OpenLGTV: Legal reverse engineering and research of LG TVs firmware

https://openlgtv.github.io/

by transpute • 5 years ago

602 299 5 years ago

openlgtv.github.io

ocdtrekkie• 5 years ago

Glad to see some work on this. The most expensive Smart TV in my house is the worst one because LG refuses to support their TVs more than a couple years: All the new streaming apps are only available on newer TVs, even if they're far cheaper and less powerful.

My experience with LG's TV software support may have driven me to Roku forever. Age old Rokus still tend to have fantastic app support and run modern versions of their OS.

polished852• 5 years ago

I mostly agree, but recently I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Apple TV app became available on my 2017 50" LG. I was able to remove my Gen 3 Apple TV box. The only app I use that is still not available is HBO Max. For that I bring my daughter's PS4 into the room, but who knows maybe that will also become available.

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 years ago

The only app I use that is still not available is HBO Max.

That’s a biggie. Isn’t it available on the AppleTV app?

For myself, I only use my AppleTV (device), for streaming. I have an LG, but am not a fan of the weird WebOS UI, so I just leave it connected to the AppleTV.

taneq2• 5 years ago

Our (now-7-year-old) LG TV was pretty good for the first 3-4 years. Now it's just a big monitor for a Raspberry Pi and very occasionally an old Bluray player.

square_usual• 5 years ago

Age old Rokus still tend to have fantastic app support and run modern versions of their OS.

Yes, because Roku's business model is getting into your living room to spy on you. Of course they'd like to do that for as long as possible!

franga20005• 5 years ago

It's the same with the TV vendors these days, only they want you to buy a new device every few years too.

kevin_thibedeau• 5 years ago

There's a menu setting to disable telemetry.

KptMarchewa2• 5 years ago

I think consoles are the best option if you want at least sometimes play some games. They sell so much of them that the application developers support them for a long, long time - the 2013 PS4 is still being sold and will still be supported for at least few years.

xahrepap2• 5 years ago

Here's what I want for custom firmware: nothing. I don't mean "I don't want custom firmware". I want custom firmware THAT DOES NOTHING. Turn the TV into a dumb monitor. Do nothing else. Don't make me wait X seconds long for the TV Software to boot. Because I don't want it. I don't need it. I have external devices that do everything I want.

deanc• 5 years ago

This “dumb tv” trope comes up in every one of these discussions. We are the minority and most people want a tv with a Netflix all and not to have to buy a set top box. There isn’t a market here.

beezischillin2• 5 years ago

It's not really worth it for them to make dumb TVs either, I assume, since that implies they can't shove ads and telemetry into them.

omnicognate• 5 years ago

Even if true (and I don't think it is), that is irrelevant to an attempt to reverse engineer an existing smart TV and create custom "dumb" firmware for it. All that needs is people with the desire for it and the technical skills to pull it off.

taneq2• 5 years ago

That makes it pretty much perfect for an open source project, then. Suitably motivated individuals with some technical skills can build and use it if they want to and the majority can remain blissfully ignorant of its existence.

deckiedan• 5 years ago

I think there could be a bit of a market in installations / events.

Often smaller installs / live events people want simple non-smart screens for all kinds of things (on stage, in waiting areas, musician cues, info to crew, signage, etc), and although it's possible to buy expensive "monitors" that do it - being able to use cheap and large domestic kit with much faster startup and no extra crap, and no logos being displayed while booting or if it loses signal or whatever would be very desirable.

xahrepap2• 5 years ago

I bring it up here because they’re reversing the LG firmware and modifying it. I would love a fork of this work that does nothing.

While a developer, this kind of work is outside my current wheelhouse and I just don’t have the time to learn and fork it myself. So throwing out my desire. Half hoping someone out there wants it more than I do.. and half just expressing my frustration with modern TVs.

laumars3• 5 years ago

I wonder how many people in that majority category you’ve described are likely to want to install custom firmware though.

I’m a “hacker” with multiple LG TVs around the house (in fact I exclusively buy LG TVs) and I have no interest in putting custom firmware on those TV sets. So I can’t imagine there’s many inside the Venn bubble that are both laymen enough to want Netflix, technical enough to know about custom firmware but also motivated enough to want to install it.

So the number of people who want dumb firmware might not be disproportionately less than those who want custom smart firmware.

whazor• 5 years ago

Not true, pre-install a removable box. Preferably this becomes a standard where Google, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia share the same form factor. Now my LG TV from 2020 is missing out functionality, even though the hardware could support it.

awill• 5 years ago

>There isn’t a market here.

I can assure you there is an even smaller a market for a reverse engineered open source LG TV firmware.

beebeepka• 5 years ago

Oh, there's a market all right. I want one

ryall• 5 years ago

Exactly! When it comes to home media I prefer the Linux model of small utilities connected by pipes.

colordrops3• 5 years ago

Sorry to be pedantic but it's the unix model.

anontrot• 5 years ago

I'm assuming you meant the smart part, and not the image processing part. And all other kinds of audio/video processing. If yes, even I'd love to have that!

black_puppydog2• 5 years ago

What really gets me is how inconvenient most interfaces are.

