- Buy an LG OLED TV. They're as gorgeous as they are notorious. I just got a 77" LG C6 and it is crazy good.

- Root it [0].

- Install Glasshouse [1] and disable all telemetry. YOU now own the glass. Now you can chromecast to the TV, use Adfree YouTube, access IP TV, etc etc etc. No point crippling your TV by pulling the wireless module and voiding your warranty.

- Install a bunch of cool apps to your TV [2] (there are many more out there besides those listed here)

- Restore to Factory Defaults if you ever want / need to unroot and get back to stock e.g. a warranty claim

The only issue is that LG recently closed the vulnerability that made rooting possible so you don't want any firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84. Hopefully a new exploit is found that makes rooting possible once again.

BTW, you might have heard of Dev Mode on these TVs but they don't allow anywhere near the functionality that rooting provides.

[0] https://tv.slada.sk/guides/rooting-guide

[1] https://github.com/rorygallagher2024/glasshouse

[2] https://www.webosbrew.org/

This seems excessive. Easier to disconnect it from the internet completely, and have it boot to HDMI1, hook up an external HDMI-CEC switch, and never think about it again.

With "Hotel Mode" you can make this effectively permanent and never see LG's UI again unless you want it.

Then just connect whatever HDMI-based box you want (Roku, Apple TV, Plex, Android, whatever) and use that for the content.

i personally wouldn't trust these not to spy on you even disconnected. They can still scan for networks and bluetooth devices around you

It won't be long until they have their own cellular modem so they don't need your network at all of the spying parts.

I used to work for an IoT connectivity provider (think SIM cards, eUICC etc); I know that some of the manufacturers of various devices have been investigating adding cellular and soldered eUICC (ostensibly for diagnostics, warranty etc).

So it's not even that it won't be long; I'm sure they already have designs and are just waiting for eUICC support to catch up.

Vehicles already have them, you don't need a lot of bandwidth just enough data to identify the members household which can be done with a wifi access point map and bluetooth MACs.

Then they'll quickly discover how bad cell coverage is in vast swathes of the USA and they'll have to be a lot more tolerant of bad customer sat scores and high return rates than they typically want to be.

Unless they include armored cellular antennas, it's just another thing to get defeated

The Qualcomm license probably makes it too expensive

where would they send that info without internet?

- neighbor's open wifi - open hotspot - public city wifi close by

Some people here say they have seen their TVs connecting https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275753

I have seen open wifi reachable from places i've lived on. Spotty and intermittent connection but there. Apartment buildings with businesses on the 1st floor are also common now, those businesses may have open wifi, etc.

Don't you then have to secure whatever you just plugged into the tv so it doesn't do the exact same thing???

Yes, but you can choose your adventure here. Better than having to replace the entire TV if you find one that doesn't do what you want.

Not to mention that technology moves forward and you can replace these if new models come out that have better features or are more aligned with your privacy preferences.

You kind of leave all the compute that the TV has built-in basically unused

Nobody wants compute in their TV.

Its job is to do an exact reproduction of the HDMI digital incoming signal with no interpretation.

Isn't that the point? You have no control over said compute.

> have it boot to HDMI1, hook up an external HDMI-CEC switch

That's not actually how HDMI-CEC works. HDMI-CEC switches aren't KVM switches that only do HDMI.

An HDMI-CEC switcher box (or devices with that functionality built into them, like many soundbars) doesn't act as its own isolated sub-HDMI-CEC bus, where the switch presents to its downstreams as the root HDMI-CEC device, catching (without bubbling) <Active Source> messages from said downstreams, selecting one downstream to be active in an internal sense, and then presenting itself to its upstream connected TV or what-have-you as if it's one leaf-node source whose video+audio signals just-so-happen to be those of the currently-selected downstream.

Rather, at an HDMI-CEC level, an HDMI switch is a lot more like a USB switch: it passes through all the CEC message broadcasts from all of its downstream source devices through to its upstream receiver device (and vice-versa), sometimes also interpreting them in turn for effect; and the root host device can actually see the whole tree topology, including any switches.

