The TV would know where you are by knowing what phone masts are in your area. But if you are in the US then ain't California pushing for tighter data collection regs?

But I get what your trying to say. Time to spin up a Software Defined Radio and start faking cell towers so your TV thinks it's in the EU :-P

No wonder that even when it’s explained to them, people just shrug their shoulders. If the alternative is to go full guerilla war against your own [0] appliances, no wonder many people just give up.

[0] I expect any day now we’ll get “subscription TVs” (as in, the actual hardware). We’re already there with headphones. https://www.channelnews.com.au/nuraphone-launch-subscription...

Roku does it now... you have to register the 'Roku TV' before using it (even if it's not network connected). TV generates a code, punch it into their network, get counter code.

I can totally see a month to month plan for getting a TV (the 50" is $260, so you could do a $20/month and come out ahead after the first year).

No, when setting up the TV, if you choose not to have a network connection, there is no need to link. There wouldn't be a way to link, as the TV can't reach the Roku servers.

I saw a subscription PC on the Dell website a few days back.

Doesn’t GDPR apply to EU citizens, regardless of geography? I know that at my place of work, I have to get consent from EU citizens to email them, even if we are talking in the US

From the privacy policy:

"If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or Switzerland, with respect to transfers to the U.S. of certain personal information collected in connection with your use of Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and its subsidiary Samsung Research America, Inc. are certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the European Commission and Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, respectively, regarding the transfer of certain personal information from the EEA and Switzerland to the U.S."

Which basically means that Samsung pinkie swears that they won’t do anything bad, and the EU is powerless to do anything anyway.

I don't understand how this works.

If you're not in the EU, the EU doesn't have jurisdiction, period. They can say whatever they want but it doesn't mean anything. I'm sure China would love to enforce their laws worldwide too, but it doesn't work that way.

China does try and succeed, I’d like to remind you of the NBA fiasco and the Blizzard catastrophe.

Tell that to the US and US tax laws

Those are enforceable via extradition treaty because tax evasion is a crime in every nation in the world; if you want to extradite someone, the act in question must usually be a crime in both nations. The GDPR imposes regulations which have not parallels in other nations, so extradition is not an option. The Europeans are, however, free to arrest those who enter their nations, so it's still worth following for most people.

In case with Samsung, EU authorities can forbid selling their products in EU.

If you want to do business in, or travel to, the EU, then you obey their laws.

You’re free to ignore the GDPR but don’t be surprised if they arrest you if you ever visit.

Legally it does

Hopefully we can just tap into the serial interface.

A lot of them has started even locking down the serial interface. Hell even the boot logo on most LG TV's these days are signed.

EDIT: One thing that "might" work is a repair remote / repair menu. On the LG TV's in my house the repair menus allow you to change things like what HDMI mux the TV is expecting (I can't recall if the WiFi Module was included in such menus, but if it is you could change it to something its isn't and hopefully break connectivity. I'll have to dig out my repair remote and play around in the menus again).

There’s so many inputs, I’m sure there’s piles of vulnerabilities.

IR interface buffer overflows anyone?

i've never been so happy to not have a smart tv...

might is not a smart tv. I will need one sooner or later, so i am going to look at corporate televisions. Like in meeting rooms, and hotels that dont have this smart cack into them. Just a good panel, with honest HDMI ports on them!

Yep, the other good ones are for "commercial signage displays". No one wants to pay for smart garbage on those, so they're usually just good panels with ports.

all i want is a good panel with ports!

You should only have to convince it that you're an EU national.