Smart TVs are a curse (from a consumer perspective). A separate smart device makes much more sense.
People usually replaced their TVs when they broke, which could be 6-8+ years. Nowadays as their already slow hardware becomes even more obsolete, streaming apps are no longer updated and start to break, new ones are not released, etc. they go ahead and buy a new one.
You also have to accept all kinds of crappy agreements, so you can be spied on and get served ADS (?!?!).
Not to mention even the most expensive TVs come with baffingly slow hardware and software. $2k devices can take 10+ seconds to load the menu with 4 options, where you can modify picture settings. Incredible.
A TV should be a display with inputs and nothing more IMO.
Smart boxes are cheap and much faster than even the most expensive TVs, and they can be replaced inexpensively when eventually they become obsolete.
For a long time I pulled the network cable from my TV after I got tired of getting bombarded with changed ToS agreements, firmware updates and home screen ads. Now I have it on the network again just because I wanted to control the source from my PC, but it's still blocked from the internet on the firewall. Go ahead and make snapshots you stupid little TV.
> Not to mention even the most expensive TVs come with baffingly slow hardware and software. $2k devices can take 10+ seconds to load the menu with 4 options, where you can modify picture settings. Incredible.
Yes it's really curious how much worse technology has gotten in some dimensions in recent decades. Analog TVs would respond to inputs effectively instantaneously - if you changed the channel, the very next frame would be drawn from the new channel. My TV now takes multiple seconds to change channels.
Analog tvs would change in the middle of frames if you swapped channels.
Digital tvs are cursed to wait for the next key frame in the video to start displaying and providers are a-okay with very long waits for key frames as it improves their encoding efficiency and thus allows them to squeeze more channels on the lines.
> Digital tvs are cursed to wait for the next key frame in the video to start displaying
If they chose too, couldn't TV decoders pretend to have a all-gray keyframe as a starting point and apply the streaming diffs to that until the next true keyframe came? That would at least give some garbled image before snapping in. I'm sure most consumers would consider this "broken" though.
It doesn't need to be that bad if they cared about it. If channel is on the same band as previous one it could keep previous data in the buffer and decode it at once when switching.
While a separate smart device makes more sense from an ecological perspective, it won't save you from ads, tracking, screenshots etc., as long as the same OS that would be running on the TV is running on the device. And, if you want to install apps from streaming services, you need one of the supported OSs - AFAIK most smart devices use Android TV?
One benefit of a separate device, especially a small one like a Roku or Firestick, is you can take it on holiday with you to access all your services while away (assuming your destination has a TV with HDMI).
With smart boxes you have much more options. I'm thinking a stipped down android TV box doesn't make screenshots and track you like most smart TVs do, they also don't serve random ads on the home page.
Apple TV is really your best option if you want privacy. Google is primarily an ad company that wants to learn as much about you as possible to target those ads.
Just because Apple promises? There is actually zero evidence that apple is any better for privacy. Your absolute best option is something like a raspberry pi with an open source OS.
When companies have a privacy policy that says “we will spy on you and sell your information to whoever will pay us for it”, and then they do exactly that, that’s one thing. That’s the Google Experience™.
When companies have a privacy policy that says they won’t do that, and then they do, that’s an entirely different thing. They lied, and that puts them in legal jeopardy. It also hurts their bottom line.
Is it possible Apple is sneakily spying on you and selling your info to third parties in secret illegal deals? Sure, I guess? But I don’t think it’s super likely.
I mean... they tell you right on their webpage that track you and and use your private information (such as: location, current app, locale, device ID, ...).
Sure, it's a "random" identifier, ... tied to your exact location, soooo random.
The TV will still spy on you, and may even send frames for upstream classification. The only way to make sure is to never connect it to the network. And even then, I'd try to remove any wifi antennas.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, automated content recognition and analysis and advertising will apply to anything on your screen no matter the input source
Ok but if the tv has no internet access what is the smart tv going to do with all these nice screenshots? First rule: never provide Internet access to your smart tv.
There was some talk lower in the thread about devices being able to form mesh-networks with other devices that do have internet connection (for ex. your neighbour) and share data that way, there hasn't been any links or sources to the claims yet however
I mean, I remember people saying similar things about Google scanning Wi-Fi SSIDs to track their location. There was a point in time where people were saying that was conspiracy theory thinking.
