[taxmeifyoucan]

For a hacker news article, it misses the crucial option - hacking a smart TV! I have LG OLED jailbroken using rootmy.tv, it was pretty trivial. It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen, you can customize it, SSH into it, map any commands to the remote, etc.

Before I only used monitor, simple DP/HDMI input is all I wanted. But being able to take full control of the tv and connect it with other devices in the house I would normally get Rpi for is pretty convenient!

[pabs3]

You shouldn't have to hack it, you should have the right to repair the software on your device. Hopefully the Vizio lawsuit will help with that for Linux based devices, signs are looking good though.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

[godelski]

You're right, but until the laws change we should be telling everyone how and make these tools better. If we can't change the laws we can make the cat and mouse game too expensive for them to continue.

Plus, I'm pretty confident they are already doing illegal things. On my Samsung TV it wants to force update. There is no decline option, there is no option to turn off updates, only to take it completely offline. There's no way in hell these kinds of contracts would be legal in any other setting. There's no meaningful choice and contracts that strongarm one party are almost always illegal. You can't sign a contract where the bank can arbitrary change the loan on you (they can change interest but they can't arbitrarily charge how that interest is determined. Such as going from 1% to 1000% without some crazy impossible economic situation).

Someone needs to start a class action. Someone needs to push that as far as the courts will go

[Retr0id]

This is just about GPL compliance though (afaik LG TVs are already GPL compliant, or at least, I haven't noticed any noncompliance).

The bigger problem here is tivoization. You can build a fresh kernel from source but you have no way to install it because the bootloader is locked down.

[khimaros]

https://fossforce.com/2025/12/judge-signals-win-for-software...

[slig]

> RootMyTV (v1/v2) has been patched for years, and your TV is almost certainly not vulnerable. We recommend checking whether your TV is rootable with another method.

[montymintypie]

The one-click method has been patched, but there are other methods that will work if you haven't been religiously updating your TV:

[0] https://github.com/throwaway96/dejavuln-autoroot

[1] https://github.com/throwaway96/faultmanager-autoroot

[jader201]

> It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen

Why would I want a Linux computer with a huge screen?

I just want a huge screen.

I’ll provide my own connected devices, independent of the screen.

[ranguna]

Well, you can make it a PC and then turn it off, I guess. Then let the rest of us have all the fun.

[stravant]

Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer? Then it can be connected to your devices AND also do the job itself in a situation where it's awkward to connect to a device.

If already needs a computer in it to drive menus / modern display protocols. Having that computer be powerful enough to also decode content is barely an extra cost.

[Underphil]

Yeah, I'd absolutely agree here. The article didn't "miss" this option. It just isn't relevant here.

[taxmeifyoucan]

I feel you, that's exactly why I was using only monitors before! I got convinced to go for this as an acceptable compromise with much more control than some proprietary backend.

[albert_e]

I want the ability to add my own picture-in-picture display or overlay of text and other dynamic content.

Example: watching a movie but want the live score of a sports match scraped from a public website to be displayed in a corner.

OR while watching a sports match -- i want a overlay feed of text from a chat stream for a select web source

Looking forward for some public experiments / open projects in this space i could leverage. Dont have the skills to attempt it myself from scratch.

[afavour]

Honestly your best bet is going to be buying a mini PC and hooking it up to any TV of your choice as the only input. Most bespoke hardware is too locked down to make anything like that possible.

[whatsupdog]

I have 2 LG OLED TVs, different sizes. Rootmytv failed to root both of them. I forgot which step and which error it was giving, but I tried everything including factory reset etc. I'm glad it's working for some people.

[scoot]

The first line of the homepage says "RootMyTV (v1/v2) has been patched for years, and your TV is almost certainly not vulnerable.", so that's hardly surprising

[amelius]

For the real hackers:

https://www.panelook.com/

Global Panel Exchange Center

[ssl-3]

Holy Toledo.

That's like Alibaba, except for small(ish) quantities of LCDs of any possible description.

[Teknomadix]

It took a bit of extra effort but `faultmanager-autoroot` script worked on my LG WebOS Smart Monitor

[jmward01]

Seems like there is a big opportunity here for something a router distro to combine with a tv jailbreak. How good is the hardware? It would be nice to have my tv serve a couple purposes if it has the hardware to do it.

