yea... LG policies are real shitty. I didn't have 5Ghz Wifi on my TV. why? cuz I'm in middle east!

Sounds more like a legal issue with permitted spectrum use than an arbitrary LG policy.

It's more likely an out-of-date regulatory database that predates 5GHz being allowed in those regions.

It seems like OP lives in Iran. It seems like at least a good part of the 5GHz band is available there. [1]

[1] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg262022.html

If LG ever removes or restricts Developer Mode, I am selling my TV the same day.

new locked down spyware TVs are so cheap, who would want to buy and move -your- locked down spyware TV?

Jailbroken LG TVs are the panacea of locked down spyware TVs.

Although like OP, if I ever lose the ability to run root, then that's the day I look for a new TV (lord have mercy).

I don’t think I will ever again connect a tv to the internet

I wonder how long it will be until TVs have some sort of cellular modem built in. Maybe some form of LPWAN - your TV may not be connected to the internet, but odds are there's one in range that is.

I was playing around with LG TV homebrew a while back. Still have the same TV, and in the age of AI, I'm considering putting a coding agent to work on a dump of the filesystem to see what it'd take to run stock Linux on it.

There's an active Discord server (I know, I know...) for LG's jailbreak community and there are some incredibly talented folk on there who know the ins and outs of webOS to a crazy level. I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Not sure if you can post the full link but what's the /invitecode for the server? I'd actually be interested in joining since I've been interested in this

what do you do with it? coincenteally i just bought a the tv in the post last week.

It should probably be noted changing the regulatory region of an RF device may result in you using illegal frequencies in your area depending on the combination of which region you're in and which region you're setting it to.

You mean that this helicopter hovering about my home is looking out for me?

Yeah, not sure if author knows, they certainly don't share if they understand this or not, but these things aren't available because the some governments say those frequencies are illegal to use. Turkey for example has multiple frequencies under 5Ghz WiFi that is banned, hence consumer don't get to use 5Ghz WiFi. If you change that, you're breaking the law and you might get a visit, depending on how hardcore they are about the rules. Tend to be pretty strict and swift payback when it comes to using frequencies you shouldn't, as they're used for other stuff and easily seen when other traffic appears.

Turkey for example has multiple frequencies under 5Ghz WiFi that is banned, hence consumer don't get to use 5Ghz WiFi.

Are you sure? According to wiki, there are plenty allowed 5GHz channels in Turkey.

It's wifi. The client and the base have to negotiate a channel they both can see. If the AP is compliant for it's region than you can assume the client will have to be as well.

BTW, I'm someone that use to by US region coded 802.11b wifi devices to get the 13th channel. Except for exploring, it was rarely useful since none of my other devices could connect on it.

TV is a client. If I remember correctly, it shouldn't transmit anything (unless connected) other than probe requests during active scanning.

Which could still be illegal, but I don't think anyone will realistically investigate a low-power device sending a few packets occasionally.

5 replies saying the same things appeared so I'll respond to myself rather than try to pick one:

A TV is indeed typically a client. Or station, if you want to dust off your CWNA certificate. One should still include the warning when sharing such projects/advice because of considerations like:

- With no explanations or warnings, the reader may very reasonably apply the same type of fix across several of their badly preconfigured devices. Now when they extend their Windows laptop display wirelessly to the TV over Miracast (a direct exchange this TV supports), both devices will agree they can do so on the bands in whatever region they were set to.

- It's not safe to assume only the AP needs and has a correct regulatory db or regulatory domain set. APs for the wrong region are sold/imported, do not always have correct regulatory dbs, and can also be similarly misconfigured. Clients can also peer to peer or hotspot. In general, you should fairly be warned you're removing one of the 2 sides to the safety system and "the channel I wanted appeared" is not the same thing as "I fixed the buggy channel config on the device".

- As some have pointed out, clients can perform either an active or passive scan based on, basically, what the system feels makes the most sense at the time. An active scan will result in probes across the supported channel list, so even if all of the above is true, people should be aware even a lone station can still transmit on all of the bands it is told to support.

I'm not against fixing buggy devices but I am against telling people the fix is to set it to Germany without warning they may result in using illegal frequencies in your area if not carefully considered. A muuuch cooler & safer fix might have been to patch the supported channel list for the given country to be correct rather than patch the region to be wrong, but that may have been harder to pull off.

I don't get it, why can't they just change the region in the settings?

I was able to on my LG. Nice TV, worst firmware ever. It had an issue with Wifi. It basically will not connect once or so a week. You needed to change, you guess it, the region. So I will keep changing from Germany to Spain to Ireland to Germany to Etc. I sent pictures, videos, emails, links to youtube videos to LG support, they wouldn't care, they would just deny it. In the end I bought a Fire TV Max and that was it. But what a horrible support experience LG never again.

"This project was born out of accidentally changing the area option to EU in the EZ-Adjust service menu on a US TV. The factorymanager binary enforces a region lock (geolock) that prevents reverting the area code — even through the same EZ-Adjust menu that was used to change it"

Sounds like service mode shenanigans. I'm curious though - does switching the TV to EU even do anything 'better' privacy-wise or anything, or do you just get trapped in that 'region' for services?

Why the hell would you ever let a TV on any network?

So I can run Plex, iPlayer, Netflix, etc etc

The majority of content that people watch is distributed over the internet, so our TVs are connected thus.

True, but it's far better to buy a streaming box (Apple TV, etc) and hook that up to the Internet. Not only does TV software serve you ads, it just plain sucks.

I disagree the inbuilt Netflix app is way better than any streaming box.

Apple TV serves ads (it's literally called Apple for fuck sake), costs money and extra electricity.

Nice workaround. Feels pretty stupid that you have to do that. Sounds like they choose the easy way to comply with the regulations. They could probably just have blocked certain frequency ranges.

Although I'm still fully convinced that TVs just got worse for the consumer since they became "smart". My extended family had to replace perfectly good TVs three times because the new version of a streaming app did not work anymore.

Add stuff like running ads on an expensive TV, running spyware that sends screenshots even of your HDMI source back to the company (possibly exposing your passwords and everything), the continuous nagging about new versions and ToS (with dark patterns to accept sending voice data home), and I feel like the only sane option is to never ever give internet connection to these TVs. Use a separate device for streaming.

Recently when I started an LG TV, there was an unskippable ad for a local delivery service. I pressed the home button and it told me "Smart services not available right now". After the ad I could go to the home menu.

If this was my own TV it would have been thrown in the trash.

My extended family had to replace perfectly good TVs three times because the new version of a streaming app did not work anymore.

Were they not able to just buy a separate dongle/Apple TV-esque device to use through HDMI?

Since you have ssh access to webos, how is it to remove the telemetry, ads and other such? Is webos better than a generic TCL for such antics? The TCL can be rooted and is android based but I’m not up to date on current rom configurations, etc.

I have a LG TV, but I do not allow it to connect to a wifi network. I don't trust LG, and expect them to do something anti-consumer to my hardware at some point, or to spy on me.

This particular failure is a blessing in disguise.

They do.

I dont understand why EU is not stepping in. LG literally spies on you by capturing screenshot of whatever you watch and send them to the mothership. This includes images and videos from your private USB drive.