Sure, it's practical, that's why most people don't have a separate smart box. That's why I called it a curse, because most people are being nagged with ads and being tracked on a level the article talks about.
Smart boxes can communicate with the TV (HDMI-CEC), and you don't have to ever use the TV's remote. If the box turns on, it turns on the TV and switches the source. Same with turn off. If you cast a youtube video to the box, the TV also turns on, etc. So it works completely seamless (at least in my case).
Oh wait, I just remembered regular TV channels exist, I guess you will still need the TV's remote for that.
Presumably you could just cut it off from the internet by dns filtering or setting up a vlan to only allow it to communicate to your locally hosted plex/jellyfish instance.
Yeah no, that's exactly what I mean (in context of the parent to which I've replied): streaming devices are likely capturing and phoning home screenshots of their own display output, too.
But yes, a smart TV programmed to do the same is even more unscrupulous given that it can 'spy' on everything it displays, to presumably include the input of connected devices.
We used to call them monitors [1], but a dumb TV at TV prices would be very appealing. Even more so because, with the smaller board brains, it might have more space for different inputs.
It will only be a matter of time until Congress realizes that among all the user tracking adtech companies there are also Chinese companies, at which point all user tracking including smart TVs will be banned.
That's... very optimistic. What evidence until now exists points to that outcome? You don't think they'll prefer the lazy route of targeting the Chinese companies themselves to avoid the real conversation?
I think Apple’s strategy here is going to pay off. Provide a box with an actual fast processor in it, a simple Home Screen with no ads, and an OS with no tracking. Somehow this is a revolutionary idea in this industry.
But slowly I’m seeing more people recommending the AppleTV, even amongst enthusiast circles which tend to be rather anti-Apple.
Kind of the opposite. I had heard of it happening, so looked for evidence, and found that HN post asking for evidence, with that random post seemingly the only bit supplied.
Shouldn't be hard to honeypot your TV into doing that - just set up a network and check if the TV connects to it, or set up sniffing at the gateway and see if there's any traffic that seems unaccounted for (as in not coming from your set-top box and suspiciously large for the periodic software update checks).
Yeah TV is not something everyone wants to play around with. Not even nerds. Especially if you have a partner which just want to watch tv. You just want to relax and watch tv without any issues.
I don't have much hands-on experience of Apple TV's, but the internet is full of mentions of a "Limit Ad Tracking" option that defaults to off (more tracking).
This is a very fuzzy memory, but I remember a report of a smart device that "helpfully" automatically connects to other devices nearby, forming a mesh network.
In other words, even if you never connect your TV to your WIFI, it might be enough that your neighbour does.
I don't think that's the same. Amz Sidewalk is very slow, low bandwidth over sub-GHz. What GP is thinking about is probably along the lines of, if not getting Internet access by the owner, willy-nilly connecting to any open wifi network it finds, and uses that.
But "meshing" with other apparatus from the same manufacturers is a clever and evil idea - perhaps another TV from the same brand is in range and has Internet, then they can proxy that way.
All these probably break some regulations or laws.
I tried searching for it, without much luck. I don't think I was thinking of Sidewalk, though. It was more like some TV manufacturer like TCL, LG, etc. The best I could find are some unconfirmed reports of devices automatically connecting to open WiFi, which doesn't quite match.
But I can't find anything now, so it might be best to consider it apocryphal.
My TV is a Raspberry 3B+ with a TV Hat and TVHeadend on my Android phone and tablets. My disconnected LG smart TV sits in a corner connected to an old PlayStation. I can use it to watch movies with friends if I want to: I connect to it either my laptop or my tablet with a HDMI cable.
BTW: why a smart TV? Because for only an extra 50 Euro I got a much better screen (subjective assessment) than the best dumb TV on sale when I went shopping for them years ago.
the bane of my existence. I have some older family dealing with serious cognitive decline and when it comes to my parents or in-laws I'm "the guy" so they will ask for my help navigating the TV because they are still understandably clinging onto satellite/cable while being forced to learn streaming.
