this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Privacy
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[citation needed]
HDMI has an Ethernet channel builtin to it. This was designed along with the audio return channel and the remote channel to make it so you only need one cable between your smart devices.
Its lovely really, other than the privacy concerns. USB-c takes it one step further and let's you power devices over the data cable. So you might really only need one cable to link all your devices.
I've been worried about the data over HDMI standard for a while, but I don't think many devices implement it. At some point there probably should be a revision to the standards (if there isn't one already) to require pairing permissions in the next version. Otherwise manufacturers will eventually start using this back channel to spy on customers, even when you don't enable WiFi on the television.
Ouch! TIL “HEC.” Presumably the device you connect to needs to proxy that channel. My LG TV keeps saying it needs an internet connection to access any of its smart features, so I guess my Apple TV doesn’t do that (or my TV is sneakier than I’d like to believe).
Thanks, good to know.
Edit: seems the ethernet channell is used by ARC, which newer apple TVs supports, so that’s probably crowding out support for HEC. This also suggests HEC isn’t widely supported. I can settle down again.
"Eventually" doing a lot of work to correct the quote above.
That said, I don't know what the quote means, since it's dumbing this down for normies to the point of meaninglessness. I'm not sure if it's claiming that it can run automatic content recognition of the stuff you send to it over HDMI or some other arcane way to share data with homebase over HDMI.
Given that the first thing is a thing and the second is not, to my knowledge, I'm going to assume it means the former, but it's really muddy writing.
My LG TV even asks me for permission to do so. But at least it's asking me. 🤷♂️
To them it’s High Definition Media Internet