(Fun fact: HDMI-CEC devices have four-step hierarchical addresses, that look like IP addresses, describing at each step the physical socket-number offset on the upstream device that connects said upstream to the given downstream. The TV is always 0.0.0.0. Whatever's plugged into the TV's first HDMI socket is 1.0.0.0. If that thing is an HDMI switcher box, then whatever's plugged into its first downstream HDMI socket is 1.1.0.0. And so on. All of these devices can see and talk to one another using these addresses, at all times. It's a network!)

Importantly, this means that if a TV is plugged into an HDMI switcher box, which in turn has several source devices plugged into it, then the TV will still be aware of, and can still hear and speak to, all the inactive sources downstream of the switcher box, not just the active one.

Which in turn means that if your TV is really stupid in the way it handles HDMI-CEC (e.g. trying to "argue" with sources about who's supposed to be active on wake, with the TV trying to force the last-active source and the source that woke the TV trying to force itself as the active source), then putting an HDMI-CEC switcher box in between will by no means improve things. They'll still be arguing, now "through" the switcher box; and the switcher box will itself be doing additional things in response to seeing these messages. Where previously you had O(N) HDMI-CEC problems, now you'll have O(N log N) HDMI-CEC problems.

But hey, at least your leaf-node sources in this tree all show up in the TV's input switcher menu! That was definitely worth making all this mess, HDMI Forum! :P

This has been mentioned in so many comments and there isn't a shred of evidence about it

It seems to be misconstruing the fact that TVs will scan nearby networks for fingerprinting, but they don't _connect_ to those networks. It would be very very easy for someone to reproduce if they did

Agreed that the fact that the capability exists is bad.

That said, open networks have become a bit of a rarity; the only ones I can see are captive portal networks, and none of those from my home.

Wasn't there some issues with TVs in the past that filled up their drives with this data and would then crash or otherwise not work?

I have a recent 60ish inch LG OLED that's not been connected to the internet AFAICT for over a year. It's not connected to a LAN and it's not configured for any WiFi network. I have never connected it to the internet at all. It's working like a champ. No crashes or other issues. I treat it as a dumb monitor. HDMI in, optical out for audio to my stereo.

That's real, but:

> The only issue is that LG recently closed the vulnerability that made rooting possible so you don't want any firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84. Hopefully a new exploit is found that makes rooting possible once again.

That's a good excuse to find a used one.

It's a good point, but maybe they get less money if they are getting less telemetry.

I mean if you think about it, you're "stealing" from them. They (probably) calculate the value of selling user data and use it to offset the cost of the TV.

If you take away the user data, you are "coming out ahead". I'm guessing the days of selling hardware at a loss are mostly over, but the margins are probably pretty tight.

once the TV is in my hands, its up to me what i do with it.

if they made a bad business decision thats up to them

Why people subject themselves to TV operating systems (or chromecasts, apple TV, etc)? I just have a mini-ITX PC connected to my TV and a flymouse. You can even use pre-made mini-PC if you don't care about gaming. Using anything without ad-block is impossible these days.

Being able to pull out a full wireless keyboard+mouse when doing productivity work is great. Me and my wife regularly use the TV to plans trips, online shop and do spreasheet stuff.

Some of us rode the home-theater-pc wave back in 2003 and are sick of the jankiness of having to have a keyboard in your living room for the daily “occasional” thing you can’t do with the remote.

Yeah I agree no need for a janky setup like that these days. If you want control of your media, but don't want the dated HTPC setup, get something like a Ugoos am6b+ run Plex/Kodi/Jellyfin/Emby on a PC anywhere on your network and that can play all of your media using a remote and nice interface.

Because I have to go through it to get to my android TV and Linux machine, until glasshouse it was driving me nuts how poorly designed the LG home app was. I just want to click a button and get the input selector!

The LG G5 stock remote doesn't even have a input button... Or a mute button, But it does have, six apps I never want to use, a AI microphone button that isn't useful, an accessibility button (which wouldn't actually be useful if I needed those features, you have to hold it to get a useful menu, which I am sure is easy for people who have trouble with remotes.

I rebound the accessibility button (located top right, where you expect the input button to be) to trigger home assistant to send an IR signal to open the input menu, disabled the random apps (though I did consider assigning those to inputs) and made the ai microphone button a mute button.

Its a bit silky I need a WebKit vuln and a vibe coded homepage to get the TV to the same UX of 10 years ago, but I got there in the end.

All I want is to select my computer or streaming box and turn it off and on :/

I don't think HTPCs support Dolby Vision or HDR10+, especially not on streaming services.

