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Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by KerrAvon on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:41PM (#35485276)
But that would require an accessible WiFi network.

I'm sure someday it'll be impossible because they'll embed 5G chips and do it over cell without involving your consent, but that day isn't here yet.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by ghayes on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:42PM (#35485309)
Simple, just put it in a Faraday cage.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by tomcam on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:50PM (#35485455)
It’s not that simple. The Faraday cage I got from Costco seems to phone home to a server in China. Obviously I returned it and used the money to buy a whole lot of tinfoil.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by samtho on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:01PM (#35486944)
I’m… not sure if you are joking.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by all2 on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:27PM (#35487178)
Quarter inch mesh is pretty cheap at the local hardware big box. It'd be good for attenuation up to 7ish Ghz.

I've seriously considered getting a roll and building a cage.

There's also emf paint that one could use.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by tomcam on Friday April 07, 2023 @09:34PM (#35489499)
Joking sorry
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by modriano on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:45PM (#35485366)
The mesh would have to be so fine that you wouldn't be able to see the screen (unless you were inside the "cage").
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by lancesells on Friday April 07, 2023 @03:48PM (#35486168)
Simple, go wired and encase the house in a faraday cage.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by xattt on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:34PM (#35486625)
Houses finished with stucco tend to do this as a side effect, since stucco is applied onto a fine metal grid screwed to framing.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by eropple on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:10PM (#35486392)
Really, anyone who's lived in a sufficiently old house knows you can run your own Wi-Fi in a Faraday cage. Just probably not between rooms.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by lostlogin on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:55PM (#35486873)
Underfloor foil insulation works pretty well as a cage. It also adds a nice electrocution risk when installing and is banned in my area for this reason.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by eropple on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:25PM (#35487160)
Metal lath under the plaster. Ripping that out was a mess.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by tzs on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:48PM (#35486769)
Google is telling me that the mesh for a Faraday cage that would block WiFi could have hole sizes up to about 5 mm. Suppose you made your faraday cage (or at least the part that goes in front of the screen) out of 40 gauge wire (0.07874 mm diameter) with the wires spaced 2.25 mm apart.

On a 70" 4K TV a pixel is about 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm. If the mesh were close to the screen I think about 30% of the pixels would have wire in front of them. Of those 30%, 1/6 would both a horizontal and a vertical wire in front (let's not go crazy and talk about orienting the mesh diagonally or anything like that), and 5/6 would only have one wire in front of them. So that's 70% of pixels not interfered with, 25% having one wire in front of them, and 5% having two wires.

The 25% with one wire crossing would have about 20% of the pixel occluded by the wire. The 5% with two wires crossing them would have about 36% occluded.

My guess is that the screen could be seen pretty well through that.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:47PM (#35488060)
Make life easy, just stop RF getting to and from your TV by cutting the WiFi, Bluetooth and mobile antenna leads.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by YurgenJurgensen on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:46PM (#35486756)
Surely, grounding the aerial would be the simpler option, right?
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by lostlogin on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:53PM (#35486851)
It’s surprising how cages work. The MR one at work will leak if the door is open .5mm, it lets blue tooth and wifi through and some phone calls.

Works pretty well for MR at 3T (which is actually more like 2.89T) though - 125Mhz ish.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by kube-system on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:13PM (#35487049)
Anyone who says that "blocking" wifi is easy is someone who hasn't tried. Even very expensive professionally built cages don't "block", they attenuate. And modern wifi equipment is surprisingly good at working just fine with weak signals.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by cultureswitch on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:50PM (#35488696)
I'm thinking a scrambler might be more effective.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by giobox on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:43PM (#35485327)
I've seen rumblings that day may be very soon, too. Once devices in the home have embedded prepaid 5G out with your control, all sorts of home networking/firewall challenges are going to arise. We are entering a world in which it will cost very, very little to embed 5G into almost anything with say 1GB of prepaid eSim data for analytics collection, regardless of whether device resides on your LAN or not.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by ed25519FUUU on Friday April 07, 2023 @03:58PM (#35486293)
There’s only a fractional amount of people using smart TVs without WiFi. I’m very dubious it’s worth the cost to imbed GSM cards in each TV to reach the fraction that doesn’t allow the TV on WiFi.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by midasuni on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:05PM (#35486359)
Large portion of those who currently don’t connect will faraday cage their connection to remove the ability too.

