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VTimofeenkolast Thursday at 11:11 PM5 repliesview on HN

Most likely case is that the tv is computing hash locally and sending the hash. Judging by my dnstap logs, roku TV maintains a steady ~0.1/second heartbeat to `scribe.logs.roku.com` with occasional pings to `captive.roku.com`. The rest are stragglers that are blocked by `*.roku.com` DNS blackhole. Another thing is `api.rokutime.com`, but as of writing it's a CNAME to one of `roku.com` subdomains.

The block rates seem to correlate with watch time increasing to ~1/second, so it's definitely trying to phone home with something. Too bad it can't since all its traffic going outside LAN is dropped with prejudice.

If your network allows to see stuff like that, look into what PS5 is trying to do.


Replies

godelskiyesterday at 7:42 AM

  > Most likely ... sending the hash
If you're tracking packets can't you tell by the data size? A 4k image is a lot more data than a hash.

I do suspect you're right since they would want to reduce bandwidth, especially since residential upload speeds are slow but this is pretty close to verifiable, right?

Also just curious, what happens if you block those requests? I can say Samsung TVs really don't like it... but they will be fine if you take them fully offline.

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CursedSiliconlast Thursday at 11:29 PM

Hashing might not work since the stream itself would be a variable bitrate, meaning the individual pixels would differ and therefore the computed file hash

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clbrmbryesterday at 12:41 AM

What system do you use to get that level of visibility?

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NuclearPMyesterday at 4:04 AM

I don’t know why you quoted the addresses.

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