Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
I want to get a second TV which will more or less be a second monitor for my System76 laptop which is plugged into a bunch of music equipment, like a korg midi keyboard, and a novation drum pad, all of which work great with linux.
I want to buy this TV used. I'm seeing a bunch of Samsung, LG, RCA, Sony, etc on Facebook Marketplace. What a cesspool Facebook has become, right?
Any suggestions on the best brand or even model for that kind of thing? I don't really want to battle with a bunch of shit that tries to coerce me to install another app from a streaming provider slash gambling entrypoint.
I imagine mostly it will just need HDMI to work, and all the TVs will support that. But, I thought maybe there would be a fun brand that offers interesting other options.
For "fun and interesting" consider an LG WebOS TV. Many can be rooted[1] which allows installing a homebrew channel[2] of unauthorized apps or writing your own.
I initially did it for Jellyfin before they made it into the official app store, but the Moonlight game streaming app has unlocked many hours of entertainment.
1. https://cani.rootmy.tv
2. https://www.webosbrew.org/
Im using a 43 inch samsung tv as a monitor. It works fine as long as you never conect it to internet.
I compiled/ported the mario64 port to the LG TV quite easily, so I would say that LGTV is the best for that.
Craigslist an older 1080p TV. People are getting rid of old "dumb" TV's, and sometimes you can get them free. I see seemingly undamaged LCD TV's out by garbage bins all the time. I sourced one such a TV for my wife for $100 a few years ago to use as a monitor - works great. No apps or anything - dumb as they come.
You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.
Good. Some of us don't need or want those things.
I bought a Hisense model from Costco and set it to "store mode".
For all practical purposes, it is just a dumb HDMI display attached to my computer.
What does store mode do?
It disables smart features and many of the settings making it more like a dumb HDMI screen.
This may seem like a good thing, but it also usually enables a "vibrant" postprocessing picture mode, motion smoothing, and maximum brightness so the display looks good in a well lit big box store. Unless your viewing environment is similar (or you don't care so much) that's probably not what you want.
Motion smoothing is awful.
It lobotomizes the TV
What does hackable mean in this context, and what's the downside of any old smart TV not connected to the internet and the input left on your laptop, where you'd never see anything having to with the manufacturer's app OS?
Most TV's today are actually giant Android computers. I opened a friends TV a few years back to try and examine a back light issue and to my surprise there were just 3 small PCB's in the TV: Power supply, LCD driver/interface, and the video input board that contains an Arm SoC. The PSU had a small harness that ran to the other two boards and the SoC board had a ribbon cable to the LCD panel.
The Arm SoC is the real interesting part here as it also has WiFi and Blue Tooth interface, Ethernet, and USB port(s). They're like a giant black box Raspberry Pi. If we could get our hands on the SoC datasheet then its possible we could flash that SoC to run whatever OS we want and actually have a Smart TV instead of a spyware and malware vector. Though I am sure no TV maker would ever let the plebs disable their money making spying and data exfiltration schemes.
>If we could get our hands on the SoC datasheet then its possible we could flash that SoC to run whatever OS we want and actually have a Smart TV instead of a spyware and malware vector
Surely it's more straightforward to buy a SBC yourself and plug that into your TV? Even if you could flash it, dealing with random SoC/hardware seems not worth the hassle compared to shelling out $50-200 for a SBC that you picked and can be carried between TVs? Flashing third party ROMs like lineageos makes sense because there's no real alternative for smartphone hardware, but the same isn't true for smart TVs.
Older LG sets (tested on C9 OLED) had security vulnerabilities you could use to root your TV and then do "??????" you wanted with them. WebOS as a platform causes a lot of unproductive discussion surrounding it's ecosystem and such but if you want to "hack" or actually have a shell on your TV it's great for that to do anything else you want. Personal favorites include changing the default screensaver behavior to the bouncing DVD logo, running Chocolate Doom, and a port of Space Cadet pinball natively. More info here - https://rootmy.tv/
Any that you can put in store mode, and run all smart features off separate device.
Otherwise it will run out of updates fast, services will stop working and only way to fix that is to buy.. a separate device.
This also let's you make search easier as you can just look at the panel itself when comparing.
A dumb TV with an x86 HTPC attached to the back via VESA bracket. Sceptre dumb TVs from the Wal-Mart web site are your cheat code.
A Vizio without accepting the agreement is a fine hdmi TV.
If you just want it for the HDMI input to use as an aux screen for what ever computer your running than anything with an HDMI input in the size range you want should work. I run all the TV's in my house like this; connected to mac mini's instead of futzing with the onboard software mostly because I despise typing one letter at a time with a tv remote.
Honestly all the onboard TV OS stuff I have interacted with in the last decade has been more or less terrible and I wouldn't even consider it when buying a TV especially one that is just going to be a screen. All of the recent installs Ive dealt with (family and friend support) has revealed a ton of pay-to-play features (Samsung frame tv's cough cough). I applaud you for wanting something neat but I cant say Ive come across anything Ive ever actually wanted to use beyond "select input -> HDMI1"...
This, this, this.
Just never, ever connect the TV to the internet. Connect up an Nvidia shield, or a mini-PC/raspberry pi configured with whatever apps you desire, hidden behind a pi-hole. Connect a steam deck if gaming/linux desktop usage is your thing. I only touch the TV remote to switch on the TV, and even that could be automatable with home assistant+CEC if that's of interest.
Any smart TV where some hacker could install its own build of the OS ? Kinda like LineageOS for smart TV ?
I mentioned in another post here that I opened a friends TV and found just 3 PCB's: Power, LCD interface, and Video SoC. The video SoC is an Arm SoC for TVs that runs Android complete with video input switching matrix and processing. The SoC board had Wifi, bluetooth, Ethernet and USB. It's all there.
My dream is to hack that SoC to boot whatever OS. Though good luck getting the datasheets...
You probably want a computer monitor rather than a TV; monitors will prioritize latency which is important for music production.
What you are looking for is a digital signage display and some android tv box
I ditched the whole smart TV years ago. I was never a fan of the slow, ad-ridden software, and later found that enormous packets were being sent when I monitored the DNS at the network level despite the TV being 'turned off'. Instead, I got a non-smart TV (you can find old Sony TVs) and attached a TV box or direct hdmi to an old laptop instead, far smoother and better at all levels.
I think Tizen lets you write your own apps. I know I installed Emby on one of the very cheap smart tvs recently and had to install it via developer mode and pull in the package by typing the IP of my laptop into the TV (maybe vice versa).
I didn't write the code but it seemed like you can get a development account from Tizen and write your own apps.
To be clear, Tizen is not a brand of TV, it's the name of the OS. It's fairly common on various no-name hardware brand, check it out.
[dead]