I don't own a TV, but every time I interact with one, be it apple TV, firestick, or some custom on-TV firmware thing, I find the UI reasonably beautiful but an absolute nightmare to use.

This might be because I don't use the TVs the way they are intended to be used. I typically know exactly what I want to watch before even switching it on. Their UIs however are built around aimlessly browsing and picking something off the top of the recommendations.

I always end up wishing I just had a keyboard and a mouse attached.

can16358p2• 5 years ago

I think the reason bubbles down to the fact that people are used to TVs being dumb TVs with a remote that everyone knows how to operate. But the abilities of these TVs are growing exponentially compared to what people expect so they have to find a middleground by having a remote-looking pointing device and a TV-looking interface for this computer with a giant screen.

Eventually I believe it will evolve into something more functional.

fragmede• 5 years ago

Have you tried a Chromecast? Your phone or laptop is the UI, and the software you're using (which does need to explicitly support) sends it to the TV. Netflix, YouTube, VLC, and Chrome all support this.

It's a different workflow than with a mouse and keyboard, and the software's still generally going to prioritize browsing/top recommendations, but at least you're not dealing with an on-TV UX nightmare (even if it is pretty).

tentacleuno4• 5 years ago

I always end up wishing I just had a keyboard and a mouse attached.

I'm with you on that. Screen keyboards suck, especially on a TV.

I still have my old Netcast 4K TV here, but the software is really clunky. It quite literally comes with advertisements built-in to the main GUI (placeholdered by "Smart LG TV") whenever you're connected to the internet. It's not seeing so much internet these days (some sort of LAN-only solution for Miracast would be nice), though.

Have you ever tried plugging a keyboard into your TV? Most of them have USB ports these days, and I'm sure with Linux they're got the basic keyboard drivers bundled.

pkulak• 5 years ago

Okay, then you gotta pay for it. And the problem is, no one really wants to pay for it.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

I find it easier to just never connect my TV to the internet and call that as much of a win as I'm gonna get. Though, with this sidewalk stuff, soon even that may not be possible.

denysvitali• 5 years ago

Nothing stops you from disconnecting the antenna or having a faraday cage around the tx/rx components

tpxl• 5 years ago

Where the numbers keep growing is in its number of active SmartCast accounts, which are now over 14 million, and how much money it makes from each user on average. That number has nearly doubled from last year, going from $10.44 to $19.89. On the call with investors and analysts, Vizio execs said 77 percent of that money comes directly from advertising.

(Amounts in article per month I think) I'd be glad to pay 300$ extra for a good dumb TV, the problem is _no one really wants to sell it_.

pydry• 5 years ago

I would be a lot more motivated to buy this stuff (& pay extra) if the FSF/Mozilla or somebody provided certification for IoT hygiene - devices that don't spy on you, don't have ads, dont send telemetry home and dont even have the capability to access the internet.

This is one of the main reasons I dont buy IoT devices and don't have an oura ring (though I'd like one). I'm skeptical even of the "good" brands and I cant be bothered to set up offline VLANS and the like to "fight" the natural tendency of corporate whores to worm their way into my life uninvited. I think this is why many corporate execs voluntarily forgo opportunities for profit from people like me - power is just so much more enticing.

What's worse is that 5G probably means that IoT devices won't even need our internet connections in future. Imagine a brave new world of subscription lightswitches and TVs to go with already existing subscription phones that turn off when you dont pay the bill. Clearly consumers are clamoring for all of this, since the market will probably one day exist. /s

Organic labeling serves as a good model to follow here.

Obviously before there was a market for organic food many farmers claimed that there wasn't a market for organic food and that outside of a few activists nobody really cared. There was though.

revax• 5 years ago

I think the closest thing you'll find are hospitality TV. Display used in hotel, restaurants and the like.

gorgoiler• 5 years ago

My TV is the final AV output device for 3 games consoles running 8 TV apps.

One thing I’d love for it to do is provide unified close caption styling, always on closed captions, automated sound levelling, and automated color / black levelling.

I’m always surprised when I see a tv that has brightness / contrast sliders. That stuff could be easily automated the same way I calibrate my PC display.

brindy• 5 years ago

I desperately want the this too, but a good reason not to is that I got a message from LG about my tv possibly overheating and having a free motherboard replacement even if it doesn’t, which I would never have known about otherwise (likewise if I disabled the network on it, I guess).

baq2• 5 years ago

I ignored this message until my friend’s tv psu let some smoke out.