I'm more than happy to help as this is an area of interest but man, what I would do to be able to set my father-in-law up with a TV, streamer, remote he can use consistently. When I bought an Apple TV I thought that would solve his problems when they housesat for us but his motor issues get in the way and he always forgets Siri. I raised this question of how do we better serve older adults a few times at an assistive tech conference and no one seems to have cracked the code yet.
FYI you can use a universal infrared remote with Apple TV, which might have larger buttons or a more familiar interface. I have mixed feelings myself about the "touchpad" in the apple remote.
They are making this increasingly difficult, though. I bought a Vizio TV years ago that came with a physical remote. At some point the firmware was updated in a way that the physical remote could only perform limited function, and to do anything slightly advanced (changing the input, brightness, things like that) you had to use their app. Which, of course, required connecting to the internet. Obviously this could have been avoided if I hadn't connected it to the internet in the first place and upgraded the firmware. But I didn't have that hindsight at the time. And I think some newer models don't even come with a physical remote. But, lesson learned: I will never even consider buying a Vizio ever again.
Alphonso inc. develops the tech https://lgads.tv/site-privacy-policy/. Looked into the LinkedIn of some of the employees and it looks like a huge operation.
I'm in the market for a new TV. Is there any source that lists models that do NOT engage in this sort of spying? I am willing to pay a significant premium and forego convenience features, but I lack the expertise to review products myself.
Sceptre is the last company I am aware of making modern TVs without smart nonsense in them targeted at consumers. All the other brands have converted completely over. I have had trouble with availability recently though.
I’m a privacy advocate but I just can’t pass up the otherwise amazing value of some of the smart tvs that have been released in the last few years, the size you can get for an reasonable price is incredible and for the first time is actually suitable at the viewing distance most people view a tv at. The colour, contrast and brightness is fantastic.
Having said that I added this block list to my router https://github.com/mboutolleau/block-samsung-tv-telemetry
You can add it to a pi hole or to your router of it supports black listed domains.
Sadly I can’t confirm if this blocks all Samsung tv’s shit.
You can also never connect it to the internet and use an apple tv or something over which you don’t have more control.
Look into “industrial” or “commercial” displays. Many of them are the traditional dumb display, but they may not have the refresh rate or other features you want in a consumer device.
You know that the smart box IS doing that, but you’re able to make the choice of which one to get. And it’s not coupled with the display so you can choose the best options in each category instead of being locked in to whatever OS is installed on better displays.
I think the safest option would be not to connect the TV to the internet and buy an OpenSource smart box for connections. If anybody has suggestions for smart boxes, please reply here!
This makes these screens a bit of an issue when eg accessing your bank. And it should be made clear to people that you must not connect a corporate or government devices to these screens.
(The fact that private citizens _should_ have the same security expectations notwithstanding, corporations and governments have more legal clout)
If they process personal data without explicit user consent, in violation of a privacy policy that outlines the types of data collected and how it is handled, it could be a GDPR violation. For example, if I cast photos of my children via Chromecast or entered my email into a Netflix app, and they send those images or my email sent to a server without my consent, this might also constitute a GDPR violation. It would be great if Max Schrems or a similar privacy advocate took up such a case.
That's why these days even TVs have cookie banners.
Most of them by default push you to accept and I guess that they are illegal under GDPR (the same happens on the web) but until we start seeing fine going down heavily the situation won't change.
Do they transmit this information anywhere? A lot of this can be attributed to the anti-burn-in tech that dims your screen if the image is mostly-static for a long time.
Its been known for years that some smart tvs do screen caps which is used for either ads or resold as data. So while I am sure there may be some use in anti-burn-in, we already know this is a revenue model for a number of the manufacturers.
They do this to match what you're watching to a database. Think Shazam but with video.
They find what movie, show or whatever you're watching and send it to advertisers with all your metadata, so they can match and track you from an ad impression to you visiting their site to get information and buy.
There's a lot of metadata there to match. If you access their site, for example with your phone, from the same internet connection, they can probably match the information from the TV with one of the tracking cookies on your phone, and then keep tracking you in all the commercial "journey".
This has been already discussed around here because this is one of the reasons smart tvs are so cheap right now, because they're being subsidized by advertisers. Some of the advertisers had in their sites information about their tracking capabilities. I'll try to find that link.
It should, but Americans spent tons of energy fighting consumer protections and complaining about the EU requiring them from US companies.
