Thousands of Android TV devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled
Thousands of Android TV devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled
arstechnica.com
Thousands of Android devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled
188 comments
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Do modern TVs even come in non-smart variants anymore?
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But they're expensive.
A 50" TV is about $220. (smart TV)
A 50" monitor is $650.
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It doesn’t really matter, just don’t connect them to the internet. Our TV just has a 14 year old computer that plays media perfectly, and is completely cut off from the internet.
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If they allow you to do that without any loss in functionality.
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It takes some research if youve never done anything like it before, but you can drip feed it the internet via a pihole, and starve it specifically of ads and data collection. Keep the functionality, kill the leech.
Google smart tv pihole, theres a few guides, for anyone interested.
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But why? It doesn’t need that for anything. Just plug an old computer in via HDMI and bookmark movie-web.app or download/stream stuff from anywhere. Much better quality, interface, and no jank.
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Just depends on what you need it for, and what youre trying to plug into it.
For example, some people dont have spare computers to turn into a mini server, but do have $60 and the time to fiddle with a raspberry pi.
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Mines a 14 year old gateway you could prolly get for free or under 100, much more powerful than a RPi. Using Windows 10 on it with zero issue.
I do have a couple Pis next to it but those don’t hook up to any screens, I just tunnel into em. One is a PiHole and one is a server. :3
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Not that theres anything wrong with your setup, but if Ive not got a spare pc or laptop, Id rather get the new pi than risk cheap older hardware that might fail sooner than later if all its gonna do is basically play as a pi.
Plus, like. Pi's are cool. All compact and efficient. Adorable little motherboards.
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Oh totally! But this ancient machine plays better video than my pi 4b 4GB (which now is my headless server.) Surprisingly, it DESTROYS the performance of a Pi 4b even though my Pi runs off a solid state drive too.
This ancient PC was my Grampa’s originally. I recommended a much cheaper machine for what he did. He told me “this is the last computer I’ll ever buy.” I told him to not be silly. He bought the Phenom x4 machine w/ video card anyway.
He was correct. I was given his machine because we did computer stuff together.
It lives on, though. It’s got a SSD now and more RAM, but it plays 1440p perfectly and runs 24/7… and has been running 24/7 for years. It used to also torrent, but the HDD died and my server RPi is gonna torrent too eventually.
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Lol all that work to protect yourself and then you put win10 on it
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It won’t take any distro of Linux I’ve tried :c
I have debloated and de-telemetried 10 though, it’s a very basic LTSC install with everything turned off. I don’t think that’s much of a security issue.
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Curious, what functionality would I lose? All it needs to do is turn on and display video through an HDMI port.
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Samsung historically has had a habit of poaching features from their Smart TVs as they age, eventually leaving you with a not so smart TV after a decade or so. Not sure if other manufacturers do the same
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What a realistic approach! A thing getting dumber as it ages, what a great idea!
/s
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Aha! Yeah that’s okay with me, since we just disable their internet hook computers up, to use them as dumb monitors.
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no.
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It's hard to buy a dumb TV now
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Above 35" monitors aren't that common, and the ones that exist are basically TVs with TV software.
Commercial displays are the only real alternative. Some of them even come with a slot for a Raspberry Pi compute module.
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I heard Sceptre still sells them. Never bought one so can't vouch for quality
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new Moto G phones come to mind lol
just got one and dear lord so much adware
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Admittedly I haven’t been looking that hard, but I don’t think I’ve seen a TV for sale in the past 10 years that wasn’t a “smart” TV.
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188 comments