[taxmeifyoucan]

It's a modest ARM CPU, I wouldn't rely on it for a router but it can run Rpi Hole! Also Home Assistant integration, I use the TV remote to control LEDs/lights around the apartment

[wolrah]

Most smart TVs only have 100mbit ethernet, even "high end" TVs like LG OLEDs. They'd be terrible routers.

[ori_b]

That still gives money to the people producing this garbage.

[broof]

I don’t know the finances, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their margins are low enough that their profit comes from advertising and data gathering post sale. So all this bloatware and advertising is subsidizing a high quality product and if you can strip out the unwanted stuff you’re probably getting a good deal at the expense of the company

[pxc]

Can you actually replace the firmware with an open-source, privacy-respecting one? If you're still left running all the same proprietary background "services" and telemetry, I don't see how this kind of hack relates to any of the reasons for preferring a dumb TV.

[bee_rider]

Agreed.

This “proprietary telemetry” is basically malware, just, it was put on the thing at the factory. Once a system is fully rooted by malware, the least-bad option is to nuke it entirely and install from scratch.

In this context where the locked-down device probably also doesn’t have a fully open source kernel and drivers, this becomes a bit tricky. Better just to use a device that doesn’t have malware on it in the first place.

[gala8y]

Did you know that a not jailbroken smart TV would spy on your HDMI, if connected to the network? I did not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737312

[mikepurvis]

I’ve been pretty happy with the smart apps on my LG OLED; it’s got the streaming things I want including jellyfin. Really the only one missing is steam link.

[sander1095]

Have you tried moonlight? An alternative to steam link. You can use install it on the lg tv by sideloading the app.

Alternatively, you can plug in a Raspberry Pi that runs steam link :)

[upfrog]

Jailbreaking is definitely an option, but there is value in spending money to provide a market signal instead.

[gosub100]

I have a no-name brand smart tv and it runs an OS called Tizen, and with a very little bit of googling, you can enable developer mode and install 3rd party apps on it. It probably doesn't solve the "spying-on-you" part, but it is nice to have the option of more apps.

[throwaway63467]

Is there much you can do with it? Does it still work as before, does it still have a GUI? Sounds really cool.

[montymintypie]

I think the parent commenter is perhaps a little over-selling the LG rooting. It is definitely root, you can write whatever you want on the filesystem (at your peril), and theoretically do whatever you want, but the homebrew exploit launches a bit later in the boot chain than you'd want (so blocking update nags isn't quite reliable), and a lot of the inner system things are proprietary and require reverse engineering to extend.

It's the same system software, just with root capacity.

That being said, there's still a bunch of nice homebrew:

- Video screensavers ala Apple TV

- DVD logo screensaver

- Adfree (and sponsorblock-integrated and optional shorts-disabling) Youtube

- Remote button remapping (Netflix button now opens Plex for me)

- Hyperion (ambilight service that controls an LED strip behind the TV)

- A nice nvidia shield emulator for game streaming from my PC with low latency

- VNC server (rarely useful, but invaluable when it is)

Sponsorblock and remote remapping are killer features for me, and the rest is just really pleasant to have.

[rssoconnor]

I used my rooted TV to root my PS4. I'm not even joking.

https://youtu.be/NzBBfGnAWM0

[_pdp_]

I was thinking the same. While it is not for everyone, hacking the TV to make the dumb is possible.

[SilverElfin]

What’s the difference between that and just using the LG TV without any of the smart features? Like if you don’t connect it to the internet and only hook up something else through HDMI, isn’t it the same?

[port11]

Sadly, modern Samsungs use signed Tizen and there are no roots/hacks available! Shame.

[immibis]

Unfortunately, this is Hacker (founder of the next AirBNB) News and not Hacker (one who tinkers with devices) News

[andrepd]

How would you block ads on such a TV? The problem is you still cannot connect it to the internet without unknown privacy intrusion... Maybe to the LAN only? But then it's usefulness is still limited.

[nolok]

Pi hole is enough for me on a modern Samsung

[duskdozer]

hosts file block?