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Why do they (LG and Samsung) not fingerprint things streamed from a phone, but do fingerprint anything coming over HDMI? And why do they fingerprint their own F

Why do they (LG and Samsung) not fingerprint things streamed from a phone, but do fingerprint anything coming over HDMI? And why do they fingerprint their own FAST services, don't they know what they showed already?

bottom999mottob 2y ago
I'm trying to find more information about these 2 companies fingerprinting or hashing anything coming over HDMI. Do you have sources? I thought disconnecting my smart TV from internet to be enough to stop the transmission of any ACR data. My concern would be if they store any ACR data locally and queue it for data collection vs if they stream it.
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  It is in the paper: "We find that: (1) ACR network traffic exists when watching linear TV and when using smart TV as an external display using HDMI"
  - card_zero 2y ago
    But also that they send it in batches every 15 seconds (Samsung) or every minute (LG). The question is whether an offline TV will lie in wait to send all the data it collected in one massive batch, when and if it gets online. That wasn't tested.
NegativeLatency 2y ago
Might be easier to aggregate data if it’s all coming in in a similar way?
- card_zero 2y ago
  Coming back to this, I see it's in the paper. There's a mention of copyright, and then: > Netflix prefers to have ACR deactivated during its streaming “in order to preserve the integrity of its subscribers viewing experiences and maintain sole control over measurement of its viewership” (Verance, 2020). The same reasoning applies to FAST channels, which LG and Samsung consider to be ”aggregator apps” (Wolk, 2023), where providers may have agreements restricting ACR usage. In other words, FAST comes from other providers, who may complain. Random content over HDMI doesn't. However, this doesn't explain why they ignore video streamed from phones (tablets, laptops, etc) wirelessly.

bottom999mottob 2y ago

I'm trying to find more information about these 2 companies fingerprinting or hashing anything coming over HDMI. Do you have sources? I thought disconnecting my smart TV from internet to be enough to stop the transmission of any ACR data. My concern would be if they store any ACR data locally and queue it for data collection vs if they stream it.

Eisenstein 2y ago
It is in the paper: "We find that: (1) ACR network traffic exists when watching linear TV and when using smart TV as an external display using HDMI"
- card_zero 2y ago
  But also that they send it in batches every 15 seconds (Samsung) or every minute (LG). The question is whether an offline TV will lie in wait to send all the data it collected in one massive batch, when and if it gets online. That wasn't tested.

NegativeLatency 2y ago

Might be easier to aggregate data if it’s all coming in in a similar way?

card_zero 2y ago
Coming back to this, I see it's in the paper. There's a mention of copyright, and then: > Netflix prefers to have ACR deactivated during its streaming “in order to preserve the integrity of its subscribers viewing experiences and maintain sole control over measurement of its viewership” (Verance, 2020). The same reasoning applies to FAST channels, which LG and Samsung consider to be ”aggregator apps” (Wolk, 2023), where providers may have agreements restricting ACR usage. In other words, FAST comes from other providers, who may complain. Random content over HDMI doesn't. However, this doesn't explain why they ignore video streamed from phones (tablets, laptops, etc) wirelessly.