We’ll lose some precision in the data because it’s biased against grandma, but good enough to sell the reports.

It may be $25/unit, but if 9/10 put their device on the network anyway, that’s $250/useful outcome.

That will single handedly kill ratings for CBS.

My argument is more that from a cost point of view we are pretty much at the point it could be done, Not that I think it will happen any time soon (Reg's about data collection around the world are beginning to tighten up, personally I think getting the lawyers to draft up the paper work for an always connected TV for data collection alone is gonna be more the sticking point then the cost of the equipment/data to do so).

But I get what your trying to say. Time to spin up a Software Defined Radio and start faking cell towers so your TV thinks it's in the EU :-P

[0] I expect any day now we’ll get “subscription TVs” (as in, the actual hardware). We’re already there with headphones. https://www.channelnews.com.au/nuraphone-launch-subscription...

I can totally see a month to month plan for getting a TV (the 50" is $260, so you could do a $20/month and come out ahead after the first year).

"If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or Switzerland, with respect to transfers to the U.S. of certain personal information collected in connection with your use of Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and its subsidiary Samsung Research America, Inc. are certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the European Commission and Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, respectively, regarding the transfer of certain personal information from the EEA and Switzerland to the U.S."

If you're not in the EU, the EU doesn't have jurisdiction, period. They can say whatever they want but it doesn't mean anything. I'm sure China would love to enforce their laws worldwide too, but it doesn't work that way.

You’re free to ignore the GDPR but don’t be surprised if they arrest you if you ever visit.

EDIT: One thing that "might" work is a repair remote / repair menu. On the LG TV's in my house the repair menus allow you to change things like what HDMI mux the TV is expecting (I can't recall if the WiFi Module was included in such menus, but if it is you could change it to something its isn't and hopefully break connectivity. I'll have to dig out my repair remote and play around in the menus again).

IR interface buffer overflows anyone?

Sounds to me like connecting it once, then resetting WiFi password will do the trick?

Samsung could throw in the cheapest caps they could find from Shenzhen Markets, but they usually come with a decent brand (at least in the TV's I've taken apart in the past couple of years).

Sneaking in the extra cost of the modulke to the customer (if its as low as $5) will be pretty easy as long as the rev generated from the data collection is more than the data charges they are billed for (omitting the cost of dev'ing the FP'ing software and generating the FP's in your server farm).

EDIT: The 3 years of service was just a random number plucked out of the air. A length of time that could be used to study to see if the costs would be worth it (and a number I picked from experience with updates / new features no longer being pushed to smart TV's). If they found its not worth it, they could drop the service 12 months in and not have to pay for the 2 years left on the experiment (thus reducing the cost again).

The manufacturers have the numbers (number of units sold vs the number of units phoning home) to know if it would be a worthwhile endeavour. Just making the point that we are pretty much at the point where the costs of such connectivity is not a huge sum in the grand scheme of things.

Even if we assume ads are nothing more than an annoyance with $0 value, the "with ads" version may still be beneficial to Amazon. That's if people with a lower budget tolerate ads and those with a high budget don't. If they only sell the expensive ad-free version, they will lose the low-budget customers, if they sell the ad-free version at the with-ads price, they lose money from people who are ready to pay more. Ads here are just a market segmentation tool. Just like it is common for low end products to be the same as their high counterparts but with disabled features.

Can you point to another Amazon produced product where they achieve segmentation by making the same product and then disable features on the cheap one?

Prime video, amazon fresh. i believe the latter is no longer available outside of Prime. I think Prime shipping itself also counts here, given the changes over the years.

Edit: spelling

In their mind $25 is a steal.

you can sell these products to broadcasters, brands, ad agencies, tv show producers and even to election campaigns !!

And that’s why you have 50” LCDs selling for $300 in the USA.

Faraday Cage

Thinking about it, That is an added bonus... ;-)