Then of course there’s a lack of 5G. I certainly don’t have any where I live. Just about have 1 bar of 4g near the window.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by rhn_mk1 on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:08PM (#35486379)
If that happens, it's going to be to reach those who can't set up wifi manually. It's better user experience not to have to, leading to fewer returns.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by YurgenJurgensen on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:43PM (#35486718)
It would simplify setup for non-technical consumers. I'm sure people complain about having to input a WiFi password with a TV remote.

WiFi/Cellular convergence as a concept also doesn't seem like the most unlikely future.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by giobox on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:47PM (#35486766)
I've long wondered about what wifi/cellular looks like on an infinite timescale... it does strike me as unlikely too we will maintain two separate wireless standards forever for IP data. I think embedded cellular or equivelent global wireless access will one day just be as taken for granted as embedded wifi in a lot of devices. Technologies like eSims are all steps in this direction.

I've seen others in this thread argue embedded cellular isnt worth the cost, but this misses the critical point - if it costs almost nothing (we are close to this point already) and is already built into every off the shelf SoC, of course manufacturers will use it. We are talking pennies per unit at scale here in future.

The auto industry has already done this - Ford for example have embedded cellular analytics you can't turn off (or at least its non-obvious to me as an owner) on every single new Ford and has done so for several years now, and you don't pay a penny as the end user, even on their most basic entry level cars.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:02PM (#35487577)
It wouldn't last five minutes on my car without being disabled. Easy to do, use a portable spectrum analyzer, find the source of the RF and then nuke the antenna.

Same goes for any other appliance that radiates RF signals (IoT, etc.).

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by vhcr on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:54PM (#35488728)
And now you will have to reverse engineer the firmware because it won't work without Internet access.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Saturday April 08, 2023 @03:27AM (#35491327)
You don't stop internet access or do anything to alter the electronics. By blocking the car from transmitting and receiving cell signals it's effectively the same as the car being out of cell range.

If cell access is essential, what happens in a place without cell access, much of Alaska perhaps?

I hate to think of all the lawsuits resulting from drivers who drive into locations where cells are out of range and get stranded.

Similarly, what happens when the cell phone system breaks down? And does that mean I can't buy a car if I live in an area with intermittent, weak or no cell or internet service? Hate to think what the manufacturer's sales department would think of that.

On the matter of reverse engineering, it seems to me we're just on the cusp of that. Hackers as still getting organized and aftermarket manufacturers have still to tool up for complete computer replacement kits. Reckon we're only at the very beginning of whole new industry.

Oh, I nearly forgot, the Right to Repair movement has only just begun to get organized. If manufacturers try to stop us altering something we've paid goid money for then they'll be in for a long political fight.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by gruez on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:46PM (#35486750)
> It would simplify setup for non-technical consumers. I'm sure people complain about having to input a WiFi password with a TV remote.

So they'll add a $50 LTE/5G modem to the BOM just to save the trouble of entering a password using arrow keys, a process that takes maybe 2-3 minutes?

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by samtho on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:59PM (#35486930)
They’re closer to $18-$25 at quantity these days, especially if you don’t want one with GPS built in as well, you can get it on the lower end.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by deadbunny on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:20PM (#35488381)
So TV manufacturers are going to pay for the Bandwidth of all TV buyers in the age of streaming?
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by dwighttk on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:45PM (#35486734)
living room faraday cage
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:21PM (#35487788)
As I said above, just nuke the antennas (a box cutter through the antenna leads is usually enough. If you're really paranoid, short the lead out at or near the equipment end (as near as to the feed IC as is possible).

