Be Careful with Your Smart TV

That is the reminder of The Verge page for Smart TV lovers. A smart TV has extremely complicated software inside, making it difficult for users to control it. This is a gap for manufacturers to profit through the information they gain from users.

Today, the basic TV series have become obsolete and unpopular products. But have you ever wondered why the manufacturer is so eager to sell us products with a variety of complex software that comes with those confusing functions? All for profit! The Verge news page confirmed.

Nowadays, Smart TV has become very popular and is also the main choice of users when shopping. The news website The Verge quoted Vizio representative as explaining to them why this product developed so rapidly. According to the company, basic TVs only function as a display screen of programs, without specific software like smart TVs. So sell a TV for you. But with Smart TV, through software pre-installed by the manufacturer, they become tools to generate advertising money whenever we hire or buy something through those TVs. And this is a new business model that helps TV makers earn significantly more profit than selling traditional hardware.

Along with that, every program we watch is carefully recorded by Smart TVs. Now, smart TVs always have a feature called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). Whatever type of content is on the screen, even if you transfer from a peripheral device to an HDMI port, the Smart TV will also collect pixels to send them to the manufacturer’s server. Accordingly, the company’s server will classify them as any movie or television program. At the same time, the company also knows what kind of program is playing on TV, how much time is. They will probably use the data collected from users to sell to advertising and marketing units to benefit. They don’t care how you watch it, using a cable or an external player, stream Netflix or any other video-watching application, as long as you see what your TV screen is playing, they are all recording.