I am unsure if this is the right community but here it goes.
I want to buy a smart TV and I will plug a HDMI device into it. I want to stream my games and movies to the TV via moonlight/jellyfin. I heard about ACR and how it can be used to recognize content running on our TV which will be then sold off to advertisement companies/data brokers.
Say I have isolated the traffic of the TV (the OS of the TV specifically) to a separate VLAN. But the connected HDMI device is connected to the internet. Can the TV use this network to effectively “phone home”? Do HDMI devices have this capability?
PS: I know modern HDMI dongles can also share data but I at least have the option to change the device/use a mini PC.
Noo long answer Noooo. Even if device had it you need a cable that supports it.
Ethernet over HDMI does exist as a standard, but iirc it requires the device manufacturer on both ends of the cable to have a special implementation, and also requires a special cable that has the Ethernet data lanes included. I’m not sure any modern displays implement it anymore, it kinda died because it sucked and wasn’t that useful.
Ethernet over HDMI
Thanks for this. Looks like it’s a rare protocol.
Excerpt from the article
If you have an HEC-compatible device, it will most likely be self-described somewhere in the user’s manual. Unfortunately, this technology is rarely implemented, and you would be hard-pressed to find a device that uses HEC. Through our research, we were unable to find any modern consumer device that uses HEC.
I am slightly relieved.
Agreeing with @[email protected] that you’re not going to stumble into internet over HDMI between two devices. This is a zero percent concern, IMO.
Security by obsoleteness
It’s very very unlikely that your TV and your device connected to it both support and enable ethernet over HDMI by default. But if you are unsure you can test it by connecting and seeing if the TV is getting a connection.
Personally I also opened my TV and disconnected the wifi card since in theory the TV could also just try to connect to any open wifi in the area without me knowing, but to each their own threat model.
But if you are unsure you can test it by connecting and seeing if the TV is getting a connection
I might be a bit paranoid but I suspect that in such a scenario, the TV will report that there is no connection but will keep on sending data to remote servers.
Fortunately in my area there are no open WiFi networks but disconnecting the WiFi card is a good suggestion. Wish we had physical kill-switches in all devices.
You can sniff the network and see if the TV is connecting anywhere.
Demonstrating the need for jail breaking firmware for smart TVs (and repealing the DMCA anti-circumvention clause that enforces Tivoization) in two different ways at once:
- You can’t use ethernet-ovet-HDMI on your smart TV because you don’t have enough control over it even though it’s running Linux.
- You only care about the feature in the first place because you don’t have enough control over it even though it’s running Linux.
I wouldn’t trust modern e-waste as far as I could throw it.
do you NEED a terrestrial receiver?
Right now, I have one of those cheap google sticks. But I want to eventually shift to an open-source solution using an RPi or a mini-pc.