You can run custom launchers on Android boxes and modded YouTube to remove most of the ads. Airplay works to mirror my laptop to my TV.

On Windows, you do get 4K HDR/DV on Netflix and Apple TV. Those services are the exception though.

I bought a Windows PC to run my TV before Android TV was a thing. It came with a remote, Bluray software, and a TV tuner.

The whole thing just felt half-assed. I'm not going back. MS really missed an opportunity, because if it wasn't for quality issues, it would have been halfway decent.

Prior to that I used a mac mini with a TV tuner. The TV tuner software was horrible; the UI for programming the DVR was like writing SQL queries. I have a degree in computer science so I could understand it, but there was no way I'd try to explain that to someone who wasn't interested in databases.

None of the streaming services send full data to PC. Netflix, Disney+, etc - you don't get 1080p in some cases, you basically never get 5.1 sound.

I’m going to give an earnest answer. first, most people don’t care they’re being spied on, don’t know they’re being spied on, or lack the knowledge to do anything about it or find alternatives. Some people just want to watch TV. Another big reason is that it’s nearly impossible to stream anything higher than 1080p from the major content providers unless you’re using DRM ready systems. The solution to that is torrenting media and running a plex/jellyfin server, which once again most people don’t want to do

It's a scale of convenience/shittyness.

TV manufacturer OS < Apple/Google OS < user OS

Most people don't really care for their TV being a computer display even if you do.

cost savings and you already have the tv remote that it comes with is the main reason i would like to use it

Because a nuc doesn't pass the wife test. Ask me how I know.

A shield does, at least.

VESA mounted with a generic VESA plate "doubler" solved the aesthetics for me. Out of sight and all. Though I now need to replace its fan with the new one sitting in a drawer.

most of the world has no clue what you are talking about, or they are too old to understand or they don't care. I'm not criticizing you I'm just saying they aren't even aware this is an issue

Because it's another point of failure and another device that uses energy.

Agree … but the part that needs to be remembered

make sure it’s a model where the latest firmware is rootable and never connect it to your WiFi until you have root

Everything you need to do to get root can be done with an Ethernet connected directly to the TV and your laptop. There may be modifications needed to the root toolkits but with good prompting, agentic Llm can figure it out.

If you bought one without root… you may have a chance never connecting it.

If it’s one on your WiFi that doesn’t have a root exploit the only safe thing to do is change your WiFi password.

If you don’t own your TV assume it’s pwnd.

> make sure it’s a model where the latest firmware is rootable and never connect it to your WiFi until you have root

Why does the TV ever needs to be connected to any WiFi? I'd say yank all the modems and antennas off it just to be safe.

What does this get over just leaving the glass itself disconnected from wifi and use an external brain for the tv?

Exactly: If you're super paranoid, the best approach is to pick a quality TV, never hook it up to the internet, and use an external device that you trust.

This worked great for me for years until a dog sitter stayed over and hooked up the TV to the Wi-Fi.

Now the TVs MAC address is banned from the router, so this particular edge case can't happen again.

Make sure your TV and device enable CEC. (Allows your device to turn the TV on and off, select the input, and control the volume.) I know the NVidea Shield can do this, and the Chromecast can do this.

Then hide the remote from your TV and only use the remote from your device.

It's a little slow, but for me, it's nice that I can turn on my Switch from the controller and it turns the TV on; or that I can put a disk in my Bluray player and it turns the TV on.

Out of interest, did anything obviously adverse happen?

LG and Samsung TVs are known to record and transmit audio of everything said in their vicinity as well as scan your network and upload the scans.

Even if I never connected my TV to WiFi , Windows and my iPhone can find it somehow and connect, so there's other protocols that are exposed and probably vulnerable without updates.

Had to come and say thanks! Hadn't heard of Glasshouse, and it's exactly what I wanted. Just installed it on 2 LG TVs on my lunch break and it's perfect.

I was blocking the telemetry in DNS previously, and my TVs were already rooted but weren't doing much with it. Now I've got a nice clean home replacement and all of the telemetry gone.

If I understand well the rooting process basically asks me to tell a website my ip and exploitable tv version... Is that not basically inviting them to make me part of a botnet?

I mean LG spies on me but I suppose it doesn't use my connection to ddos people, crawl for AI, or infect other devices on my network.