So yeah, it was worth it.

fy20• 5 years ago

Are you willing to pay for it? A lot of manufacturers make displays intended for digital signage, which under the hood are basically just a TV with different software:

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/

There's an infographic on the differences here:

https://image-us.samsung.com/SamsungUS/b2b/resource/2016/07/...

dkdbejwi3832• 5 years ago

These type of displays are usually low to mid range displays. You aren’t likely to find an OLED panel that supports Dolby Vision etc without “smart” features.

vladvasiliu• 5 years ago

Are you willing to pay for it? A lot of manufacturers make displays intended for digital signage, which under the hood are basically just a TV with different software

According to your link (and to what I've seen at work) that's not entirlely correct. One of the differences they give:

Built to run from 16/7 to 24/7 hours per day, have better cooling for longer runtimes

I bet this alone increases the price but quite a hefty amount.

I'm not the GP, but if they're anything like me, they just want the "dumb" part, not the "runs 24/7/365 at blindingly high levels of brightness".

Ericson2314• 5 years ago

Wow what a document. Commerical products are always nicely so much less bullshit. Funny to read the manufacturer say so!

amne• 5 years ago

I actually have one of these made by Samsung. It's quite old though. It's a 40" 720p panel but it can take 1080p HDMI and looks quite ok actually. Can function as a standalone display or it has a builtin PC (a sub 1ghz AMD CPU I think, 256mb ram and a couple GB HDD inside it).

It is insanely heavy and well built (slightly dropped it once, RIP floor).

The panel: it is much much brighter than a regular TV but the kicker is there is no color or contrasts shift no matter how you look at it. I gamed on it for a while and the pixel response time is insanely fast. It is truly an amazing display. Too bad about the resolution though. I'm not using it anymore but I did not throw it away either.

washadjeffmad• 5 years ago

Sceptre makes "dumb" TVs:

https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...

Vision and HiSense don't incorporate any ads. You can also buy kits to convert your television into, well, just a television.

Also, not having features doesn't necessarily make your TV faster. I have a 39" Seiki from 2013 that takes 6-8 seconds to power on and about 5 to display the image again when changing resolutions. Great panel, wouldn't trade it for another LG at least.

grepfru_it• 5 years ago

Hisense definitely does automatic content recognition.

the sceptre panels are stupid cheap, but they fail. and good luck getting an rma through support. otherwise they support hdr and motion compensation etc etc so its not a bad deal

jonatron• 5 years ago

If you're willing to take your TV to bits, you could replace the motherboard with a generic LCD controller board from aliexpress.

beezischillin2• 5 years ago

I'd love a feature that would allow alphabetical sorting of channels. It's kind of ridiculous that this isn't possible on a 'smart' TV today.

kayson• 5 years ago

I hope this eventually leads to the ability to remove ads. It's unbelievable to me that you can pay top dollar for a high end OLED tv and it will still drown you in ads and notifications. I ended up just disconnecting my tv from the internet entirely and using a dedicated Roku Ultra for streaming.

ornornor5• 5 years ago

Panasonic OLEDs are the same price as LG but they show no ads whatsoever, don’t have gimmicky menus, and turn on in 5 seconds flat.

dkdbejwi3832• 5 years ago

They moved to Android since 2020.

_puk• 5 years ago

Haha, I find the recommendation for Panasonic for an ad free experience quite ironic.

They were the first to go there circa 2013: boot screen, home screen and volume ads.

But, they got a lot of backlash, and I doubt it was as lucrative as expected, so it appears they removed them in more recent years.

elabajaba• 5 years ago

Panasonic got out of the NA TV market a few years ago, and no warranty+exorbitant shipping costs means it isn't worth buying one in Europe and having it shipped.

They're also ending their inhouse TV production and outsourcing it for 2022, which probably means they're going to get worse.

vbphprubyjsgo5• 5 years ago

I have a 15" LCD from 1998 and it turns on in a few hundred ms. 2010s+ LCDs take about 5-10 seconds which is insanely slow (even for a casual user, in which case it causes more confusion when plugging cables in because he's likely to assume the cables are wrong and disconnect them because the screen didn't react right away). TVs take as long or worse because they are simply more poorly designed. 5 seconds is literally longer than it takes for a CRT to turn on and have a viewable picture.

The general quality of hardware can be gleaned as the inverse of how much software is in it.

As for vendor fetishizing: All monitor/TV vendors are terrible.

yessirwhatever• 5 years ago

pihole + check connections made from tv + block em == no ads

KptMarchewa2• 5 years ago

Wait, where do you get all those ads? I might be blind but I don't see any in my CX. Unless you count the "recommendation service".

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

Unless you count the "recommendation service"

Which will never turn on if you don't agree to the terms & conditions. So far, I've been able to avoid things like ads, but every time the TV pops up with an update I get the Fear.

I do not want ads or voice commands on my devices. Especially not given I paid a premium :/.

pabs32• 5 years ago

I hope the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuit against Visio results in an open source distribution for TVs like there is OpenWRT for routers after their last lawsuit. Perhaps the OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will join forces on a common distro for smart TVs.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liber... https://www.samygo.tv/

tentacleuno4• 5 years ago

Perhaps the OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will join forces on a common distro for smart TVs.

