Martin Luther King, Jr.'s comment in his famous letter from Birmingham Jail: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
I will follow Dr. King and jailbreak my TV.
It’s not the real name for the crime, obviously. But, it’s true that section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass “access controls”, which are so loosely defined that just about anything qualifies. As a result, any device with “access controls” gets to define how you’re allowed to interact with it, and if you interact with it in the wrong way, even if you own it, you’re committing a felony.
It’s Cory Doctorow’s pet name for it. Like most terms he comes up with, it’s almost too brutally honest to say in polite company.
When people ask a farmer how they’ve managed to keep their tractor running for 50 years
“The secret ingredient is crime”
Well then, I guess I’m here to do crime.
Anyone have a good guide on how to jailbreak my “smart” TV to install Linux in order to run adblock on my TV
I just use stremio with torrentio and real debrid and I watch whatever I want ad free.
Step 1. Never connect it to the Internet. Step 2. Connect Linux machine. Step 3. Profit.
I do this. It’s the best. You can buy used HP or Dell mini workstations on eBay for super cheap.
Full Linux, full ad blocking, full access to every streaming service instead of just whoever makes an app for your particular TV.
And with the enshittification of smart TVs injecting ads everywhere they can, keeping it disconnected is the only way to fly. Modern tech is like Skynet, you can’t let it connect or it’s the end of the world.
Only problem is streaming services like Amazon that purposefully limit the quality on Linux.
This is the point where you download qbittorrent on the machine, and hop on your favorite torrent site to go get whatever show or movie you want for free, and play it on VLC. Just make sure to use a VPN if you live in a country that enforces piracy law. My reccomendation is Mullvad VPN ($5/month) if you care about privacy, and literally whatever’s the cheapest if you don’t.
That is why I’m not subscribed to any of them. If they don’t want to offer me the same bare minimum, it’s on them. I mean why are they even doing that? To protect against piracy? Yeah, that seems to be doing absolutely nothing then.
Get a browser spoofing add-on! I have google fiber, and I’ve found that my internet is faster if it thinks I’m using chrome 🤷♂️
That doesn’t make sense, a “browser spoofing” addon most certainly doesn’t do anything that would be detectable by an ISP listening in on your encrypted connections.
Amazon is not an ISP though…? In this scenario, Amazon Prime Video is a server that is receiving a series of HTTP requests. User agent spoofing absolutely would work in that scenario.
I don’t think they were talking about Amazon
And it also depends on your version of Linux as sometimes they don’t play well with the copy protection software.
I had a lot of issues getting some videos on Tubi to play just because I was playing it on a Linux.
I was using mint cinnamon.
Couldn’t watch the Olympics on Peacock because of this. Super annoying.
Same here I’ve just started pirating more.
Some cheaper brands, which are subsidized via ads, actively search for unsecured networks. Disabling the Wi-Fi as completely as possible might be worth the time, if you have such a model.
I don’t even think it’s limited to the cheaper brands. I thought I heard about Samsung (or some other similarly large vendor) TVs connecting to networks their servers knew about for updates and stuff all of course without your interaction/consent. I might have just read that as a possible future thing though it was a while back that I saw it.
If it’s aggressive enough might have to damage what it uses for an antenna
What if my business model is jailbreaking tvs?
If(businessModelProfit>10000000){ PayBusinessExpense } Else { Go-to jail }
“You’ve tried the best, now try the rest!”
I do wonder why people buy smart TVs instead of getting regular displays together with a Linux PC.
Different job. TV has less pixel density and is bigger, because you usually sit farther away.
I went to buy a new TV and they were all smart tvs. I just never gave it my network info so it can’t connect to the internet and ive never had issues.
When you find a 70" QD-OLED panel without SmArT electronics attached, let me know.
It’s 5" smaller but:
https://www.lg.com/us/business/digital-signage/lg-65ep5g
I think I saw a 98" one tho too if you want bigger.
Samsung might have some options as well
I’ve been half assed looking for a new tv for like 5 years now, I haven’t seen a larger TV for sale that want smart in that time.
How much more would you pay for this kind of tv?
Could be a good business
I wonder whether buying “smart” TVs, flashing “dumb” firmware onto them, and selling them at a slight markup would be a viable business model. I guess you’d be at high risk of being sued, even if it’s entirely legal.
I feel like it’s becoming increasingly harder and harder to find TVs without smart crap built in.
Because it’s virtually impossible to buy a non-smart TV these days.
Regular displays of TV size are usually harder to find and more expensive than the smartcrap.
Say I do that.
Streaming can be done through the browser. Which frontend would I use to access the regular TV channels?
Sorry, streaming from a browser on a Linux PC is limited to 540x860 due to an inability to establish an HDCP chain. Have you tried using the TV’s native Netflix app instead?
This is what piracy is for.
There is non-smart TVs with a Netflix app installed?
Oops my hand slipped and I accidentally torrented all my favorite shows!
Ohhh no! The horror!
In france there’s an ISP,Free, that just gives you a .m3u playlist that you can use whenever you want. Maybe there such an ISP where you live…?
Because I like to take advantage of subsidized pricing and I have yet to encounter a brand that’s been able to break through my pfSense box’s adblocking coupled with bimonthly reviews of traffic logs from suspect devices
What’s a good solution for a remote control and “TV like” interface for browsing accessing things? I really just want a good YouTube and jellyfin interface with a normal remote.
Plasma Big screen:
A PC. You can buy an n100 mini PC. There’s different interfaces and os’s for htpc’s. You can buy a remote that works with PC’s and those handheld keyboard/trackpad combo’s work pretty well.
The 2.4ghz connector for those trackpad/keyboard combos never worked more than like 10 feet away so the couch wasn’t an option (until I got one that used BT)
I actually bought one of those corsair lapdog things when they were new (the keyboard+mousepad with built in USB hub) and it’s honestly fairly comfortable. Wired connection.