Hard to see this issue move forward, when the population considers corporate rights more important than personal privacy.
Heck, tons of people appeared out of thw woodwork to complaining about Right-To-Repair, but now that several states have required it, everyone loves having the manuals/parts.
Pretty sure they agreed to it. Whether or not that's actually enforceable will have to wait for a lawsuit and then a judge to decide. (You can't just say all EULA's are unenforceable)
Echoing from comments, most likely the image is scaled down and / or only fingerprints (think: Shazaam) are uploaded.
While the latter allows remote party to gauge what you're looking at it most likely doesn't infringe copyrights. But, as you mention, it might very well violate some of the HDCP fine print.
Someone needs to put a network sniffer on a bunch of different TVs and see exactly what traffic they're generating and how much. Sending 120 4k images per minute (or worse, 6000 for the LG) on a residential WiFi connection should be pretty obvious, and it should be fairly easy to block too.
Yes. A sequence of consecutive hashes would match to a TV show or movie identifier in a local database; and that identifier is all that needs to be uploaded until there's a new TV show or movie identified.
Use one of those perceptual hashing algorithms that work across noise and resolutions. Then you just need a tiny fingerprint sent per scan that can be aggregated across consumers.
What if any traffic is encrypted?
Taking snapshots is not sending them in the meaning that software can delete similarly looking images by their own definition of similarness.
And BTW that kind of testing is more needed for some industry critical equipment - processors with ME, routers, etc. TV is a brainrot thing for dumbs, nobody needs a TV which doesn't spy you.
Definitely not users (useds?) of proprietary software. Use monitors for privacy they do not have any urge to phone home.
I agree that the testing should be ubiquitous but if the device is crooked it is no sense in trying to figure up how exactly crooked it is. Maybe it uses steganography, maybe it is able to detect MiTM devices, some TVsets cease to keep working if the internal memory is 100% filled with pictures of what are you watching so no extra knowledge about the crooked device is useful if you have already agree to have Pavlik Morozov with microphone and videocam right in your bedroom.
> Smart TVs from Samsung and LG take screenshots of what you are watching even when you are using them to display images from a connected laptop or video game console
Best Buy sells the "DuraPro - Partial Sun Series 43" Class LED Outdoor Partial Sun 4K UHD TV (2023)" which is supposedly a "non-smart" TV. I just ran a search and don't know anything about it, personally. They could still be screenshotting AFAIK.
Frankly, I never understood why you'd ever want to connect your TV to any network rather than use an external device. Any convenience (?) you might get will be quickly offset by problems becoming inherent to your TV which doesn't make any sense to me.
For me it's home automation. I turn down the lights or switch to a movie scene whenever the TV turns on. Oh, and my external subwoofer also gets its power turned on/off the same way.
Now that I found some old links... This began to be more public since Vizio published their 2021 Q3 earning reports and it was made public that their profits from advertising and users data was more than double than what they made selling devices [0]. Roku themselves have said that they are in the Ad business, not in the tech business, and they were getting around $40 per user a month (also in [0]).
All these ACR (automated content recognition) systems mix and match data from what they can see in your screen, with your IP address, with cookies you have on different devices... soy they can match different devices you own.
For example, AudienceX says about ACR [1]:
Second-Screen Experiences: Being able to synchronize content across connected devices is vital for successful advertising. ACR lets you do this by identifying the content that viewers engage with most on a primary screen (such as a smart TV) and delivering similar or the same content to secondary devices such as mobile phones or tablets.
[...] Automatic content recognition relies on two main types of technologies—fingerprinting and watermarking—to identify and analyze content. However, ACR technology can be broadly categorized into three main types. These include: Audio Fingerprinting [...] Video Fingerprinting [...] Digital Watermarking.
The Drum news site says [2]:
Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a technology built into smart TVs that allow the set to see or hear what is being played on the television. [...] ACR gives advertisers the keys to go beyond impressions, to understand who is watching and when. When paired with digital ad libraries, advertisers can find exactly where their ads ran – the hour, on what network or streaming service – and understand the exact corresponding impressions for the specific occurrence of their ads. [...] You can even go as deep as zip code, reading further between the lines about the impact of advertising at a local level.
