My new 46 inch Samsung LCD TV is linux based

Just had my new Samsung la46a550 LCD tv for just under 2 weeks and I’ve been frantically searching for new firmware updates because of lots of issues such as

• Not as clear as it should be even on HD channels, google says its because samsung tvs make shit hdtv tuners. HDMI is ok though but not as clear as the smaller Sony Bravia I used to have.
• Irritating 200ms delay from sound out, Samsung fix this FFS

Anyway, it turns out after downloading and extracting the firmware from Samsung it turns out the firmware is STLinux based.

Heres the firmware’s contents.

appdata.img  exe.img   oneboot.bin  T-AMBDAUM   validinfo.txt     vmlinux.ub
boot.img     info.txt  rootfs.img   u-boot.bin  version_info.txt

Yup it uses u-boot as the bootloader.
The images are either squashfs or rfs based without encryption and easily mountable with a loopback. Heres whats in the images

boot.img

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    624 2008-10-20 17:17 db_format.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8676 2008-10-20 17:17 MicomCtrl
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   1024 2008-10-20 17:17 modules
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   4810 2008-10-20 17:17 rc.local
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 131072 2008-10-20 17:17 $rfs_log.lo$
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root   1024 2008-10-20 17:17 rfs_pool.sy$
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3355 2008-10-20 17:17 usb

The modules folder contains the kernel modules used by the TV

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  35644 2008-10-20 17:17 ehci-hcd.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   2428 2008-10-20 17:17 gpio_reset.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8243 2008-10-20 17:17 MicomCtrl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  23168 2008-10-20 17:17 ohci-hcd.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  79200 2008-10-20 17:17 rfs.ko
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   1024 2008-10-20 17:17 st
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 143816 2008-10-20 17:17 usbcore.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  52476 2008-10-20 17:17 usb-storage.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 125844 2008-10-20 17:17 xsr.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  89436 2008-10-20 17:17 xsr_stl.ko

The st folder contains some of st’s custom kernel modules

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1184528 2008-10-20 17:17 companion_7109_audio.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1063940 2008-10-20 17:17 companion_7109_video_Cx.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   11628 2008-10-20 17:17 embxloopback.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   15868 2008-10-20 17:17 embxmailbox.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   35420 2008-10-20 17:17 embxshell.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   38648 2008-10-20 17:17 embxshmc.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   36196 2008-10-20 17:17 embxshm.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    4730 2008-10-20 17:17 load.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    9788 2008-10-20 17:17 lxload.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   39828 2008-10-20 17:17 mme_host.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    9360 2008-10-20 17:17 rpc_userver.ko
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3591300 2008-10-20 17:17 stapi_stripped.ko

rootfs.img - busybox based. Even has network settings and telnetd but unfortunately my model doesnt have an ethernet port. I suppose theres serial somewhere inside as theres getty as well.

drwxrwxrwx  2 root root  921 2008-01-17 12:09 bin
drwxrwxrwx 12 root root 2155 2008-03-21 16:51 dev
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 dtv
drwxrwxrwx  4 root root  228 2008-03-31 09:18 etc
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 exe
drwxrwxrwx  3 root root  888 2008-01-17 12:09 lib
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   11 2008-04-01 14:24 linuxrc -> bin/busybox
drwxrwxrwx  7 root root   54 2008-01-17 12:09 mnt
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 mtd_appdata
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 mtd_boot
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 mtd_chmap
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 mtd_contents
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   10 2008-04-01 14:24 mtd_epg -> mtd_chmap/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    3 2008-04-01 14:24 mtd_exe -> exe
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   10 2008-04-01 14:24 mtd_rwarea -> mtd_chmap/
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 mtd_settop
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 proc
drwxrwxrwx  3 root root  480 2008-01-17 12:09 sbin
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    3 2008-01-17 12:09 sys
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root   80 2008-01-18 15:39 util

appdata.img - contains all the font, images (mostly bitmaps) and sounds in the system.

drwxrwxr-x  2 root root 207 2008-12-17 15:02 Font
drwxrwxr-x 12 root root 199 2008-12-17 15:02 Images_1920x1080
drwxrwxr-x  2 root root 107 2008-12-17 15:02 Resources

exe.img - contains the tv’s application in exeDSP

-rwxrwxr-x 1 502 502 15761292 2008-12-17 15:03 exeDSP
-rwxrwxr-x 1 502 502     4374 2008-12-17 15:02 run
-rwxrwxr-x 1 502 502     4432 2008-12-17 15:03 start.sh

I’m very tempted to start looking at other firmwares just to see if theres anything new in a more recent Samsung LCD tv model. But am abit cautious not to stuff up and end up with a 46inch paper weight.