These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.
The trouble is you can’t find decent sized monitor panels at reasonable prices. Frankly your most practical bet is to buy a TV with minimal smart functions and never connect it, then use that for your media PC. Also maybe hack the TV, that should be far more common IMO.
Good. Have fun uploading any information about me without wifi or an ethernet cable. Smart TVs were a mistake, even the most expensive ones are slow and trash.
Couldn’t you use a raspberry pi or something? My point was that a $50 android tv box beats the absolute top TVs both in terms of speed and compatibility with apps.
I dont need them for the smart, I need their menus to be consistently fast for automation. Response time for input changes, menus disappearing timely after boot.
When we buy $300 50" ‘specials’ and I start pumping IR at them for timed remote automation they always get hung up and start missing steps.
if you’re this paranoid, just buy one of those mcdonalds menu screen tvs or just rip out all of the wifi electronics. i can imagine it being one of those standard modules like in laptops.
Pull one of your old routers from the back of closet, and use it to make a completely new network just for your TV. If you don’t connect the router to the rest of the internet, your TV is happy to connect to something, and you get to keep your privacy a little bit longer.
A popular brand could totally set up their own network like this and with apartments there would probably be sufficient density to ensure that there’s always at least one connected device nearby to act as a bridge.
I don’t think so. The first step when connecting to WiFi is to agree to the terms of service that allow the manufacturer to legallly spy on you. Without agreeing to that, they’d be breaking the law.
I’m too skeptical to default to the whole “corporations will abide by the law” thing anymore. I’m willing to accept that I might be wrong though. There have just been too many times where I’ve pessimistically remarked on a situation like this as a sort of half joke only to find out that I was right and it was actually worse than I initially assumed.
A TV that is not connected to the internet is effectively just a large monitor.
I understand that some TVs lock functionality and coerce you into connecting it to the network, but most of them function well as monitors. I know it’s tempting to make use of the “smart” features since it’s included, but if you care about privacy, it’s better to keep it off the internet.
genuine question: is it still considered ‘smart’ if its fully offline? what can it do that a ‘normal’ tv cant? can it connect to a local media server or something?
Joke aside, would that make it basically anonymous? Unless it’s actually sending screenshots, it will only tell “somebody around this IP is watching TV/Something from HDMI”
What personally identification information is there? Sure, they can know everything is from the same user/household, but they can’t know it’s you by name, email, phone, address… That’s what I mean by anonymous instead of private
I guess it is somewhat like paying in cash for your groceries: While anonymous, only you buy at this time of the day your favourite 3 food products, a cup of gluten-free instant ramen and a period product.
I would be concerned about this scenario:
Company X has your TV data (but doesn’t know your name, etc)
Company Y, Z, … know your name and have data on you.
They buy/share/whatever data and intersect it. Now they can probably connect the data they have on you.
You joke… but isn’t that what Amazon Sidewalk was invented for? And isn’t it sort of what AirTags do? They don’t connect to the internet… they connect to partner devices in ways that are unseen by the owners to co-opt their internet access.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Samsung TVs without internet access are using nearby Samsung phones to connect to the internet. Or maybe they partner with the ISP to use those default guest wifi networks. If news broke tomorrow that this was already a thing, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
So… Can someone explain how this is legal if you’re watching DRM content? Capturing and uploading copyrighted, protected content doesn’t seem very kosher.
advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads
Jesus. Spend a fraction of that developing good products that people will actually want to buy so you can end this unethical, scumbag way of making a buck.
Who cares? Ad targeting has been around for years, ads on TV aren’t any different than what’s on YouTube anymore, they’re often literally the same ad. I don’t need drugs, I don’t need cars and I don’t need insurance so whatever
You do know what community you’re posting in right?
This type of snooping covers anything you play on the screen including but not limited to Blu-Rays, Plex, Home Movies, Live TV, YouTube, and Netflix. It’s incredibly invasive and harmful to the end user, especially when the raw data is inevitably leaked to the world at large.
I really likr the last few firmware updates that my TV received. But apart from checking for updates every few months, I agree that keeping it blocked in my router settings is ideal.
My Sony runs AndroidTV and uses NextDNS to block telemetry and the like. The features that I received with the last few updates enabled VRR, improved clarity and Dolby Vision, etc. So it was definitely worth it.
I had read a story once that if I recall correctly, one manufacturer would send the signal back thru the coax cable to the cable box just in case to make sure your data was captured somehow.
Worst part about this is I have an OLED, if I use a different device for features I risk burn. Netflix on the tv will show a screensaver and go black after 2 minutes. Pressing pause on Netflix on the ps5 or appletv means you get a static screen until you return.
I wish we could get what we pay for and not be products ourselves.
This thing gives me serious 1984 vibes. I hadn’t read the book when I first heard of this, but I now realize the name is pretty much and open play on the tellyscreens in the book. Reminds me of the black mirror episode where you have to pay to stop watching.
Since I didn’t comment elsewhere on the thread, my plan of attack for now is usually older TVs (even just a few years old are still really good quality), even if they are smart but not ever connected. Apple TVs on each one, also buy the 2-3 year old version of this used for about $40-$50 not any more then I used to spend buying Roku sticks. Gives me a good enough balance for now, and before Apple haters pile on, yes it’s not perfect, but there have been some studies showing these are some of the best behaved streaming devices. More importantly than what the streaming device is, I have the ability to chuck them and add a PC or whatever else without having to replace the actual TV.
I have my old (stupid) tv from like 2013, works perfectly fine. No apps, no firmware, no ads, no tracking. Never felt the need to buy a smart tv, but I’m afraid it’d be near impossible to find a new one that isn’t nowadays I’d mine broke down.
Yeah, I’m waiting for the death of my current TV. A LG that’s plain old LCD, but HDR and 4k, no smart shit. Luckily I know hardware and can physically disable things. I break and remove things so hardware is physically incapable of connecting.
This is the only reason I have a smart TV. I didn’t want one, in fact it prompted me to make an SSID and VLAN just for it, then applied a bunch of DNS blocks. Unfortunately my old 2012 TV wasn’t worth shipping across the country and the image was getting pretty dim and it had started developing dead pixels.
If you want anything above 1080p that’s a dumb TV you have to go commercial like the hospitality market and they charge you way more for it. And they won’t even sell it to you without a corporate account in most places.
The only way to get 4K and HDR without the smarts as a consumer is to buy a giant gaming monitor… and those too ask for quite a premium, because gamers.
Tbf, gaming monitors usually have higher refresh rate compared to regular monitors. So it’s not just RGB lights and racing stripes that accounts for the extra cost.
Yeah but they do still end up pretty expensive. I was able to score a black friday 65" 4K HDR 1000 nits 120 Hz FreeSync TV with local dimming for $700. Not the best but given I don’t use it that often or for very long I didn’t want it to turn into a big investment.
I’m sure it’s pretty average but for my use case it worked out pretty good.
Doesn’t mention what circumstances it’s tracking your watching habits. If you’re watching an obscure movie on DVD, is it still looking at frames? Does it have to be through a streaming service being run on the TV? Does it recognize content being run on modern game consoles? Not a very informative article.
First, a quick primer on the tech: ACR identifies what’s displayed on your television, including content served through a cable TV box, streaming service, or game console, by continuously grabbing screenshots and comparing them to a massive database of media and advertisements. Think of it as a Shazam-like service constantly running in the background while your TV is on.
All of this is in the second paragraph of the article.
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