What's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it to some extent with proprietary software, but there's documentation, a lot of open-source stuff, and overall it doesn't look too bad.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

A4ET8a8uTh05• 5 years ago

Not parent, but I think I can respond. There is really nothing wrong with WebOS ( I actually find very good for my needs ), but the focus is not on having one decent OS we can mess around with as needed. The focus is on ensuring that users have actual control over their smart TVs.

And this is where it gets fun. There is money to be made from harvesting data. Do you think companies will willingly give up the ability to keep 'users' in their grasp?

ptsneves• 5 years ago

No updates, specially to the browser. That means an old version of chrome that most sites refuse to run with. It is just useless.

bogwog2• 5 years ago

LG TVs are filled with ads on the operating system itself, there are built-in features which you can't use without agreeing to an invasive privacy policy, the general performance is dogshit after a few years of updates, and there are dark patterns.

For example, I have one Fire TV (and nothing else) connected to the HDMI port of mine. Whenever I turn on the TV, it correctly shows the HDMI input, but it always displays the WebOS app launcher for a couple of seconds, which covers a quarter of the screen. I know the difference between launching the Netflix app in WebOS and launching it through Fire TV, but I'm pretty sure the average non-techie doesn't.

WebOS itself is pretty good, especially considering it's open source. But I would neither trust LG to provide a safe or decent implementation, nor would I want to rely on the performance of whatever low budget SoC they're sticking into these TVs. An external Roku-like device would be the best option.

mindslight2• 5 years ago

What's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it to some extent with proprietary software

You just answered your own question. Besides the Freedom issues and unwieldy bespoke UIs, embedded proprietary software inevitably becomes abandonware in a few short years.

brokenmachine2• 5 years ago

I think it is consumer-hostile that LG TVs don't allow you to downgrade firmware.

So they release an update that breaks basic advertised TV functionality (like ARC, HDR, etc), and then all the consumer can do is pray for 6 months that they're actually working on fixing the problem that they caused.

That's bullshit.

pabs32• 5 years ago

Others have answered, but I'm only interested in community based software distributions, or ones backed by an ecosystem of companies, not ones ran by a single corporation.

stevesimmons• 5 years ago

I so want this for my Samsung TV... since they did a firmware update that puts ads into the source selection screen.

And for what? A couple of dollars of side revenue. And whole lot of customer hatred.

marceldegraaf• 5 years ago

Pro-tip: use a DNS provider that can block ads (e.g. NextDNS) or install Pi-Hole in your local network, and block Samsung's ad network domains.

It's sad that this is necessary to keep enjoying a device of $2,000+ that you own, but it has worked beautifully for my Samsung Frame TV.

josteink• 5 years ago

Samsung does this for their top end models? WTF!

I’ll put them on my list of devices to never buy then. Jeez.

sneak4• 5 years ago

Just don't connect your tv to any network, wired or wireless, ever. It's much simpler.

3guk2• 5 years ago

Disable Samsung TV Plus - https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_TV_Plus - and you'll be most of the way there to removing a lot of the intrusive advertising that currently shows on the Samsung homescreen.

superjan• 5 years ago

I concur. This removed the auto play trailers on my parent’s TV.

Sander_Marechal• 5 years ago

That crap forced me to finally pi-hole my entire home. I'm never buying a Samsung TV ever again, or other Samsung stuff.

My dryer broke yesterday. I specifically bought an AEG because it was a dumb dryer, not some smart appliance with an app and all that junk. Don't get me wrong, I love smart stuff. In fact, I plugged my new dryer into a Shelly S plug so my home assistant can send me a notification on my phone when it's finished. But I trust my HA. I can never trust Samsung again.

Pi-hole your network for a week and take a look at the logs to see all the crap it has blocked. You'll be surprised.

lordnacho• 5 years ago

I added PiHole on a RBP and it turns out up to half the rejected requests come from my various Samsung TVs. It's staggering how much traffic comes out of them. And that's in a home with two work from home adults in laptops all day.

What are other people's experiences with other brands of TV?

cameronh90• 5 years ago

"I'm never buying a Samsung TV ever again, or other Samsung stuff."

I swore off buying Samsung stuff after the Galaxy S3. I eventually gave them another chance and bought one of their TVs since the reviews were great. Huge mistake. I hated that thing so much, and recently replaced it with an LG which has been fantastic.

melbourne_mat• 5 years ago

You have a clothes dryer?

