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.

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.

If it's a station (client) then it's unlikely, as long as your APs are compliant.

With some chipsets it can end up being entirely ass-backwards - if you use an Intel WiFi chipset, a nearby AP can broadcast the wrong region and cripple your connectivity.

Outdated regulatory databases and firmware efforts by vendors have generally made both illegal and legal usage beyond ch 1-12 at 2.4GHz rather difficult.

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.

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

This is about a WiFi client - on WiFi networks the AP station chooses frequency and manufacturers/driver writers fuck up legal frequency lists and regulatory codes all the time.

"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?

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 TV is several years old at this point, but I've never had a single ad show up on it. Telemetry is easily blocked via DNS filters and the homebrew software blocks system updates.

Modern versions of Apple TV, Plex, Disney, etc all work fine. The only time I ever watch YouTube is on the TV because it has SponsorBlock baked into it so I never see an ad there either.

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

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

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.

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

So I can turn it on using Home Assistant reliably.

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.