I do this on old smartphones that I have no intention of ever using as a phone again (say for testing APS etc.). It's dead easy, a razor blade through the circuit board tracks that connect to the antenna(s) and it's all over—no phone, with or without SIM (i.e.: no emergency service) and no WiFi or Bluetooth.

Very simple really.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by AlexAltea on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:46PM (#35485387)
This already happens with Nespresso coffee machines (they have an SIM that connects to the Internet, whether you want it or not). That day is already yesterday.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by robocat on Friday April 07, 2023 @03:44PM (#35486130)
A SIM? Reference?
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by shrike on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:15PM (#35486430)
Wow, they sure do. Page 29 of the user guide for the Nespresso Zenius says -

This coffee machine is equipped with M2M (Machine to Machine) techology which may be activated in due time with your agreement. Thanks to a SIM card already integrated in the machine, such network connections will offer new services (subject to further terms and conditions) to its customers and improve the after sales process by automatically communicating machine troubleshooting / diagnostics to our Customer Relationship Centre (depending on country requirements and specificities).

https://www.nespresso.com/shared_res/manuals/zenius/www_Zeni...

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by oblio on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:36PM (#35486640)
I imagine that can be disabled physically?
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by YurgenJurgensen on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:45PM (#35486739)
I also imagine that naïve attempts to disable it would be interpreted as a way of defeating some kind of always-online DRM on the coffee pods.

And if coffee pods don't come with always-online DRM yet, I'm honestly surprised at Nespresso's lack of dedication to this dystopia.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:39PM (#35487989)
If that's the case then it cannot be used in any place/location where there is no signal.

If so, then there would be hell to pay the first time if happened. If it works sans connection, then do what I've said elsewwhere and that's to cut or short out the antenna lead.

Removing the SIM may be deemed provocative by the manufacturer, if there's no signal reception then that's a different matter (the user can't be blamed).

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by blep_ on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:04PM (#35486977)
Everything can be disabled physically.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by dexterdog on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:39PM (#35487338)
Except an escalator
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by vhcr on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:52PM (#35488712)
It's going to be hard if they're using an eSIM.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by freedomben on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:39PM (#35487344)
doubtful. I'm sure it will refuse to work if it can't talk to home base, and that home base will have some sort of certificate pinning so only their servers can authorize it do make the coffee.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by peterfarkas on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:42PM (#35486715)
What a time to be alive. This should be disclosed on the front page of the manual and not hidden in the smallprint. And it should come with instructions on how to disable it with a physical switch.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by fghsqwads on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:13PM (#35487705)
Now I want a used one just to rip open and find the SIM card.

I wonder if I can use it for mobile data.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by elteto on Friday April 07, 2023 @09:46PM (#35489599)
You can’t rip out eSIMs.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @06:32PM (#35487915)
For heaven's sake just cut the leads that freed the antenna with a razor blade or box cutter.

All over, done permanently. Never another internet connection.

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by philsnow on Friday April 07, 2023 @04:18PM (#35486463)
I think the most likely next steps is integrating with Amazon Sidewalk instead of 5G. I don't know what the relative availability of 5G signal vs Sidewalk signal is, but I'm pretty sure Amazon has a dashboard tracking the latter.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by girvo on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:45PM (#35487399)
It’ll be 4G, because NB-IoT is already here and pretty excellent for data collection.
Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by hilbert42 on Friday April 07, 2023 @05:51PM (#35487467)
"…they'll embed 5G chips and do it over cell without involving your consent,"

There'd be hell to pay if they ever did that. Moreover, it'd be impossible to keep the fact quiet if deployed at any reasonable scale.

A much bigger looming threat is the possible closure of terrestrial Free-to-Air TV broadcasting (it was an early agenda item to be discussed at the 2028 WARC/WRC (World Administrative Radio Conference) but was dropped early on.

That it ever got there in the first instance is a very big worry, it shows that people in high places have been or are considering such a move).

Re:Ask Wirecutter: Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me? by vhcr on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:51PM (#35488708)
It doesn't sounds so crazy to shield a house from electromagnetic radiation (Faraday cage).