IanSanders• 5 years ago

Pi-hole does not solve the problem completely unfortunately; it's fairly trivial to bypass network DNS. In theory any software could manually call one of the public DNS ip's or just have a fallback hardcoded list of IPs.

genewitch7• 5 years ago

I've had Samsung on "boycott and complain" list, anytime someone asks me for a recommendation and samsung is an option i say "avoid samsung"; I started boycotting them after they told me to pound sand when i had an issue with my $800 4k monitor a couple months after i bought it. I had also bought a new samsung refrigerator around that time as well, and among other issues, it leaked water from the ice machine starting about 1 year after i bought it. I've had to replace the mainboard in it, as well.

So no phones, appliances, laptops, TVs, memory sticks, SD cards, and whatever else they make. Even if they magically got a better reputation for customer service, the shenanigans with the smart TVs is enough to keep the boycott up.

LeonM• 5 years ago

And for what? A couple of dollars of side revenue. And whole lot of customer hatred.

Don't forget that the HN crowd is not your average consumer. Most people don't care, or don't seem to have issues with the ads. They just want the best TV they can afford in terms of size and picture quality.

With companies this big, who have been in the consumer electronics market for decades, you can be sure that every decision (like putting ads in a menu) is tested over and over. Obviously Samsung knows that they will loose a tiny percentage of the enthusiast market by placing ads. But the margin on the sale of a TV is pretty slim anyways, and multiple years of ad income for every sold unit is probably worth losing a small fraction of your audience.

A4ET8a8uTh05• 5 years ago

So funny story. I have two wifis in our house ( one piholed, one not ). One day my wife comes up to me asks me why there are ads on her game now ( she was using pihole all this time ). Edit: Turns out cable was pulled.

People notice, but you have to re-condition them. I know adless hulu and netflix did their part in that fight.

MereInterest4• 5 years ago

Most people don't care, or don't seem to have issues with the ads.

There's a difference between enjoying the current state and accepting the current state. A few years ago, while helping my grandmother find something online, I asked if she would want an adblocker installed. After explaining what it was, and what the effect was, she was over the moon for it.

Ads are noticed by everyone, and are pretty universally despised. The difference is that you and I know that there are options, while less techy relatives assume that nothing can be changed.

deergomoo• 5 years ago

I generally agree, but they put that crap on TVs that cost well into the thousands. Surely it’s only enthusiasts buying those?

imglorp3• 5 years ago

Here's more reasons to hate: it's a serious surveillance device.

1. It uploads voice samples. Don't say anything sensitive in the room. https://imgur.com/Phy1uzX

2.It uploads screenshots regardless of input. See other threads.

3.Front facing camera. Not kidding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x6TOtkFQxY

4. Audio beacons? Old news. https://threatpost.com/ultrasonic-beacons-are-tracking-your-...

5. Targeted ad market, selling you. https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsungs-invasive-plans-...

6. If you don't give it wifi, it may decide to find some by itself anyway. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTechnology/comments/odf9qu/can_s...

kall• 5 years ago

This is all horrific, but I was especially shocked by 6 so I read that. This seems to be only someone asking if this may happen, and no one answering that it would.

Of course this is the point of Amazon Sidewalk, so in due time, it probably will.

grishka• 5 years ago

Audio beacons aren't plausible to me as a mobile app developer. Mobile OSes have been tightening their privacy controls for quite some time. At this point you can't run an Android app in the background without the user knowing. You have to explicitly request access to the microphone. In recent Android and iOS versions, the user will be notified about which apps used the microphone when. Besides, constantly recording and analyzing an audio stream would have a noticeable effect on battery life.

oehpr• 5 years ago

What's going on with number 3?

Obviously there's a front facing camera, they're not hiding it. It's even a GOOD webcam, to disable it you push it into the bezel and that physically blocks the camera. Great design.

Beyond that, the criticisms are just "This is a proprietary OS by a company that makes hardware, it's not trustworthy." So why the focus on the camera? It's almost like you're trying to imply that Samsung is integrating hidden cameras just to covertly surveil their customers.

phire• 5 years ago

Most of the examples you link don't prove what you claim.

1. Same issues as any voice assistant. It only uploads things when voice recognition is actually active, and puts a big icon on the screen to show this.

2. Not screenshots, it uses fingerprints to recognise content.

3. That TV is an older special model advertised with built-in camera for skype. The linked video raises a minor security issue that web pages you navigate to (on your smart TV, how many people actually do that?) can enable the webcam without you knowing.

Most TVs don't have a hidden front facing camera.

4. Audio beacons are hard-coded into the tv content, your smart TV doesn't add them. It's more of a privacy issue with smart phone apps using them, and the studios who add them.

5. Actually true

6. You link to a thread of someone asking if TVs might do this. Nobody has provided any evidence of TVs actually doing it, it's 100% theoretical.

IMO, the fingerprinting and advertising are bad enough. No need to invent extra FUD about what smart tvs can do.

matheusmoreira3• 5 years ago

ads into the source selection screen

Is there ever a point where these advertisers stop and think "no, this is too obnoxious"?

reaperducer• 5 years ago

The advertisers probably don't pick the placement. All they know is that their content is being shown on TVs.

