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LG responds to TV spying allegations (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”

LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.

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[–] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)

From looking around out of curiosity when this stuff about LG TVs came out, Samsung sells explicitly Non-Smart 65" Hospitality Displays, but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.

Also somebody pointed out Spectre TVs (which seem to only be sold in the US, and I couldn't really find an European equivalent, the closest being a Spanish brand whose largest non-smart TV is only 40").

I couldn't actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.

Personally, the way I already use my TV (wired to a Mini-PC running Linux and Kodi, which has Series and Movies as video files as well as using free IPTV for live TV, and I even have a wireless remote for it so it's used just like you would a traditional media player or Smart TV) is already perfect for a dumb monitor.

(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn't know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).

It really seems that the only way to keep at least some privacy is to ditch corporate devices altogether and just put together your own media player box (which, as I wrote above, is pretty straightforward with something like LibreELEC).

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.

    Subsidized by ads, makes it cheaper. Personally I am willing to pay it (to some degree)

    I couldn't actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.

    Chromecasts are not able to cope with anything other than 16:9. :(

    (A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn't know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).

    What does it matter if TVs like LG do ACR on HDMI content?
    For actual privacy it requires at the very least a display with nothing other than hardware to decode a video signal.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Oh yeah, you want dumb everything else beyond the little box that you control which has the "smarts" and something like Linux and Kodi on it.

    Even having Windows on that box would pretty much guarantee you have no privacy.

    As it so happens, in my experience of over a decade using Media Players to play videos on my TV (since well before Android TV and Smart TVs) it's even the most economic option: the life-cycle of the hardware that plays videos is a lot tighter than the life-cycle of the actual display - unless you're running after the bleeding edge, you more often have to replace the video playing hardware because it doesn't support newer video codecs than then display - so it's cheaper to have those things be separate so that you don't have to replaced the whole thing every few years just because the cheaper part - the processor - can't decode newer codecs and instead can just replace the "smarts" and not spend any money on the stuff that still works fine (and is actually more expensive).

    Further, if one does like I do and actually use that box for more things (my Media Player Mini-PC is also a home server and home NAS), that's yet another way that such a setup ends up being cheaper because it's being used to do the work of 2 or 3 things.

    I suspect even if one pays twice as much for a non-smart "Hospitality Display" to have alongside your own self-made Media Player box, it'll still end up cheaper because in 5-10 years' time that display will still be just fine even while that box might need upgrading due to new video codecs.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    I have a 43 inch samsung hospitality tv on the merchant ship I work on and it's the absolute worst display made since... The brightness is beyond terrible, colors are beyond dull and the speakers have more in common with the nokia 3310 than anything made past 2007.

    Don't bother. Find a decent tv where you can remove the wifi functionality from physically or via software (jailbreaking, service remotes and such).

    Also I was in japan and some hotels actually had some decent custom software (eg. "Hospitality) tvs that might be able to be found ... Somewhere.

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