My question is basically how I can have reasonable certainty that the guys running the root site are not going to abuse it. Or is there also a way to do it offline?

Forget the calculus of the rooting site... Just leave it offline IMO... One's spying, sneaking LG TV is a genie in a bottle so long as it's never connected.

This works great if you live alone or otherwise are the only one controlling the device.

This may not work so well if you have other people around that may connect the device to the internet, such as kids or family members during a holiday.

They do ddos people and crawl for AI. Look at bright data and other "ethically sourced" residential proxy providers.

If you really have root access, you can check for yourself.

Firewall for http traffic while blocking everything else can easily check for weird connections. If you use your TV for browsing, better buy a PC.

I am unfamiliar with LG TV software but I would imagine that you can reinstall it after rooting and use custom software that you trust.

I didn’t go though every level, but do you mean when it asks for the local LAN IP address?

The route seemed to vary depending on the is version, starting from using the built in browser to a few other options. But basically I worry can I trust the guys more than LG? Like is there a business model behind the service?

Does this guide eliminate google play services? If not, then you still don't really control it. For reference, on my Pixel 6 Pro, GrapheneOS gets 2x the advertised battery life until you add Google Play Services back into a sandbox. At that point, it gets advertised battery life.

I assume the TVs Google backdoors are even worse (video scraping, etc, etc) since they are not power constrained.

The battery drain issue looks like more of an issue with suboptimal power management in Graphene OS than Play Services. Or the sandbox interacts with them in a weird way, resulting in some kind of loop or bug that keeps the CPU alive.

LG Web OS is not android based, so that should be no concern

If you'd never heard of WebOS (which sounds a bit like "eggs" in spanish), the story of how it was developed by Palm, then killed by HP and re-released as a TV OS after being acquired by LG is fascinating. It could do real multitasking on a tablet in 2010, years before either iPads or Android tablets could.

WebOS and Android are broadly the same thing: custom user-mode applications and layers on top of a Linux kernel.

Just install microG or Mind the Gapps

I had no idea google play services uses that must power. Another good reason to get rid of it.

Thanks for the concise guide, it was easy and painless. I've been keeping my LG C2 offline the last couple of years, it's time to own it ;)

With these things I always wonder if there is not a hidden extra layer of root below it.

You joke, but the IoT project I used to work on had a bootloader system that kept 2 firmware versions of our software in memory. If the "main" one entered a restart/crash-loop it would auto-revert to the old firmware.

If you don't flash the bootloader too you don't "own the glass".

Yeah I don't think there's that level of thought and planning and skill going into each of these devices.

I suppose they could be putting some of their pervware within the ARM TrustZone, but that seems excessive.

Something like virtualization? SMM? IPMI? Who knows.

Thanks for that first link, was finally able to root my B4, took less than 10 minutes.

One would think that TV manufacturers would provide the means the root TVs so consumer would still buy them. Our TV is kept offline and a fanless low power PC facilitates all content. We would have liked to buy a new TV, but being the real owner would be a hard requirement for that. And a new one would just need to be able to do what the PC today already does.

Some TV already fail at just being a larger monitor and I think most products just suck.

They sell the TV hardware at a loss or barely break even. The real profit is selling your usage data.

The people running companies aren't interested in selling things with the intent for you to own them. Not when it is perfectly legal to essentially lease access to the metadata of your usage patterns.

I was literally about to remove the wifi/bluetooth module today on my C5 48 after reading about that in an HN comment a couple of weeks ago. I'll definitely be looking at this before I do that.

(It has never connected to wifi nor done any firmware updates, just my AppleTV and MacBook via HDMI. So I don't actually need to root it but I like the idea anyway.)

FYI, OP is wrong about "pulling the wireless module and voiding your warranty."

In the U.S., merely doing something like that will not void your warranty due to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies will lie and claim that, but in my experience, they immediately backpedal when you ask for that in writing (or if it was already in writing, thanking them for admitting to breaking the law).

I love this. Do simple procedures like this exist for every smart TV? For every smart device?

And how well does it work in practice? My experience with setting up my own media box suggests that online community solutions, no matter how well integrated, will always still have some rough edges that you don't see in commercial products (subtitle sync in my case).