LargoLasskhyfv• 5 years ago

The link also hosts the last (obsolete now?) SamyGo. So there is something at least, from where one could start, instead of reinventing the wheel from scratch.

Don't know if it could be applied to current models at all. Not following that stuff, since not using TVs since 1996.

Retr0id3• 5 years ago

See also:

https://github.com/webosbrew/webos-homebrew-channel - A GUI app for easily installing homebrew applications on LG WebOS TVs

https://repo.webosbrew.org/apps/ - A repo of such homebrew applications

https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io - A one-click* LG TV rooting tool

*firmware-version dependent, an updated exploit supporting "all" firmwares is in the pipeline.

Nursie• 5 years ago

That's interesting.

To your knowlege does the rooting/installation of this stuff break existing streaming apps, or are they not affected?

Retr0id3• 5 years ago

They are not affected.

anktor2• 5 years ago

Does anyone know of anything equivalent for samsung? I have a QE65Q75T model which I feel gets more ads as the weeks go by, and I didn't know this type of things were possible

Jleagle• 5 years ago

Pihole?

ig0r02• 5 years ago

Many thanks for this. Rooting my LG TV with rootmy.tv took a few seconds and now I am enjoying YouTube without ads which Pihole was never able block properly.

kristofferR• 5 years ago

An alternative universal solution is to just VPN to India and then buy Premium for $1.66 USD per month (399 rs per quarter).

drewg1232• 5 years ago

Do the homebrew apps obey the normal screen saver / burn-in protections? Eg, Netflix on the TV, when paused, will put up a fireworks screen saver very quickly. Will the homebrew youtube app do the same thing?

Retr0id3• 5 years ago

Yes, the screensaver is part of the OS, not the app.

GoToRO• 5 years ago

Finally I can find out why the tv messes up the channel list by moving some channels at random after which any edit of the channel list will corrupt it even further…

retSava2• 5 years ago

I made https://github.com/msloth/lgtv.js which can control a webos LGTV on your local network. It was in my js beginnings so pretty sketchy and not at all clean. Once I was able to control it I kind of lost interest in making it more tweakable, cleaner interface etc, but there are others that did.

At home I now run a small rpi0 with a telegram bot that, among other things, acts as a LGTV command proxy. So on my phone, I now tell my telegram bot eg "movie" which then puts the tv on the right input, sets volume, dims some hue lights and shows a nice float on the TV with a welcoming message.

It's also useful when I can't find the physical remote, or to send messages like "dinner in 10" (that shows on the TV screen in a float) to a gaming child with selective hearing enabled :).

mjoin• 5 years ago

That way of communicating with your child is some black mirror shit

mkl• 5 years ago

Why? It's just an instant message.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

If you prefer shouting up the stairs through multiple doors over whatever it is they're doing, that's your prerogative of course.

A4ET8a8uTh05• 5 years ago

I don't see why. Can you elaborate? Black Mirror explicitly explores paths of technology gone wrong? I might be missing the concern here.

For the record; I think its cool. I do like my LG ( but it is not connected to anything ). This is the first time ever I am actually tempted.

Angostura3• 5 years ago

My daughter wanted a colour changing lightbulb in her bedroom, so I bought a Homekit-enabled one. I'll call her for dinner a couple of times, but of she still hasn't responded after that (headphones on, usually). "Hey Siri Red Alert" will start pulsing her light red.

At which point there is much grumbling and stomping. Black Mirror? Maybe, but hey, I have to get my enjoyment where I can.

Netcob• 5 years ago

I think that's basically just a notification. Where it gets creepy is when parents install 24/7 surveillance cameras in their childrens bedrooms.

I can kinda understand it when it's about being able to quickly check if your baby is okay, but I doubt every parent has the decency to disable it eventually to give their child some privacy.

There's no way there aren't lots of children growing up with zero privacy right now.

ezconnect• 5 years ago

I just turn off the device wifi on the router if my child is not paying attention.

nkrisc• 5 years ago

But sending someone a text message on the phone isn’t?

mig39• 5 years ago

I routinely SSH to my kid's iMac and use the 'say' command to deliver important messages. Like "this computer will be rebooting in 30 seconds ..."

tekstar• 5 years ago

If you ever want a kid to listen to you, try airplaying to the Apple TV from your phone, turn on selfie camera and deliver the message

semi-extrinsic• 5 years ago

Nah. We have Nest Mini's in our kids rooms, and I will routinely cast my phone audio to those speakers, turn the volume to max, type my message into the Google Translate webpage and then press the "Read Aloud" button. It's funny and it works.

retSava2• 5 years ago

Hehe, if that were the only modus of communication, yeah :). Thankfully it isn't, we are also known for leaving messages in the snow, ads in the local newspaper under pseudonyms, anon leetspeaks on the dark webs, and occasionally speaking with one another :).

