.
> Some small companies just don't know their obligations because they think they won't apply as they're not in the EU.
To be fair, unless a company has a business presence in the EU there is nobody to sue for GDPR violations. The EU cannot enforce its laws on an entity which isn't under its jurisdiction at all.
Okay, with "any bigger US company" I thought mostly about Facebook and similar companies, of which many does continuously break GDPR rules even after many decisions and fines (simply because their business model is incompatible with privacy / data protection).
But it is still true, that nothing happened after the Schrems II judgment, and many-many companies continued to transfer personal data to providers affected by FISA.
> ... GDPR is simply ignored by any bigger US company, it took 5 years for NOYB to facebook get fined which was less than 0.3% of their income, basically a small tax, not a huge fine. ...
From my experience working at multiple companies, and having interacted with others, the GDPR is not ignored by American companies. websites based out of the US block EU users to avoid fines, or these US based companies which don't block EU users have gone out of their way to comply with the GDPR as interpreted by their respective legal department.
GDPR is closely adhered to by big American companies. They may be the only ones to whom the EU is applying regulatory pressure on this. Chinese and Indian companies, on the other hand, as well as any non-enterprise American company, including start-ups, on the other hand, can and do safely ignore it. (Or follow it in broad strokes.)
What do you think about laws? Or lead in gas? Asbestos in your house? Are you one of these free thinkers who don't use seats belts because regulations are always bad?
Your last sentence makes no sense. Something can both be good, and be undesirable for government regulation. For example, it's good for me to eat vegetables. But it would be odious to have a law requiring me to eat X number of vegetables per day. Similarly, a person can be in favor of wearing seatbelts but opposed to a law requiring seatbelt use.
Your reasoning is flawed, eating vegetables or not basically only affects you and your health, not wearing a seatbelt turns you into a projectile against the general public.
Whether regulation is a good or a bad tool for solving problems is an opinion. It cannot, by definition, be "untrue". At most one can say that they disagree and cite evidence as to why.
It looks like a lot of people have taken this statement to be proof that the poster doesn't believe in 'regulation'. When I read this I believe the poster is pointing out how the US has a tendency to politicized anything with the word 'regulation' associated with it to the detriment of the issue involved. For what it is worth, I too see the attack on 'regulation' without context or thought and it makes it hard to accomplish things as a society, but it also forces you to think of other ways things could get done. Convincing people to vote with their wallets or just bringing bad press are also ways to influence this issue. I personally do think regulation has a very big place in this discussion but maybe if we explored other avenues more we could make progress as well.
I wish people would stop regurgitating this obvious lie. You can’t walk 3 feet without bumping in to something that is better for you because of regulation.
My motorcycle has a rev limiter for a reason. If you let the motor run wide open it will fail catastrophically. Economies are no different.
If you think regulation doesn’t work then you’re simply ignorant of how even basic parts of your daily life work.
you are programmed to think this way because you will focus on some
“good regulations” and say “look, regulation in ____ caused all these positive things.” but regulation means that government decided what can or cannot be done. and government is run by people that spend 70+% of their time fundraising. and people that shell out money at said fundraisers will want things and return. and that leads to regulations which are not in the interest of people in general but you know… also regulation is a double-egded sword as you always imagine that regulation will “go your way cause you are smart and have common sense” but we both know (especially in the USA) that is not the case. every regulation made by one political party the other will do everything possible to remove once they get the power back and vice versa
this is how i learned that taylor swift had a birthday recently. my samsung television advertised it to me on the ad banner that goes across the top third of the home screen of the television.
For what it's worth, my LG TV (which is a few years old, to be fair) has never once showed up in my pi-hole's logs. We use an external box for the "smart" stuff, and the TV itself isn't up to any shenanigans as far as I can tell.
I have an entirely separate VLAN network in my house for "appliances". Any access to the internet from that network has to be explicitly whitelisted in my router.
pi-hole uses DNS, and will give out fake ip addresses based on the name lookup.
Unfortunately it is NOT a firewall.
Any device can easily do its own DNS like DoH (dns over https), nnot involve pihole in name lookups, and send package directly to the destination ip address.
I used to have a rule on my firewall to redirect all internal 53/udp dns traffic to my local DNS server for just this reason. But with DoH, there’s really not much one can do to ensure a device is behaving without completely null routing that device.
Manufacturers make recurring revenue by invading the privacy of "dumb" users with their "smart" TVs.
It's probably only a matter of time before TV manufacturers establish their own ad networks.
Why? Because they can. They have the ability to fully control *their* "smart TV" (that you paid for) and show you ads that they control --- independent of any programming.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/tcl-tvs-will-use-fil...