"Smart tv's have already beaten this one to the punch by a few years now."
Yes, but no technologically clueful or savvy person is buying or using a "smart tv". Those are "grandma devices" that get sold to the demographic still shopping at Best Buy (whatever that is).
The HN crowd thoughtfully buys computer monitors that don't connect to networks. Like an NEC commercial (airport) display.
As a very technologically savvy person, most TVs I have bought recently are "smart" TVs, just because that functionality happened to be included. I don't use it, but I imagine it's probably listening anyway.
This is the case for most non-technical people as well.
If I have a choice of a "smart" TV and a dumb one with the same panel, I pick the dumb one (it's also cheaper, but I'd probably pay extra). My "smart" TV in the living room would show ads on power-up until someone told me how to deactivate them. It still nags me to update its useless apps when I accidentally press the "internet" button on the remote.
Clearly you and your friends aren't the target market for smart TVs.
I know several people who actually use their TV's Netflix app, and occasionally Youtube or Pandora or something for music, but they're in the minority, and here's why.
Most people already own a TV, and have an HTPC/Xbox/Roku/Chromecast/whatever device that works for them. All that happens is the old device gets plugged into the new TV, and they're good.
Conversely, most of the people I know who use their smart TV's Netflix app have zero dedicated devices to play Netflix on their TV. The ones with Macbooks don't even own the whatever adapter to plug their laptop in using an HDMI cable I'd give them.
They also exclusively use Netflix and Youtube for online video, so the question of codecs on a downloaded mkv file never comes up.
You now know one. We do not own an Xbox/PlayStation-gaming system, or Roku/Apple TV-like streaming box in our living room. New LG TV came with "smart" features, and we use them (Netflix really) daily.
My brother does - or at least, I assume you're talking about the different apps that come installed on TVs these days. For example my brother uses it to watch Netflix, BBC iPlayer and another VoD service that I don't remember the name of. He also uses an Apple TV, but most of the time he just uses the television's interface.
my panasonic smart tv has a netflix app, but it's so clunky and unbearably slow that it's faster and easier to boot up a playstation and browse netflix on that.
They were planning to evaluate the reaction after they got caught and then determine whether to continue. Seems people forgot about the whole thing after a few months and I doubt it caused more than a blip in lost sales, so they're probably still doing it.
So if I buy a new TV the first thing I do is turn off WiFi connectivity. I pay for a bunch of features that nobody in their right mind would use if they thought through the consequences.
So don't give them your money! Yes, sometimes fighting against crap like this requires sacrifice. Right now, the people that are trying to normalize surveillance are betting that most people are too addicted to TV and won't go without.
This is one of the reasons some of us try to make a big deal about fighting "insignificant" things (the DRM module in firefox (EME) is a recent example). They aren't a huge issue today, but when left alone, the sacrifice required tends to grow.