I do like Black mirror :)

sneak4• 5 years ago

Note that telegram is not e2e encrypted, so you're sharing your private family communications with logging servers in russia.

GranPC• 5 years ago

Telegram is indeed not E2E encrypted, and messages sent to/from bots cannot opt into E2E; but would you happen to have a citation handy for more information on these logging servers in Russia you speak of? Thanks!

orangepurple• 5 years ago

USA: PRISM is probably still a very active project. This is the program where the NSA would request access to major US companies (notably Google and Microsoft) and the companies would grant them access to some of their databases. The NSA slide says that "it varies by provider" what information the NSA is privy to, but it never breaks it down fully to say exactly which provider is providing which data. The NSA slides do mention email contents, photos, etc., so it's probably safe to assume that at least some of the major providers are/were providing contents and not just metadata.

vmception• 5 years ago

And? Everyone with a cloud cron job or doing the same thing on a compute instance hosted somewhere has the same reality

Telegram is just a nice platform, have you tried using it? basically just a standard ui so that none of your bots need frontend development

Why regurgitate something about the optional e2e feature

ciberado• 5 years ago

I used your library! When I asked Alexa to light the fireplace, a raspi turned on the home heater and the TV started playing the furnace video on Netflix :D My daughter told me she didn't understand the point, as it was not real, but the project was so much fun to implement ^_^ Thanks a lot for sharing it.

exikyut2• 5 years ago

"Yule log"™

lifeisstillgood• 5 years ago

It's interesting that FOSS point inexorably towards what people want if only the interface was available - and it is clearly not what corporate decision makers want.

illuminated• 5 years ago

Is there any similar project covering Panasonic smart TV's?

lorek123• 5 years ago

I wonder if I could remap movies button on my remote so it won't try to install/open Rakuten TV and run other app instead.

rootsudo• 5 years ago

The same time, it's a bit sad that people are doing this and putting this much effort into a toxic product.

I don't mind the fire stick/tv, and DNS rules but if it gets too much I just won't buy a tv and get rid of it.

I get that it's a nice piece of furniture and such, but if it's hostile, expensive and after a few years becomes worthless - why bother.

I'll fight by not purchasing a tv.

rxt_ian• 5 years ago

It's possible that buying the TV and removing the toxisity is more effective - you get the subsidised price, but the manufacturer never makes the ad money back.

bborud• 5 years ago

Given that modern TVs like to phone home a lot, and have microphones and cameras. I think an open source solution would be really nice to have.

martyvis• 5 years ago

Really like my 2020 LG TV. (First TV I have ever bought - I'm 58 and every other TV was either a gift, the 14" Sanyo from my parents-in-law in 1989, or hand-me-down)

The one thing I'd like fixed is when I watch an in-progress scheduled recording, say 15 minutes behind real-time, the TV jumps in to live TV mode rather than continue to play the recording. I have to manually go and select the recording and then jog forward to the point I was watching. Seems a strange default, certainly different to Kodi. I've been meaning to write a bug report but it would be interesting if this project has a fix.

marcodiego3• 5 years ago

This should not only be legal, this should be the law. A manufacturer/vendor should be obliged by law to hand out keys to allow the user to own the device that was bought.

matheusmoreira3• 5 years ago

Yes!! I wonder if EFF, FSF actively lobby governments for such laws.

sneak4• 5 years ago

Consumers are already free to choose to buy from manufacturers that do this. Consumers largely dgaf.

Additionally, companies like Apple know and believe that if consumers could exercise such control, a large number of them would be deceived into using such control to backdoor their own devices for advertisers and other shady characters, such as is the case in Android-land. Consumers often choose products specifically because they offer the feature that they are completely and totally managed by the vendor.

You may not like it, but many people who don't care much about their privacy from the vendor do.

marcodiego3• 5 years ago

Consumers are already free to choose to buy from manufacturers that do this. Consumers largely dgaf.

Can you point me one manufacturer whose is smart tv is simple for the user to replace the software it runs?

antihero2• 5 years ago

I just wish I could get the auto-turn off timer to disable. I've disabled it everywhere in menus. Still, after a few hours of it being connected to my Apple TV 4K, it gives me the whole "TV will be turned off in five minutes unless you press a button on the controller" bullshit.

Other than that I just want the thing to be a lowest-possible-latency, accuratest-possible-colour dumb display. No cool shit, just a dumb accurate fast panel.

maweki• 5 years ago

Maybe you could periodically give some remote control command through one of the WebOSTV python libraries. Needs networking though. Alternatively, an Arduino/ESP that sends a useless IR signal.

doikor• 5 years ago

If you can get your hands on a service remote it will allow you to access a menu to disable that and a bunch more (a lot of the OLED burnin prevention features you can’t normally fully disable)

0x53• 5 years ago

If you have a phone with a IR blaster (mostly older LG phones) you have download an android app that with act as an LG service remote

antihero2• 5 years ago

This sorta thing? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390856037063 or https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363604565328 I don't have an IR blastable phone.

