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Expansion of the functionality of LG TVs and the grin of Korean capitalism

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A small note about how the firmware for LG TVs was investigated, what was achieved, what problems met on the way and how things are now. About the reaction to everything that happens LG Corporation, decided to simply step over the laws.

A tour of the history of the issue


This story began in the already distant 2009. Then, facing the problem of choosing an LCD TV, I, as usual, sat down to study market offers, evaluate existing models from different manufacturers, since Google helped and on many subject forums the current and new trends were discussed.

I would not call myself a technoman, but since childhood I was interested in what was going on inside all electronic black boxes. I also do not consider myself to be a red-eyed linuxoid, but for 10 years now I have not used MS products and can cope with it. Already by enough otyuningovav by that time my asus-wl500gp, I realized that we need a new victim of experiments.
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Actually the possibility of something to twist inside the new TV and got the first priority for his choice. For this reason, uninteresting phillips, dormice and Toshiba were immediately dropped. In fact, the choice was not great - either samsung with the then well-known modifications from the samygo project, or the new LH LCD TV series from LG that just appeared. In addition, these firms produce lcd-matrixes themselves and of quite good quality.

Some inquisitive minds already for several months of 2009 revealed a small feature of all models of the LH series - all of them were assembled on the same element base, i.e. they were simply the same, except, of course, for the diagonal and the type of matrices. They did not stop at that and compared the functionality of the models, it turned out that in the older ones there was the possibility of playing HD video, music, viewing pictures from disks connected to the usb port, in the younger ones the functionality gradually became poor. It became clear that this is nothing more than a software limitation, which was successfully removed from the “secret” technological menu without the use of soldering irons or any software patches.

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At that time it was great. Having bought a TV of a little younger model, I received a ready-made and working hd player absolutely free of charge. The choice was made!

Research


What turned out to be inside the new black box? SoC saturn6, and everything was managed by software with linux OS and a proprietary program that provides user interface and interaction with purely television iron.

Probably the first people to start research were now known on the forum lg-hack.info luca, tester13, keitsi and a few more people. It became clear that the firmware was assembled on the linux kernel distributed under the GPL license, which means that LG is obliged to provide the sources of the system core.

What could it give? Many dreamed that it would help solve several main problems of the entire lg product line - firstly, these TVs do not reproduce and do not even pass through the sound in DTS format, secondly, everyone understood how great it would be to connect them to the network and watch movies directly From home NAS'ov, there was still the so-called problem of "red lines", not solved, unfortunately, until now. If briefly - then LG, in addition to limiting the functionality, added a feature to the youngest models - artifacts were added to the image in the form of parasitic colored lines of different colors, especially noticeable next to the red thin lines, and the whole picture was smeared.

A request followed from LG. The correspondence gave its first result - the first openlgtv free firmware was created by the Finnish programmer Mikko Karkalo.

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It allowed connecting TVs to the network using a usb-ethernet adapter, supported file systems, upnp, ssh, mounting partitions using nfs and cifs. A little later, the user-friendly LGMOD web interface was written, later modified by the french fusion arno1.

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Unfortunately, the main program, called “release”, is completely closed, namely, it is responsible for displaying the image on the screen, working with the remote control, the built-in player. Thus, having solved a part of the problems, some remained unsolved.

At this time, the programmer under the nickname jenyavv from Ukraine connected to the question. A way was found to change some of the operating parameters of the proprietary release program. By modifying the values ​​in some of the memory cells, TV owners from Russia and Ukraine had the opportunity to watch digital TV without changing their country (and interface language) to foreign countries. It became possible to disable the preview in the built-in player, which is very slow to work. On some models, the opportunity to activate the player.

In addition, he was shocked with LG firmware for many models. LG itself, probably under the pressure of requests, made a site where it began to publish the source code of the core of most of its TV.

Work has begun on analyzing the functioning of the release. It turned out that it was compiled statically with the uclibc library, released under the lgpl license, which is a limited alternative to glibc optimized for embedded systems. What could it give? LG was obliged to provide object files for release with any other version of uclibc, but not only did not do this, but did not advertise the fact of using lgpl libraries with its program, but it wasn’t really necessary.

However, a new opportunity has appeared to expand the functionality of older models by combining object files from older and newer models, where, for example, it has become possible to adjust image parameters when playing video with the built-in player.

This is where LG really wondered what this might lead to and instantly began collecting all new release versions dynamically. Among other things, refusing to issue object files for old versions of software, simply by stepping over the law and compliance with licenses. At the same time, one by one, websites began to be closed where there was some information with an analysis of the TV internal device: the wiki on sourceforge.net was closed, the site from the wiki lgusb.wikispaces.com , the developer site lgmod - lgmod.free.fr . Part of the wiki was restored on Russian hosting and is now available on openlgtv.org.ru . But now from Washington one of the well-known in narrow circles of the law firm office receives letters demanding to close the resource. At the weekend there was a dos attack on the server of the hoster, on which the wiki lies.

The position of the lg is 180 degrees different from samsung, which at least does not harm the researchers from samygo. For some reason, lg believes that it can break the law and at the same time make a complaint to the legitimate resources. Just not even double, but triple standards, the height of arrogance and parasitism at the work of tens and hundreds of people, in fact, for developing for the most part free software. Discussion on this issue was opened at gpl-violations.org .

In 2010, LG releases a series of PK / PJ TVs, in which the situation repeats. At the moment, LE / LX models are being actively studied on the forums, and for the entire LD line-up, the possibility of connecting network resources has recently appeared.
More details can be found on the forum and wiki, links to which are given below.

Results


To confront closed technologies can sometimes be not easy, but it's worth it. The struggle for an open information society must be waged on all fronts. And anyone who can change the world a little for the better, restore justice should not give up and give up. It is clear that there are many other problems, especially in Russia, but nevertheless ...

List of sources




UPD1: 2011-04-11: OpenLGTV BCM 0.3.0-alpha4 appeared. Includes support for Yahoo Widgets from LG's North American TV models, and Samsung TV. You can activate all possible Netcast services. Plans to edit the list directly from the TV menu (via the built-in browser). Details on the forum .
UPD1: 2011-04-13: Today, a friend under the nickname rtokarev showed the community the development of OPENRELEASE. This is not a new release, but a release "wrapped." At the moment, you can reassign the buttons of the remote, turn on / off the preview in the player, write logs. We are waiting for developments ... Details on the forum .

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/112062/

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