I do think this kind of thing needs to become more commonplace, but it's clearly still going to be a steep barrier for most people.

https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv

This works on most Android devices. Just ran it on a shitty TCL TV yesterday.

1: turn on debugging 2: run the included prompt in Claude on a laptop on the same network.

It’s fully automated and undoable.

'Simple' is subjective, but it's just like phones in many ways.

Is it permanently rooted? Or does it revert you if the TV decides to upgrade itself? Intentionally never upgraded my firmware, but it did it automatically once despite me not approving it.

Updates will revert it from my understanding. The homebrew app has a setting to block updates, but according to the rooting guide linked above apparently it's not reliable and it's recommended to block it with your router to be sure. https://tv.slada.sk/guides/blocking-updates

I've worked out the router blocking already. It also blocks app updates and downloads, which is a pain.

buying expensive equipment to deliberately take advantage of a now-exploit is such a bad idea, and it's bit me more than once in the past few decades.

and ethically, what's the point in giving hostile corporate groups any money ? I get that you're breaking out of their mega subsidized and profit-locked walled garden, but 'sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies going forward, and as with all goods the vulnerabilities will get more and more exotic until totally pushed out of public availability much like the newest console gens.

The manufacturer will price in the value of ads and the such. So if you never connect it to WiFi, you get a good deal on the hardware. The same is true if you buy a tv and connect it to a traditional antenna (all tv’s in America are required by law to support this). You can always take it back if the firmware is not the right version to root.

> So if you never connect it to WiFi, you get a good deal on the hardware.

Until it becomes harder, or even impossible, to root the hardware, as even the guide states:

> DO NOT UPDATE TO WebOS 26 firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84 (see the firmware list). Public root method got patched and this firmware currently cannot be rooted. If you will connect your TV to the internet to root it, first turn off autoupdate.

* https://tv.slada.sk/guides/rooting-guide

So if people continue to buy 'subsidized' TVs, companies will continue to produce them.

There needs to be an unsubsidized-by-ads option and people need to purchase it to show The Market™ that there exists demand for such a product. But the problem seems to be that all the current offerings are ads-based.

Vote with your wallet though. If the price is not an issue (like the OP seems to be saying "I don’t mind paying a premium"), then there's no point in encouraging these kind of practices, even if they're pretty common for these kind of device.

Unfortunately though I think you are right and the best thing to do is just get one that has the specs you want never connect it to the internet and just get a companion device for the connected stuff like a Shield Pro (aging device but I did not catch up to what was the cool new things for those)

Oh I absolutely don't have that kind of money, that's why I had no choice but to buy a crappy JVC TV that's definetly a spying tool rather than an actual device. But as I said, it does not seem to be the case for the person asking it in the first place as they are OK to pay extra for this...

The manufacturer will look at sales metrics and say "this is what consumers want more of".

> sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies

Exactly, if we want change the sales numbers have to go down. That means don't by LG, Samsung and who have you, it also means telling friends and family to go buy something else... but what?

If you organize a national boycott with participation levels similar to elections then maybe this is a reasonable comparison

Organizing a national boycott would be a reasonable comparison to running for office.

In a capitalist system, most people primarily influence the expenditure of their dollars. In a democratic system, most people have their vote. In general the average person exerts an average-person-sized influence over the world.

Participating in a national boycott is similar to voting in an election, but someone has to set it up in the first place.

Individual boycotts are like writing in a candidate for president

A lot of people didn't know and already own this stuff. We can always buy second hand.

It could be a loss leader where they make all their money with ads and spyware. I don't know if that's the case, but if it is, they'd lose money from the purchase and never make it back.

The one unit you buy is an insignificant drop in the bucket for them, and getting their actually good underlying hardware and display firmware is much more valuable for you in comparison.

Mostly had success by buying it second hand and checking the firmware version

If you're worried about giving money to these corporations, why don't you buy second-hand? It's not like a 9 month old TV model suddenly is obsolete. An excellent TV from 3 or 4 or 5 years ago is still excellent today. Resist turbo-consumerism and just buy second-hand!

I wonder if it’s possible to hack my LG remote to use local voice models like Parakeet hosted within the LAN…? To trigger home assistant light settings, adjust blinds, switch on and off AV devices etc

Is it possible to root a Samsung?