Hakashiro3• 5 years ago

Can someone explain to me how this is legal?

I understand LG may not want to enforce IP laws, but something illegal is illegal regardless of perpetrators being punished or not.

And to me this seems quite obviously to be a violation of international IP laws. Like I'm all for right to repair and whatnot but I don't even think the LG TOS/EULA allows you to do this? Correct me if I'm wrong.

RealityVoid2• 5 years ago

What, more exactly, is illegal? Reverse engineering is not illegal (in no jurisdiction that I know of). And neither being in violation of a EULA or a TOS.

Hakashiro3• 5 years ago

If the EULA explicitly states you are not allowed to reverse-engineer the product, which is so common I've never seen one that doesn't say so (I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying I haven't see it) then... doing so is a breach of the terms and therefore illegal by definition.

jancsika2• 5 years ago

I just hook my rpi up to the (non-smart) tv and use x2x over ssh to open Chromium from whatever device I'm running.

What am I missing that open source version of smart-tv firmware/software would get me?

marcodiego3• 5 years ago

Unfortunately non smart tv's are getting rarer and more expensive.

speeder2• 5 years ago

1. Non-smart TVs are being hard to find.

2. most devices to plug into TVs are underpowered for some applications, for example I tried to transmit games from my PC to such devices, and they all introduced too much artifacting and input lag, TVs tend to have a bunch of ASIC/FPGA alongside their general processor to handle video and thus can perform better.

3. computers that CAN handle the previous use cases, often are very expensive anywya, so... in a sense doesn't make sense anymore, for example I looked into this and concluded the "cheapeast" option would be a rpi4 with more RAM and SSD... at the prices here it made more sense to buy a actual x86 computer instead.

vbphprubyjsgo5• 5 years ago

What use case are you talking about? Plugging a chord from PC to TV will only have input lag due to the TV itself. No artifacting would be caused from this either. I can't imagine what "transmitting a game to such devices as a rasberry pi" means.

vbphprubyjsgo5• 5 years ago

The main goal of the project is to improve the functionalities of the TVs by adding new features, fixing bugs and providing new software.

The solution to software in TVs is to have no software in TVs. A TV is just a big monitor you plug into your PC (albeit, with 10 years of input lag, caused by the said software that should not exist). General purpose OS like Windows or Linux are a good enough interface to choose what video / stream to watch. You can use some software that runs on startup to provide support for a remote control or whatever comfy thing you think requires buying Samsung Garbage Half Working GUI T5007. This fact was stumbled upon by most 20 years ago (largely due to the warez scene, who unintentionally provided a better user experience than anything corpos could create). The idea of needing a special proprietary GUI is purely artificial. Smart TVs were trying to become a thing for 20 years (and had all the same insane security problems from the get go as with any industry who's software is driven by high churn newgrads). Various marketing pitches failed and failed until around 2010-2012 (can't remember). If you are a geek and are trying to jerry rig a modified proprietary Smart TV firmware into your TV, you have fallen for the marketing trick. There's no way you would have come up with an idea like this if they haven't previously marketed Smart TVs as a thing. A much better and easier effort would be to bypass all the garbage circuitry in modern TVs and monitors to ensure they are an actual useful product that can consume and deliver a video input.

Epa095• 5 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree!

And still I use the webos apps on my LG to watch netflix, Disney, hbo and our national TV channel. It's weird how it goes. There is no getting away from the fact that as long as the app works on my TV its easier to install it and use the stock remote that doing something custom. And since it works OK for 99% of people, the TV producers will ad the little computer, and there will be nothing to save on buying a TV without (if you can even find one).

aqfamnzc• 5 years ago

The solution to software in TVs is to have no software in TVs. A TV is just a big monitor you plug into your PC

I disagree - I don't think there's anything wrong with having a computer built-in to a TV, as long as the user has control over it (Granted, they obviously don't right now). For the average user, it's going to be far more convenient to be able to stream or play offline media without having to connect an external device. I'm hopeful we'll reach a point where we can install an openwrt equivalent for easy, dark pattern free operation.

vbphprubyjsgo5• 5 years ago

I disagree - I don't think there's anything wrong with having a computer built-in to a TV

The problem is bloat and bugs. And I like my peripherals to be peripherals. I don't think we need to go into discussion of the common user here. They were fine with set-top boxes.

squarefoot• 5 years ago

The 1st goal of such software should be to neutralize and possibly remove all built-in malware/spyware, then disable any means that would allow the manufacturers to reinstall it or control the device in any way. A so called SmartTV must be able to 100% function without any Internet connection, and if having one it should benefit from it only in ways that are completely under the user control. Right now, there's a lot more junk that has to be removed rather than new functions to be added.

OpenLGTV: Legal reverse engineering and research of LG TVs firmware

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