>Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does

>Besides that, a cable company's set top box doesn't need to use any fancy HDMI tricks to snoop on what you're watching at any given moment: the cable box does that for them. I believe they were worried about the reverse - the (isolated, wifi-disabled) Smart TV using ethernet-over-HDMI to phone home.