Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

newscientist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 148 posts

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#41

Post by trckdhsbr »

Meniceses wrote: post #39
flacebo wrote: post #34

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 Nowadays as their already slow hardware becomes even more obsolete, streaming apps are no longer updated and start to break, new ones are not released, etc.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 agreemen…

A SmartTV is not a problem as long as it has HDMI Input. You don't like your SmartTV? Switch to HDMI Input and use your device. I find it very practical that my LG Smart TV has the normal core apps available and i do not want to have a second remote.

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

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#42

Post by jannes »

KaiserPro wrote: post #33

Sounds like wholesale copyright theft to me.

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.

Similar to what Shazam does for music.

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#43

Post by jannes »

idiotsecant wrote: post #25
citboin wrote: post #5

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.

All TVs are non-smart TVs if you don't give them internet.

Is this even possible nowadays? Maybe they already have an embedded 5G radio? (subsidized by advertisers)

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#44

Post by MavisBacon »

doublerabbit wrote: post #38
pmontra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meanwhile my 70 year old something mother wants to watch TV not having to rely on me for tech support when she does. For nerds, brilliant. I love such setups myself but for the household consumer it's an no-go.

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.

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#46

Post by mahkeiro »

trckdhsbr wrote: post #41
Meniceses wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A SmartTV is not a problem as long as it has HDMI Input. You don't like your SmartTV? Switch to HDMI Input and use your device. I find it very practical that my LG Smart TV has the normal core apps available and i do not want to have a second remote.

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.

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#48

Post by tjansson »

kleiba wrote: post #26

If you live in the EU, certainly you first have to give consent to that practice, right?

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.

Re: Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

#50

Post by flacebo »

rob74 wrote: post #36
flacebo wrote: post #34

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 agreemen…

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?

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.
Post reply on HN