[bhaney]

I recently bought a smart TV and spent about 20 minutes unscrewing its back plate, unplugging the daughter-board where its wireless NIC and antennas were, and desoldering the ethernet port from the main board. Was super easy and the TV still works fine, just with no networking capabilities of its own (entering the wireless settings menu and trying to scan for wifi networks just immediately crashes back to the previous settings screen, which is perfect). It's effectively a dumb TV now, just like I want, and any "features" are provided by whatever system I plug into it.

[PrivateButts]

Genuinely curious, but why desolder the Ethernet port? If you don't want it to connect to the network just don't plug a cable in right?

[bhaney]

I mentioned it in another comment, but it's to prevent the case where the TV might be connected with an ethernet cable in the future by someone other than me, giving it an opportunity to upload any collected historical data it might have. I'm not actually very worried about that happening, but I already had the thing splayed open so I figured I might as well just gut anything I could get an iron to and didn't plan to use.

[SoftTalker]

Hopefully it never has a genuine bug that requires a firmware update.

[defrost]

They (Android based Smart TV's) often have USB ports and various means of installing your own sideloading software | dropping back to command shell as admin, etc.

While firmware updates can be applied that way, here's hoping for a future OpenTV OS with all the desired features and none of the bolt on merchant wares.

[bhaney]

I can always solder the port back on if I really need to

[l33t7332273]

My guess is that GP may have been curious if the TV would react poorly to not having being able to phone home via any method, including ethernet.

[bhaney]

I don't think the TV can electrically tell the difference between the ethernet port being soldered in or not. Removing the wireless NIC was the only thing I was concerned might cause some broken behaviors.

[pbnjeh]

I may well be wrong, but I have a vague recollection of reading that some devices can enable/share an Ethernet connection over their HDMI ports.

I worried a bit about this when I was deciding to provide content to my unnetworked Toshiba Fire TV using a Roku device.

Yeah, Roku... at least it's not Amazon, hopefully it's not communicating what's on other HDMI sources, and so far the TV's not superimposing its own ad streams.

Whole setup was bought piecemeal on sale, and was a "good enough" compromise for the limited stuff I watch.

P.S. The TV's just old enough that, especially without any updates, I may have escaped the open/public/mesh wifi "enhancements" that apparently are becoming more common. I guess I should poke through settings and see whether I can find a system and/or firmware date or version number...

[NoZebra120vClip]

Man, if someone like you set up shop and offered this as a service to TV owners, you could probably make a killing. Either aftermarket, or like the WRT market for routers that are flashed with F/OSS routing kernels and then sold to end-users.

[bradgessler]

You can achieve the same effect by not connecting the television to wifi or Ethernet.

Sadly that means you’re also buying the device to plug it into, which is an AppleTV in my case.

[rcme]

These types of devices are increasingly leveraging mesh networks to connect to the internet even if they're aren't explicitly connected by the owner. Simply not connecting your device to the internet isn't as reliable as it once was.

[ipython]

I keep hearing this but haven’t seen proof of this happening. Curious to see if this is reality yet.

[daveoc64]

They are just as likely to use telepathy to upload data via superintelligent owls.

There's no evidence of Smart TVs connecting in this way.

[jbm]

Is there a documented instance where this happened?

I've heard of this but I've never actually seen this in person. A google, ddg, and even a leddit search doesn't bring up anything.

[mmh0000]

Amazon Sidewalk[1] is one of the big players in this area. They've recently announced a partenership wwith Panasonic[2]/.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

[2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/amazon-ces-2023-ann...

[judge2020]

Haven't seen a TV manufacturer implement it yet, but

> , Sidewalk can help simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices to help find pets or valuables with Tile trackers, and help devices stay online even if they are outside the range of their home wifi.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

[ianburrell]

Amazon Sidewalk uses BLE for short distances and LoRa for long distances. LoRa is seriously low bandwidth. The highest is 50 kb/s and that is for the shortest range and all users. BLE is higher bandwidth but requires having an Amazon device as gateway.

[SenAnder]

10 kB/s is 25 GB/month. That's a lot of telemetry going one way, and a lot of automatic content recognition signature updates going the other.

[judge2020]

For most people in high density housing (non-single-family), there's a pretty good chance someone with an alexa is within range, which means BLE communication is probable. But even for LoRa, a few KB of telemetry being sent every x hours is probably likely if a manufacturer ever integrates the radio - although the ROI might not be there if it can't handle carrying ads.

[rcme]

Low bandwidth is fine. One way that smart TVs track you is fingerprinting the audio that you're listing to, even turning on the microphone to do so. They do this to sell analytics on the content you watch. Audio finger prints are pretty tiny, and you could easily send periodic fingerprints over LoRa.

[ianburrell]

What mesh networks are they going to connect to? Are there any mesh networks?

The only other options are cellular, which manufacturer is not going to pay for a modem and service, or LoRa, which is way too low bandwidth for leaking any data.

[bradgessler]

Check out Amazon Sidewalk

[ianburrell]

Amazon Sidewalk is LoRa.

It doesn't have data price but is capped 500MB per account per month.

[wiml]

Links? This has often been described as the obvious next step for consumer-unfriendly TVs, but I don't know which brands and models to avoid.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Zealous Autoconfig: https://xkcd.com/416/

[bhaney]

> You can achieve the same effect by not connecting the television to wifi or Ethernet

You can hope that you're achieving the same effect, unless the manufacturer has shipped the device with software that will scan for open wireless networks and send its collected data out once it finds a network that allows it Internet access. The TV I got was an Amazon Fire TV, so for all I know the thing is going to some day silently connect to some kind of mesh network built out of the Ring doorbells my neighbors have. Physically removing the networking hardware gives me much better peace of mind, and prevents some well-meaning future house sitter from briefly plugging in an ethernet cable and allowing the device to upload years of collected data or something.

> Sadly that means you’re also buying the device to plug it into

I don't see what's sad about that. I'd much rather have that functionality be provided by a separate device that I can replace or upgrade without trashing the whole TV. I see other people with smart TVs that are a few years old and half their "apps" no longer work because the technologies used by the services backing them have changed and the TV doesn't support them.

[bradgessler]

Its sad for two reasons:

1. Those without the means and who are uninformed have less privacy and 2. It’s a waste of resources to not use the computer built into the TV and have to by another one for the sake of privacy.

[lyjia]

I don't think the second point has any weight when people are shipping miniature computers in literally everything these days. Personally, I don't want these devices using all of their power.

The first point is indeed tragic. But I think some of the blame has to fall on the consumer for failing to keep abreast of changes, and for not forcing manufacturers to change their ways.

We're super quick to cancel companies for social justice stuff, but not for spying on us?

[w-ll]

No! It's a waste of resources to include stuff that's quickly outdated and only used to sell our info and serve ads.

I dont go as far is desoldering ports, but day 1 everything I can disable is, and they get a device I control in HDMI 1.

[thefz]

What is preventing a future owner to plug an USB-Eth interface?

[bhaney]

That's a good point! I don't intend there to be a "future owner" of it, but I've made a note to sever the USB data lines when I have some time tomorrow. Want to leave the USB power lines intact in case an accessory needs the 5V.

[dudul]

That's a lot of effort while you could just have not connected your TV to the wifi.

[bhaney]

It wasn't much effort at all, and I enjoyed doing it. And I've mentioned in another comment why "just don't connect it" isn't necessarily a foolproof plan, even if it's very likely to be sufficient.

[wlesieutre]

Until they add a cellular chip or make a deal to get their TVs on the “Comcast sharing your cable with other Comcast users” networks all over the place, assuming they having already done it