Grapeseed Media, that works with agencies to provide technology and plans, says [3]:
For example, let’s say your client is Nike, and you’re running a Connected TV campaign for Nike shoes. When a person sees your Nike ad on their CTV, you want to deliver a specific set of display banners to their mobile devices so that the next time they open up a browser on their phone, they see these banners.
One of the ways to do this is with ACR. You would contact an ACR vendor and give them all of the details of your campaign, and the ACR vendor would use their software to create an audience segment of people who have been exposed to your Nike shoe ad on CTV [Connected TV]. Then, they would send you that audience segment so you can target it with banners. Think of this data like a file that can’t be opened — you can see the title, but you can’t dive in. You can only upload it and target whatever is inside.
All of this happens in real-time...
Mountain advertising software company say that they know all the devices in your household and will match your "Connected TV" ad impressions with your visits from others of your devices... [4]
Seems like nowadays they're still around that number, although a bit smaller in 2023 ($39.92, down 4% YoY) [0]. They think it went down due to the growth of international users.
Do they get less money per user because they can't legally do the same things in other markets or maybe advertisers pay less for data or reach to non US markets?
What I see from their 4Q2023 report [1] is that they sell devices at a loss. Their gross revenue in "Devices" is negative $20K. And I guess that also includes any expense on advertising or promoting the devices, not only the hardware price.
I can't find if there's any mention anywhere about what percentage of their platform revenue is advertising and what is subscriptions, but they say:
We generate Platform revenue primarily from the sale of advertising (including direct and programmatic video advertising, M&E promotional spending, sponsorships, and related ad products and services), as well as streaming services distribution (including subscription and transactional revenue, the sale of Premium Subscriptions, and the sale of branded app buttons on remote controls).
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0: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/roku-80-million-active-accounts-earnings-1235826274/
1: https://image.roku.com/c3VwcG9ydC1B/4Q23-Shareholder-Letter-Final.pdf
I think they are just generating fingerprints of the video data on the device. Then they send it to the cloud where they compare it with a huge database of TV shows, etc.
> you may download one copy of such Content to a single computer or mobile device (as applicable) for your personal, non-commercial home use only, provided that you (a) keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) make no modifications to, and do not rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, copy (except to create a single copy for your own back-up purposes), or create any derivative works based on a Site or the Content, in whole or in part,
I would say thats commercial derivative works.
I think shazam had to agree permissions to sample works for fingerprinting.
I think, at this point, we can assume if it has a camera, microphone in the controller, connects to wifi, etc, it will be spying on you in some way. No list needed, just look for displays without those features.
I get around it by using PC displays as televisions, usually hooked up to a thinclient or SBC that I've purpose for media delivery. So, when I shop for a display, any feature beyond an HDMI port becomes wholly unnecessary to me.
Any modern Smart TV, I'd say that any of those made in the last 6 to 8 years. The feature is called ACR: "Automatic Content Recognition".
It's more a capability of the TV OS than the hardware model, although of course, more processing on the hardware gives you more ACR capabilities and it isn't usually listed on the device features.
Also, some of the brands have ACR under features named like "Samba TV" or "Live Plus", making it more difficult to find it on their setup menus.
There are sites that tell you how to deactivate ACR for different TV brands.
Edit: of course, you could disconnect your TV from the Internet. Some years ago there were rumors about TVs connecting to open wifi APs by themselves, but I think I haven't seen any proofs of that...
People usually replaced their TVs when they broke, which could be 6-8+ years. Nowadays as their already slow hardware becomes even more obsolete, streaming apps are no longer updated and start to break, new ones are not released, etc. they go ahead and buy a new one.
You also have to accept all kinds of crappy agreements, so you can be spied on and get served ADS (?!?!).
Not to mention even the most expensive TVs come with baffingly slow hardware and software. $2k devices can take 10+ seconds to load the menu with 4 options, where you can modify picture settings. Incredible.
A TV should be a display with inputs and nothing more IMO.
Smart boxes are cheap and much faster than even the most expensive TVs, and they can be replaced inexpensively when eventually they become obsolete.
For a long time I pulled the network cable from my TV after I got tired of getting bombarded with changed ToS agreements, firmware updates and home screen ads. Now I have it on the network again just because I wanted to control the source from my PC, but it's still blocked from the internet on the firewall. Go ahead and make snapshots you stupid little TV.