Yes, but the ecosystem is far less mature. I managed to dump the contents of my S90F using this repository: https://github.com/chris-ritsen/samsung-tv-root/releases

The root is transient, and Samsung TVs also have Knox security which I presume you really don’t want to trip. Some parts of the file system are protected by SMACK which even root can’t access.

I’m working on reverse engineering the applications that run in that SMACK context to see if there’s any way to gain access.

Doesn’t rooting it void the warranty anyway though!?

Not automatically, at least in the US.

The Magnusson Moss Warranty Act protects against that kind of thing.

If you modify function A, and then make a claim for warranty service for a defect in unrelated function C and they don't want to cover that because of the modification, then: The onus is on the warranty provider to prove that your modification of A caused the defect in C before denying the claim.

And they know this. The first layer grunt on the phone or in the chat box may think it is some other way but the larger organization definitely knows what their responsibilities are.

Why would it?

To the best of my knowledge, changing software does not cause damage to the TV that could result in warranty being voided.

If the new software burned pixels or did something like that, which I am unsure is even possible from software, then I believe that would cause the warranty to be voided as a result.

But the reason would be pixels being burnt by using the hardware wrongly (i.e. through a bad software). Not merely by installing the software.

Of course this is a thing. My LG CX is way out of warranty and on older FW. Will give this a go later! Thank you.

How does the "chromecast" work as you described? Is it just DLNA/DIAL?

This is so cool! My next TV is definitely going to be a rootable one.

Buy any tv with CEC support (almost all of them) and never connect it to the internet. Never. Never start any app on the tv. Hook a Kodi box to the hdmi port and use that, and only that.

For the Kodi box get series-7 Intel NUC with Kabylake-era processors, gen 7. They don't run Windows 11, so come very cheap second hand, but decode h264 and hevc in hardware and drive a 4K screen like charm. You can install a modern Wifi card in the NUC and a PCIe SSD.

Then buy one of these: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/154/intel-nuc-hdmi-cec-adapter and put it in your NUC, so you can use the TV remote to control Kodi.

That's it.

Bonus, you can take your TV with you when travelling.

This is what I do already but aside from the "neighbors open wifi" problem I'm more concerned about:

-In-laws or other visitors "finishing setup" to use their netflix while I'm at work or something.

-Future TVs including 5G modems.

-TVs demanding internet access to work at all or worse working but with a hidden time out that waits until after the return period to activate and disable the TV until I give in and let it on the internet.

Most TVs seem to have removable wifi modules, or at least they did. But throwing away the warranty removing it on day one doesn't sit great with me. And that doesn't protect me from point 3b.

Those hypotheticals sure would suck, if they ever happen. Until then you can easily avoid worrying about 2 and 3, and for 1, simply leave the PC's remote out, and put the TV's remote somewhere inaccessible.

Also for extra confidence on 1, you can often disable the TV's wireless/bluetooth scanning (so other devices can't access it), at the "cost" of the TV's own remote no longer working. At least my Samsung (QN90B) offers that.

I find the most important point just to be "and never connect it to the internet".

No matter which smart-tv you use, this is the one and only thing you have to do - just don't give it any way to exfiltrate any data. Use as suggested HDMI and your good to go. Extremely simple and safe. Can it still sniff and log data locally? Sure - but it will never leave your home.

Are there zero unlocked wifi networks in your area?

I don't know if they're communicating over a cellular modem but if I was them and could get a low-priced deal I would.

Keep in mind some smart TVs will attempt to connect to open networks automatically so if your neighbor’s WiFi is open, you might end up connected anyway. I had a Vizio TV that connected to my neighbor’s fridge open WiFi (but not connected to the internet) and my TV operations became very laggy. I would buy a TV without smart features and without Wireless connectivity from a reputable brand (more a digital display than a TV) if privacy is your concern…

Did your TV connect to the fridge, or did your neighbor connect their fridge to your TV? Without some evidence I would be far more inclined to believe that a neighbor did something dumb (I've seen multiple of my neighbors try to connect to my offline TV via bluetooth) than that TVs connecting to fridges are slipping under the radar of tech journalists in the era when scrutiny has led to negative press for LG. Either way it's dumb that that network connection is possible, and concerning it could be possible without your consent, but it's also not nearly as bad.

