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Encryption Privacy Television Communications The Internet Your Rights Online

Running Tor On Your TV 80

jaromil writes "TorTV is an early effort to embed Tor in household computing: run it on your TV at home. So far only WDTV installed with the homebrew WDLXTV firmware is supported. What other platforms do you think are viable for it?"
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Running Tor On Your TV

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  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, 2011 @06:21PM (#38390922)

    OK, let's get the obvious question out of the way: Why would I want to run Tor on my TV? Honestly, I don't get why. I don't see anywhere on the site that explains why it would be a good thing for me to run my TV on the Tor network.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, there is the, "Because I can" factor. But it also could provide some interesting safety measures when using a built-in browser on some televisions. Yes, there are televisions with a web browser. Why? Because some people like the idea.

      • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        Yes, there are televisions with a web browser. Why? Because some people like the idea.

        I like the idea; I have a computer plugged into my TV. With that setup I have no use for cable at all; most of the channels are on Hulu, most of the networks stream their shows from their websites, and I don't actually have to be in front of the TV at 7:00 Thursday night to see BBT. All I have to do is log on to CBS's web site and get the latest stream. It's like having a DVR and not having to take the bother to set it up

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wiedzmin ( 1269816 ) on Thursday December 15, 2011 @06:38PM (#38391108)
      I guess so you can host an always-on exit node, without having to keep your laptop on? Can this do exit nodes?
    • Some TV's come with Netflix and (as mentioned by another user) web browsers. A lot of content out there is limited to specific countries; for example most Canadian TV networks (comedy network, space, etc) have TV shows available for viewing but locked to Canadian IPs; likewise for American networks and American IPs. Netflix, Amazon, etc, all do the same. If you could choose an exit node in any given country, you'd effectively have a nice proxy for these geographically locked services.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        have you ever used tor ? its slower than a hayes 14.4k modem over a crappy phone line. and thats for web browsing, not media.

      • Tor is way too slow for streaming.
        • by jc79 ( 1683494 )

          But if everybody's TV was a Tor relay node, then it would be way fast. This is why Tor-on-TV (or Tor-on-toaster) is a Good Thing. These relays don't need to be exit nodes.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So that nobody can tell that you're browsing child porn in your living room, of course.

    • by jaromil ( 104349 ) *
      If you visit Asia you might notice it: the only electrical household that everyone has is a TV, even in absence of any other basic furniture.
  • Can you throw that shit on a replacement firmware for some of the higher end but still consumer level routers?
  • Speaking of WDTV... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LanMan04 ( 790429 ) on Thursday December 15, 2011 @06:47PM (#38391214)

    I just grabbed the newest version, the WDTV Live Streaming Server "Gen 3", which is essentially the "Hub" product without the internal hard drive.

    Will WDXLTV be available for this model ever? If so, do I really care? It plays *everything* I throw at it...so what else does XL do, other than being a torrent/usenet client?

    • I think torrent/usenet is probably the big thing. I think there was one hack that allowed you to send remote control commands to the device via the network, which would be cool if you wanted to control the device through a smart phone or tablet device.

      • That was the idea behind DLNA, but during design the tech grew so complicated (In large part due to every company involved demanding their own patented technology be made a requirement) that it became impossible to get it to work.
      • by jaromil ( 104349 ) *
        For sending remote commands UPNP-AV is there as ... yet another standard. Here an implementation I'm busy with http://syncstarter.org/avremote [syncstarter.org]
    • by dobster ( 989215 )
      ... can connect my 6 2TB drives (and more) ... can keep track of what I watched (MediaMark) ... superior MediaNavigator ... and a zilion other things. Oh, and it is LX and not XL
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Its much better to use Tor to watch British TV here is how to do it http://www.caledoniacomputers.com/?p=1880 and its free for Linux users.

  • I don't know... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday December 15, 2011 @07:51PM (#38391992) Journal

    As a result of inexperienced police departments, running a TOR exit node can have some serious consequences.
    So the idea of ubiquitous TOR is great, but in practice I'm be leary of endorsing having TOR enabled [everything].
    For now, it should remain the domain of experienced users who are running TOR with their eyes open.

    You can say it's a chicken or egg kind of situation, but I don't want my family to be one of the eggs that gets broken because of the content coming out of their TOR exit node.

    • This is why you load it up on other people's TVs.

  • by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 ) <kcocknozzle&hotmail,com> on Thursday December 15, 2011 @08:13PM (#38392222) Homepage

    Is the goal to flood the Tor network with so much traffic that the feds might not be able to catch your bittorrent downloads?

    • by jc79 ( 1683494 )

      Running BitTorrent over Tor is stupid:

      1. Malicious exit nodes can correlate your BT streams to your Tor web browsing, and learn your real IP.
      2. The high bandwidth used by BT cripples the Tor network for everyone else
      3. Most popular BT clients send the tracker your IP anyway.

      https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea [torproject.org]

      If you want anonymous P2P, then I2P is a much better option.

      • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

        1. Malicious exit nodes can correlate your BT streams to your Tor web browsing, and learn your real IP.

        How exactly can they do this? Why would your web browsing have any correlation to your BT streams?

        3. Most popular BT clients send the tracker your IP anyway.

        This is definitely a risk. It is probably best mitigated by ensuring that the client doesn't know your IP (NAT, no route to internet, etc).

        If you want anonymous P2P, then I2P is a much better option.

        Assuming you don't want to actually download anything. What is actually available on I2P? How does its library compare with any of the trackers on the internet at large? The reason people use tor isn't because it is more secure, but because it lets you browse the intern

        • by jc79 ( 1683494 )

          1. Malicious exit nodes can correlate your BT streams to your Tor web browsing, and learn your real IP.

          How exactly can they do this? Why would your web browsing have any correlation to your BT streams?

          Sorry, should have been more clear. Because Tor conserves circuits for reasons of efficiency, it is possible for an exit node to build a profile of the activity of a circuit by inspecting the data leaving that circuit. If you are browsing via Tor while running a BT session, the data from the two sessions can be sent over the same circuit. The exit node can learn your IP from the BT stream (BT client tells tracker what unique random port it's listening on, exit node sees connection to tracker at unique port

    • Tor is horrible for any type of file sharing, and likely to just fail for lack of connections. Most outbound nodes have defaults to only support a few protocols on. HTTP(S) is the most popular supported. File sharing and email being the least supported of all, for obvious reasons.

  • None. It's a bad idea and will get nowhere. There are already enough solutions to watch world-wide TV. If Tor is the answer to watch 'home movies' then I for one wouldn't support it.

  • I'm running MCE 2005 on my TV with two analog tuners (useless since September 2011 in Canada).
    It runs MAME and other emulators, and I can run about anything I want on that thing (the limiting factors are its CPU, an old 3000+ Athlon and its video card, an old 6600 non-gt silent)

    2GB ram, 3 1TB drives + a 120GB for system

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