Don't mess with Texas....

[eastof111]

Getting harder and harder to watch tv lately... I guess Sony will be next to add this "useful" feature to help you "enjoy" watching tv. /sarc

Texas sues TV makers for taking screenshots of what people watch

The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users' data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can help mask the network data collected by Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology, but it does not directly "block" the ACR feature itself. ACR runs locally on your smart TV or device, taking screenshots or analyzing audio, and a VPN only encrypts the traffic as it leaves your network.

 

[lme]

I think that's the reason for lower prices on smart tv these days: spying & seling the user activity to the advertising companies.
Same story as of microsoft: they make more money from seling user activity then from seling the new electronic devices price. Everything in comerce today is based on spying the user. Looks like a new type of "cold war" !