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Adding “smart” hardware & software into a TV is negative incremental cost, because they make a profit selling your viewing information. Source: I designed a pr

Adding “smart” hardware & software into a TV is negative incremental cost, because they make a profit selling your viewing information. Source: I designed a product that helped networks package up and sell ad space based on this data. I am so not proud of this.

cptskippy 7y ago
> Source: I designed a product that helped networks package up and sell ad space based on this data. I am so not proud of this. I wonder how many people have knowledge of shady crap like this but don't speak out because of shame or fear.
basch 7y ago
They track your viewing information from an hdmi source? I would hope most budget tvs decoding and analyzing the video to determine whats playing.
- c256 7y ago
  Yes, they can. The most pernicious version literally sends compressed screenshots to their data-harvesting services. Compression can be pretty aggressive, since they only really want to figure out what you’re watching, and they have a full database. This process is essentially a hash-table of screen content; they can use compression on screenshots because that hardware codec is heavily optimized and quite cheap (witness mobile streaming video usage). I have no idea which vendors/models currently do this, but several have been caught doing it in the wild; it’s not just theoretical. Things like pi-holes and avoiding ever ‘activating’ your smart tv can help stop it, but if you want to use the built-in Netflix (etc) app, or look for firmware updates, or use a built in Roku or similar, then you’re usually either doing something complicated (routing rules, pi-hole, etc) or giving in to your tv collecting data on you.
  - basch 7y ago
    It would make a lot more sense to send the has database to the device. If I wanted to block the TV from connecting I'd blacklist the Mac address on my router, not pihole, and just unlock it to update. If they stored all my screenshots or hashes forever then I'd lose.

cptskippy 7y ago

> Source: I designed a product that helped networks package up and sell ad space based on this data. I am so not proud of this. I wonder how many people have knowledge of shady crap like this but don't speak out because of shame or fear.

basch 7y ago

They track your viewing information from an hdmi source? I would hope most budget tvs decoding and analyzing the video to determine whats playing.

c256 7y ago
Yes, they can. The most pernicious version literally sends compressed screenshots to their data-harvesting services. Compression can be pretty aggressive, since they only really want to figure out what you’re watching, and they have a full database. This process is essentially a hash-table of screen content; they can use compression on screenshots because that hardware codec is heavily optimized and quite cheap (witness mobile streaming video usage). I have no idea which vendors/models currently do this, but several have been caught doing it in the wild; it’s not just theoretical. Things like pi-holes and avoiding ever ‘activating’ your smart tv can help stop it, but if you want to use the built-in Netflix (etc) app, or look for firmware updates, or use a built in Roku or similar, then you’re usually either doing something complicated (routing rules, pi-hole, etc) or giving in to your tv collecting data on you.
- basch 7y ago
  It would make a lot more sense to send the has database to the device. If I wanted to block the TV from connecting I'd blacklist the Mac address on my router, not pihole, and just unlock it to update. If they stored all my screenshots or hashes forever then I'd lose.