LG TV Hacking Guide

This is the information that vendors SHOULD include but don't. Information to understand and fully utilize a product shouldn't be some sort of state secret but we don't live in a sane world.

This manual will disclose every secret on these products that I can discover, will offer up for download every scrap of source and binary code that I can find that has a redistributable license. However nothing outright illegal will be discussed here and no copyright violations. So that pretty much rules out distributing complete firmware images. Everything else is fair game. And while I wouldn't post service manuals or datasheets I would use the information within to flesh out these pages. Hint!

These pages are partly to document my research efforts and hopefully to act as a central information store for related products. I only own a single 32LF11-UA, so can only include first hand knowledge of it. Unless noted otherwise all information here relates to that one model, so your mileage may vary. But do drop me a note when you find something that is different and I'll make a note or put in charts showing differences by model/revision/whatever. If LG can document twenty models in one manual it should be possible to cover quite a few without becoming too confusing. Eventually I'd really like this to become 'the rest of the owner's manual' for as many products as possible.

It probably makes sense to define a limit of sets with similar chipsets (made by MStar with a MIPS processor) and the RELEASE executable.

Beyond this gateway page most of the information is plain text. When taking notes I use plain 'ol vim and embedding markup during research just isn't how I roll. As time goes on I hope to make docbook out of all of this.

WARNING

Some of the information contained herein can, if misunderstood or misused, render your set permamently inoperable. Example: Remove the boot partition from the flash and you won't recover with any information currently known. If the idea of one accident turning your expensive TV into a boat anchor isn't something you can live with you might want to navigate away now.

Chapters

Copyright © 2010 John Morris <jmorris@beau.org>

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".