I wonder how likely it is though? The consumer access points don't come without passwords by default. Where I am, having an open access point without identifying the users is illegal, so it's unlikely a regular person would do that, and if some cafe does - it'd just have a captive portal asking for a phone number. And even if the business owner doesn't want to bother with that identification - there would 100% be a password on such a hotspot.

Fully anonymous open WiFi remains legal and common in many countries, including the US.

Even many guest or public WiFi captive portals in the US only seek to enforce agreement to a terms of service and/or privacy policy, not necessarily gathering identifying info and not locking behind a password. (Yes, there are also those which do require a password or identifying info, but that’s not due to a legal requirement.)

It’s relatively rare nowadays that I see a guest or public WiFi network with neither a captive portal nor a password, but again, those do still sometimes occur and are fully legal in the US. Organizations (and their insurers) do tend to like the protections of legalese and/or identifying users, but US law doesn’t generally force them into it in this context.

Indeed, and just use Apple TV or so. Or Chromecast. Or whatever you do trust. I have never plugged in my TV network connection.

These would be my preference unless I setup the Kodi box myself. Theres repeated, almost monthly, uncovering of supply chain compromise of cheap Kodi/android TV boxes.

This is what I'm doing, but we also have to admit that kodi kinda sucks.

It's really unstable, I can't find a browser, can be janky, unstable and don't forget unstable.

I can't even identify if it is some plugin that is causing the instability or not. Which should not be an excuse, because poor architecture is still the project's problem.

Is anyone working on alternatives? I would accept vibecoded stuff at this point.

> I would accept vibecoded stuff at this point.

You might as well start you own project. Buy a $200 subscription from one of the major AI providers. And guide it towards your goal.

It is likely that within a week you will have something that suits your needs, is fast and reliable.

An example of a prompt that you might use to start:

> Please build a home TV frontend similar to Kodi or Apple TV. But nicer, faster, more modern and with cooler features. Use modern software engineering practices. Keep the code well-organized, performant and readable.

If you have a spare android phone, you can buy a usb-c hub and plug the phone into hdmi.

Vibecoding android apps is easy. The Android SDK has built in components for web views and media players, so you can get it set it up with netflix, disney, whatever.

I've got mine set up with that, a weather display widget, and some vibecoded edutainment games for my kids.

The only tricky bit is keeping the android ui off the tv, so tell the AI to use Android's "Presentation API".

I'm not sure if it fits your usecase but I'm using Jellyfin and it works really well.

I have mine connected to wifi, isolated network, no cross client communication, and no internet access. That way I can still control it from Home Assistant, and the TV doesn't need any connectivity as all streaming happens from an AppleTV.

Depending on your usage that may not be an option, as appliances eg a gaming console (xbox/PlayStation) can require you to update their firmware through their DRM. So unless you keep updating the TV it only shows a black screen

Vero V is IMO the best Kodi box you can get.

I could have sworn NUCs come with CEC built in?

I'm sure I've seen it in the BIOS menus of either my 8th gen or 12th gen.

Raspberry Pi definitely comes with it, and a Pi 4 does 1080p x264 and x265.

Recently I've had to deal with this same problem - get a new TV for living room. Personally, I do not watch TV at all, but kids want to see cartoons when having their breakfast. I spent a week reading forums and came to conclusion that best solution would be to buy a "dumb TV" and connect it to a PC I trust, but it appears there are no dump TVs in my rage of 55" and larger. So, I bought "Google TV" based TCL.

When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)

PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.

> I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :)

I had this same experience with my Samsung tablet - but for a TV that isn't connected to the internet, I couldn't really be bothered to adb uninstall apps - it's not like they're going to be doing anything anyway.

> PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.

While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.

Better to replace the wifi antenna with a dummy load.

OP means that some WiFi antennae are soldered to the motherboard and cannot be easily removed.

When building my PC, I got a PCI WiFi card but it turns out there was also a direct WiFi network interface built into the motherboard somehow

They would be traces with pretty obvious patterns and easy to cut.

But I don't the GP comment was talking about that; I have also used WiFi without an antenna (PCB or otherwise), and it was also slow for me.

A dummy load is probably the best idea: an impedance mismatch would obliterate any chance of anything working (including Bluetooth fwiw).

The point of a dummy load is to match the impedance so that all the radiative energy gets turned into heat and the transmitter is none the wiser.

Also so that any electronics don't get fried. Wi-fi board borking itself would be good, but I'd be worried about it affecting something else down the line.

