<story><title>My Sony &quot;smart&quot; TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app</title><url>https://twitter.com/buro9/status/980349887006076928</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>buro9</author><text>HN replying to myself with some context outside of the tweets.&lt;p&gt;I actually trust stock Android over Samsung, Sony, etc Android. Hence my &amp;quot;if we&amp;#x27;re going to have Android TV perhaps Google could supply it without the forced add-ons&amp;quot;. I see this similar to installing Windows yourself rather than having &amp;quot;Windows with added vendor crap&amp;quot;... like if you know you want Windows, a stock one is better and same with Android.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m now looking at purchasing the Nvidia Shield and disabling all network connectivity on my Sony TV.&lt;p&gt;The Sony TV is a recent one, about a year old. A Bravia something or other. I have disabled the Samba app using the Android Apps system.&lt;p&gt;One thing I didn&amp;#x27;t include in the tweets was Samba&amp;#x27;s patent list, because it&amp;#x27;s too deep a topic for Twitter. The patent numbers are on their site though... go take a look: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;patents&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;patents&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; Some of those are downright scary and have no positive application for privacy conscious users.&lt;p&gt;Feel free to ask anything.</text></item><item><author>buro9</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the author and linking to my tweets is a bad idea because they auto-delete after 14 days.&lt;p&gt;For future HN context, as the author I&amp;#x27;m reproducing them here in full:&lt;p&gt;My @Sony &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app from &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&lt;/a&gt;  and boy oh boy... this is worse than recent @facebook stuff.&lt;p&gt;From their own privacy policy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;privacy-policy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;privacy-policy&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; … they track what you watch, when you watch it, your location, your interactions with other apps. And they share this with... well, everyone basically.&lt;p&gt;This information is then used to market to you within the TV and offer you a &amp;quot;hot list&amp;quot;... but it is also used to &amp;quot;Detect, investigate and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect the rights, safety and property of Samba and others&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you have a &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; from any brand and it&amp;#x27;s doing an update you will 100% want to disable Samba.&lt;p&gt;Samba is not a feature for you, it is a snitch in your living room, snitching on everything you watch on your TV, it&amp;#x27;s a feature for corporations only.&lt;p&gt;To disable Samba the soft way... don&amp;#x27;t agree to their T&amp;amp;Cs post OS upgrade.&lt;p&gt;To disable Samba the hard way... use Android system settings to disable the app.&lt;p&gt;This is a good time to say that if you own a &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; from any company you should run it on a different network than your NAS and other computers. And that all other devices best require passwords to connect to them.&lt;p&gt;Ideally you run a TV on a different VLAN.&lt;p&gt;And this is where I wish that dumb panels were all the rage, and that the only &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; functionality was external to the display itself. But when @netflix and other content providers decline the use of their apps outside of integrated devices this is the hell we live in.&lt;p&gt;I really wish that @Google provided a TV box that was the full Android TV, but that was vanilla Google with the ability to install @netflix, @BBCiPlayer, @mubi as apps. That I could just plug this into any display panel, including dumb displays.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps @Google could even call it Pixel TV.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tannhaeuser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve bought a Sony Bravia TV set around this time a year ago, too, but mine doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to have Android TV. Or does it? The firmware only has basic TV, EPG, and recording capabilities, plus Netflix but no &amp;quot;apps&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s an absolute joke compared to PlayTV on PS3 of ten years ago. I was about to reset&amp;#x2F;update it because the recording software is stuck in a state where it can&amp;#x27;t delete a scheduled recording in the past and won&amp;#x27;t take programming for new recordings.&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m selfishly asking if you could look up the version number of yours, so that I can identify mine and avoid updating it?</text></comment>
<story><title>My Sony &quot;smart&quot; TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app</title><url>https://twitter.com/buro9/status/980349887006076928</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>buro9</author><text>HN replying to myself with some context outside of the tweets.&lt;p&gt;I actually trust stock Android over Samsung, Sony, etc Android. Hence my &amp;quot;if we&amp;#x27;re going to have Android TV perhaps Google could supply it without the forced add-ons&amp;quot;. I see this similar to installing Windows yourself rather than having &amp;quot;Windows with added vendor crap&amp;quot;... like if you know you want Windows, a stock one is better and same with Android.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m now looking at purchasing the Nvidia Shield and disabling all network connectivity on my Sony TV.&lt;p&gt;The Sony TV is a recent one, about a year old. A Bravia something or other. I have disabled the Samba app using the Android Apps system.&lt;p&gt;One thing I didn&amp;#x27;t include in the tweets was Samba&amp;#x27;s patent list, because it&amp;#x27;s too deep a topic for Twitter. The patent numbers are on their site though... go take a look: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;patents&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;patents&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; Some of those are downright scary and have no positive application for privacy conscious users.&lt;p&gt;Feel free to ask anything.</text></item><item><author>buro9</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the author and linking to my tweets is a bad idea because they auto-delete after 14 days.&lt;p&gt;For future HN context, as the author I&amp;#x27;m reproducing them here in full:&lt;p&gt;My @Sony &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app from &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&lt;/a&gt;  and boy oh boy... this is worse than recent @facebook stuff.&lt;p&gt;From their own privacy policy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;privacy-policy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;samba.tv&amp;#x2F;legal&amp;#x2F;privacy-policy&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; … they track what you watch, when you watch it, your location, your interactions with other apps. And they share this with... well, everyone basically.&lt;p&gt;This information is then used to market to you within the TV and offer you a &amp;quot;hot list&amp;quot;... but it is also used to &amp;quot;Detect, investigate and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect the rights, safety and property of Samba and others&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you have a &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; from any brand and it&amp;#x27;s doing an update you will 100% want to disable Samba.&lt;p&gt;Samba is not a feature for you, it is a snitch in your living room, snitching on everything you watch on your TV, it&amp;#x27;s a feature for corporations only.&lt;p&gt;To disable Samba the soft way... don&amp;#x27;t agree to their T&amp;amp;Cs post OS upgrade.&lt;p&gt;To disable Samba the hard way... use Android system settings to disable the app.&lt;p&gt;This is a good time to say that if you own a &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; from any company you should run it on a different network than your NAS and other computers. And that all other devices best require passwords to connect to them.&lt;p&gt;Ideally you run a TV on a different VLAN.&lt;p&gt;And this is where I wish that dumb panels were all the rage, and that the only &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; functionality was external to the display itself. But when @netflix and other content providers decline the use of their apps outside of integrated devices this is the hell we live in.&lt;p&gt;I really wish that @Google provided a TV box that was the full Android TV, but that was vanilla Google with the ability to install @netflix, @BBCiPlayer, @mubi as apps. That I could just plug this into any display panel, including dumb displays.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps @Google could even call it Pixel TV.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregmac</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had the Nvidia Shield for a couple years now, and highly recommend it. It&amp;#x27;s a bit expensive if you&amp;#x27;re not using it for gaming or Plex server (I&amp;#x27;m not) but I find it worth it because it&amp;#x27;s reliable, still gets updated, and generally &amp;quot;just works&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s literally the only content used for my TV now: Netflix, Plex, YouTube, weather, Tinycam (baby monitor), Google Music, and I can also cast from a phone&amp;#x2F;computer&amp;#x2F;etc without changing inputs.</text></comment>