CNET.com > CES 2008
January 10, 2008 2:25 PM PST

Bloggers behaving badly: Gizmodo messes with CES flat screens

Posted by Rafe Needleman 13 Comments

The Gizmodo kids pulled a good stunt at CES: they fired TV-B-Gone remotes at walls of shiny new monitors on display and during press conferences, much to the displeasure of booth staffers.

No colors anymore.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

The video is funny. The ramifications of prank will not be. The CES organizers only grudgingly gave bloggers press credentials to the conference, and even then kept them segregated into a working lounge that was a step down in amenity and luxury from the "press" lounge and work area. This prank will not endear the blogging class to either the CEA, which produces CES, or the companies that paid dearly for the right to occupy CES floorspace and show off their products.

I would not be surprised to see Gizmodo banned from the show and possibly sued by either the CEA or the companies its bloggers harassed. For journalists (in my mind, all bloggers are journalists), legal and constitutional protection does not extend to mischief or sabotage. Publishing news reports, opinion, and satire are protected acts. Physical interference is not.

I asked Gizmodo publisher Nick Denton if he was going to fire the Gizmodo crew for their prank. "No," is all he said in an instant message. He did not reply to followup questions.

Gizmodo added this apology after the post first ran, but I don't think it will mollify the victims.

It was too much fun, but watching this video, we realize it probably made some people's jobs harder, and I don't agree with that (Especially Motorola). We're sorry.

There are other likely outcomes of the prank. From now on, no one with an infrared-controlled device at a tradeshow is going to leave it exposed. A few tabs of black electrical tape will thwart TV-B-Gones. Beyond that, as our security expert Robert Vamosi said about this incident, expect TV manufacturers to think seriously about building encryption into their remote controls.

Topics:
Televisions
Tags:
CES 2008, flatscreens, video, bloggers, TV-B-Gone
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 13 Comments (Page 1 of 1)
by jimothyGator January 10, 2008 6:27 PM
I doubt you'll see encryption in remote, as it would add cost, no matter how small that cost is. Look at the cheap remotes that ship with $2,000+ TVs. The manufacturers obviously are not adverse to skimping on remotes. Why add encryption to millions of sets to protect a few demo units? Nor, do I imagine, would they put encryption in just the demo units. That said, I could see Bluetooth remotes replacing IR remotes on high end TVs (as Bluetooth would be a selling point, but encryption, not so much). The pairing features of Bluetooth devices would provide a level of protection (though electrical tape won't do a thing in that case).
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by Boggy40251 January 10, 2008 9:19 PM
First of all, it is very tasteless for one person of the same profession or line of business to talk badly about some other. Both of you represent competing companies (more or less), so ... phleeeze - show some class. Secondly, yes this joke may have ambarrassed some business or CES folks, but ... what the youngsters discovered (lack of security) may save this company a future potentially expensive law suit for negligence in protecting privacy of any possible user of their products. How about that? Maybe, Gizmodo should be rewarded instead of being vilified? Just a thought.
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by rvillela January 10, 2008 10:29 PM
I don't see a problem with CNET commenting on Gizmodo. This sophomoric prank is clear indication that they are NOT in the same profession. And to say so is an offense to the editors and writers at CNET. Gizmodo just made it harder for all small/upcoming bloggers to gain access to trade shows. Mr. Denton won't have to fire his crew, but that doesn't mean they will still have a job. As a matter of fact they may all be out of a job pretty soon.
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by VT808 January 10, 2008 11:58 PM
Seriously, that was a lame joke.
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by SimonMackay January 11, 2008 4:17 AM
This will certainly be a wake-up call as far as remote control of audiovisual devices deployed in residential, educational, hospitality, display and similar environments is concerned. I have read the TV-Be-Gone web page and this device has been promoted as a way of "getting away from" TV ubiquity. This device will be (and, I suspect, is) being used by disruptive students to "black" the screens of TV sets used for showing video material during classes and is used as a way of causing trouble in sports bars by turning off the TVs during a critical event in a sporting fixture. Some people have modified this device by increasing IR emitter output in a focused manner so it's operated in a "sniper" fashion from considerable distance, added IR LEDs so that multiple TVs in a large area are turned off and "potted" it in such things as caps so it's not obvious to TV users about what is going on. The audiovisual equipment industry needs to be able to support systems like HDMI-CEC (control of TVs and related peripherals via the HDMI cable) and UPnP AV via Ethernet, especially in the context of volume control and power-state control; plus "authentication" methods for wireless remote control like what is done with Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n or Wireless USB. Here, a set can be configured to work only with user-authorised remote controls rather than responding to particular IR pulse patterns. Other solutions could involve the use of duplex (two-way) IR setups like IRDA with authentication functionality for set control. Bang & Olufsen was the first to use duplex IR for controlling consumer electronics, but this was used so that equipment status can be shown on a display built in to the controller. As far as "mating" controllers to devices is concerned, there is a lot of interest in using simplified methods like "push-push" pairing where you push an identified button or select "Add Device" on a master device, then push an identified button on the slave device; or near-field "Touch and Go" pairing where you touch both devices together to pair them. Hopefully, by next CES, the audiovisual electronics industry will start to tackle this issue so as to make life harder for unauthorised remote control activities.
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by Baer January 11, 2008 9:36 AM
Teenage bloggers show that the backwards baseball hat culture is NOT professional journalism. They have hurt their credibility. Perhaps their next job should be at the Improv? As for the exhibitors there is an easy fix, just as those in public places have learned to defeat these gizmos by taping over the IR input on the T V?s and using a repeater so it can be done at future CES events.
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by murrayw76 January 11, 2008 9:37 AM
And this is why I stick to Engadget and CNET for my gadget news! I've met Denton before and he's a bit of a rabble-rouser (in a good sense), but the attitude that personality cultivates among staff can be hard to reign in when you're talking about someone who doesn't have the good sense to know their role. Shutting off a few TVs on a wall of display units? Ok, that might be amusing (and not terribly disruptive), but doing the same during the Motorola press conference was just plain stupid. If there's any justice in this world, Gizmodo should expect that they may have a little more difficulty getting into future expos and that they may have a little more trouble getting products for testing from the big players that were affected by this stunt. At the very least, I wouldn't be too surprised if some companies distanced themselves from Gizmodo, although I'm not sure that they have any real legal recourse for what happened.
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by baddawg65 January 11, 2008 10:12 AM
Simple solution we did a long time ago at my old workplace, we just opened the box and put electrical tape over the remote sensor. If you don't want to do that you can put electrical tape over the sensor window but make sure you do it cleanly so they don't suspect it and it won't look ugly. However you or anyone will be able to control the TV remotely and you have to do it the old fashion way, walk up and press the buttons on the unit.
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by LordDDA January 27, 2008 5:31 AM
Pardon me for saying, but I think you guys have all been reading one too many tech related blogs lately :-) Don't you think it's overkill to propose bluetooth, encryption, full duplex, electric tape, opening the unit and what more, for a simple problem like this? Why not use the On Screen Display menu, select "turn off (IR) remote reception" and that's it! Of course this setting is currenlty not yet in any model, but it's practically free to do so and doesn't require any hardware changes! I'm sure with a minor software upgrade it's even possible to implement this on most models already on the market. For those of you that think "yeah, but how to turn it back on, stupid", simple, like baddawg65 said, use the buttons on the television itself.
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by jkjokeman March 5, 2008 5:48 PM
lol backwards hats, yeah i see what you mean. I guess you just need to be careful out there. anyway, definitely some good info out there. keep up the good work Jeremy lesser tries make it harder to fail~
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