Exactly. That's part of what I meant by "none the wiser." The other being that the xmitter could in theory detect a missing antenna from the impedance mismatch and try to increase its power (assuming it knows how to do so without frying itself).

"(assuming it knows how to do so without frying itself)."

Unlikely, as Wi-Fi is flea power (not high enough to do damage). Moreover, Wi-Fi chips have an inbuilt power limit so as to comply with spectrum management regulations.

Anyway, why wouldn't you want to fry the Wi-Fi chip if possible, that'd solve everything? If I had that problem I'd simply stuff the chip or short out its RF output (bridge solder across its antenna pins).

There are multiple ways of fucking the chip, likely the easiest is shorting B+ to the high side of its antenna pins (that'll likely do the trick). Another method is to hold the tip of a hot soldiering iron on the center of the chip until it fails.

Of course, you shouldn't do this unless you know what you are doing. The Wi-Fi chip may also control Bluetooth so if you still want that risky comms pathway then consult the chip's datasheet first.

Wouldn't reflections be worse (genuinely asking)?

No. Reflections happen with unmatched impedance.

RF wireless always needs an antenna somewhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679

If you know what you are doing and have explicitly disconnected/cut all antennas including entire MIMO arrays (many people miss one or more antennas) in the motherboard then the only remaining explanation is "accidental antennas".

This is only possible if the WiFi-chip has dangling metal pins/traces/joints whose length is comparable to that of its wavelength, in which case these will act as makeshift antennas. These will pickup ambient WiFi RF, but for this to work at all you need lots of RF power i.e. a very strong signal strength which means you have to be very close to the WiFi router.

The whole thing works because of Physics and not Engineering (the "accidental" part) and hence very iffy (may not work at all) and should not be relied upon.

You don't need an antenna. You can think of an antenna as simply being a signal booster.

That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679

I would imagine the antenna just strengthens the incoming signal. You could still get reception/communication if the gateway/router/modem was near enough and not a lot of electrical shit attached (I would imagine that would generate more noise that could interfere)?

As an example - if you have a motherboard on your computer that supports wifi and comes with a port/plug for an antenna, you could remove that antenna and still receive a signal (IDK about sending) but it would suffer more signal loss due to the lack of antenna.

All that is just a guess of course. People more knowledgeable than me could explain/clarify.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679

Valid question.

I am not the person you asked the question of, but here is the answer;

Smart TVs have a built-in "WiFi-Chip" on the motherboard and its antenna hidden in the TV frame itself, exactly like the antennas in a Smartphone. The different radios on a Smart TV viz. OTA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Satellite, Zigbee etc. all operate at different frequency ranges and hence need their own antennas. Many of these antennas are either a) etched on the motherboard b) hidden within the plastic back frame or c) directly taped to it.

Axiom of RF Wireless - There can be no transmission/reception without an antenna either external or internal.

PS: Since RF Wireless is everywhere today and most people do not have much of an idea of this technology, i very highly recommend the book The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless by Carl Weisman for study. Expressly written for a non-technical audience, it explains everything simply and beautifully. It really gave me the invaluable overview and the grounding i needed to understand this important science/technology.

This is not even a viable option these days: secondary processors, the potential for a backchannel to some installed app on a device in the home (this has not made headlines, but it’s possible), tying an account to the device proactively.. The TV industry really ran to collect “their” data

To put a finer point on it: these are ideas they had long ago and already ran with…

Though he didn't connect any network.

There is a rumor that some connect to any open wifi, although I'm unsure how true that actually ist.

Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350

Some IoT providers' h/w products use globally viable sim cards that can connect to supporting networks. It doesn't have to be "open wifi" since a lot of IoT is for movable objects that are shipped around.

And I think there’s Ethernet over HDMI to consider too.

That was never implemented in any devices and is now a vestigal limb of the HDMI spec.

And it’s clearly less convenient for exfiltration vs most other options. Even closed implementation of HDMI eth to a soundbar of the same brand: then where to

Yes, that’s my second argument: even if it were implemented, you think Apple’s going to let just any ol’ POS IoT junk use an Apple TV’s connection? “Pass through using my IP address doing $DEITY-knows-what? Sure, random device, have at it!”

I think you can look for a "digital signage display" or "large format display"