Comment by seemaze
13 hours ago
As someone who hasn’t owned a television in decades, why would a TV even need a microphone in the first place?
How many other household devices have a microphone whose primary function is orthogonal to recording audio?
There are lots of good reasons that are used to paper over the abuse cases.
Microphones in tvs are a useful accessibility feature when they enable voice commands for the user, and allow them to be used as voice assistants.
They also enable tvs with a camera and microphone to be used as video calling or audio calling interfaces. Used well we get star Trek view screens, used poorly we get little brother monitoring.
For those interested, it turns the tv into an interactive terminal for voice and camera powered video games, which are becoming more popular.
Unfortunately advertising and tracking incentives drive the abuse cases to the top and will crush the positive use cases :(
Like I do with laptops, just snip wires (or pull out header/connector) to microphone and camera. Problem partly solved.
Fully solve it by disconnecting network cable/Wi-Fi so there's no internet.
For me a TV set only receives FTA signals and has connectors for local media/AV input. It ceases to be a TV set when it starts doing what my PCs and laptops do.
(Anonymity is the reason why FTA broadcasting is still so very important, by design it's only one-way — broadcaster to listener/viewer. Unfortunately smart TVs and the internet subvert anonymity by design.)
There's no practical reason for most people. Spying is the primary function. Edge cases like accessibility or conferencing can be easily enabled with an add on USB mic. You'd need a USB webcam with mic for conferencing anyway.
People use voice commands on TV remotes all the time if they're using streaming apps. At this point it's the default way to interact with the UI for many people.
Typing out the show you're searching for with an awkward onscreen keyboard is a huge pain compared to just clicking a button and speaking.
HN users are very much in a bubble if it's surprising to learn consumers expect voice control functionality on a new TV.
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Accessibility is not an edge case. Every single human being who lives long enough will experience some form of accessibity challenge, either for themselves or for others around them.
You can dismiss the lives experience of most humans over the history of humanity, but it won't win you any arguments.
Are there any useful resources for finding devices that don't have surveillance apparatus built in?
I'm still not purchasing a television. The last thing I need is more screen time in my life.
You'd be looking for what's now called a "dumb tv". But those are getting rare, because TVs that can't sell your watch data have to be more expensive to make up for that, and that doesn't sell. Commercial screens are an option, as are computer monitors. Or getting a smart tv and never connecting it to the internet. So far nobody has started shipping TVs with a mobile connection to exfiltrate data, as far as we know. Unlike cars.
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> Microphones in tvs are a useful accessibility feature
Made nearly moot by the presence of microphones in most (all?) modern remotes.
I say nearly moot because its worth noting the ability to operate a physical remote may itself be prohibitive to some.
So in effect, there are a multitude microphones in a modern LG environment.
a tv may be the only shared device in low income homes.
Voice recognition is really useful when searching. It's annoying to type with a TV remote. Also you can just say what you want like "play breaking bad on Netflix" and it'll just do it.
Edit: also the mic in the remote has a function to calibrate the speakers to the room (correcting for the impulse response of the room basically) which can make the audio much better.
Since you're using it for Netflix, etc I assume it has unrestricted Internet access. With that and microphone access, you're giving tacit permission to capture and upload basically whatever it wants, to whoever it wants.
That seems unwise, no matter how helpful the features are.
Every speaker can be used as a microphone if the circuitry is added to do so.
Many common SOC's MediaTek, Realtek, and Broadcom SOC's quite often used modern audio capable devices analog pins can be software defined either input or output.
IIRC I saw already Bruce Schneider's blog some team proof of concept where they listened using laptop speakers what was spoken in that room. Audio quality wasn't perfect, but it making sense what was spoken was good enough.
"…I saw already Bruce Schneider's blog some team proof of concept where they listened using laptop speakers what was spoken in that room."
Users need to know the electrical features of their H/W and its limits. If a loudspeaker output stage is designed (hardware wired) so that it can never act as an input then no later firmware update can turn the speaker into a microphone.
This is why hardware authentication is becoming more and more important.
limits
Even the screen itself can be used as a microphone, and a pretty good one, too.
1984 purposes.
Orwell's 80 years ahead of his time. The great unwashed who watch Netflix etc. either don't know or don't care that they're mirroring the closing moments of the book.
The warning has been there for 80 years and still most are unaware. When Vespasian built the Colosseum it was to help rule over the unruly. Netflix and ilk are its modern incarnation.
Of course it is needed in a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen ...
Some "smart" TVs could do skype in the past, I'm not sure if they needed external headsets of worked with builtin mikes.