Where Have All the TV Cameras Gone? (theverge.com) 59
TV manufacturers are abandoning their attempts to turn TVs into interactive social devices through smart cameras. Sky announced this month that it will discontinue Sky Live, a camera accessory for its Sky Glass televisions that brought video calls, body-tracked workouts, and motion games to the living room. The device will stop working at the beginning of December. Sky will brick the cameras and reimburse customers. Sky launched the product in mid-2023 as part of an effort to transform televisions from passive viewing devices into interactive platforms.
That vision has not materialized across the industry. LG's Smart Cam, released in 2023, is out of stock at major retailers and appears discontinued. TCL's smart TV camera is no longer available. Samsung stopped integrating cameras directly into its television sets, though it still sells an external camera accessory.
That vision has not materialized across the industry. LG's Smart Cam, released in 2023, is out of stock at major retailers and appears discontinued. TCL's smart TV camera is no longer available. Samsung stopped integrating cameras directly into its television sets, though it still sells an external camera accessory.
Surprising! (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't like having cameras streaming from their bedrooms and livingrooms. I'm shocked.
Re: Surprising! (Score:4, Funny)
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And the people who are into having a camera in their bedroom want to get paid per minute.
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Yup, public perception around your TV having a camera is pretty negative.
Also the cynic in me thinks they have microphones and can use audio processing systems to sus out details about how many people are in the room and all that data they want anyways.
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Also the cynic in me thinks they have microphones and can use audio processing systems to sus out details about how many people are in the room and all that data they want anyways.
Seems like most cable systems and plug-in such as Amazon's smart TV steaming stick et cetera do have microphones in the remotes.
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Not just the remote.
They mention the microphone button on the remote, they do not specify that how many microphones are in the rest of their system.
Multiple microphones are great for echo cancellation (occasionally mentioned) AND for being freaking microphones!
Smart speaker lifecycle (Score:2)
The smart speaker, smart home, two-way TV, etc. has run its ~10 year course from extreme hype, adoption, frustration and losing eyeballs to the "next shiny thing".
Manufactures would be smart to just make their product achieve its purpose and not much else, and let the smartphone do the extras.
Not every device should be a subscription platform.
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I, for one, absolutely shocked that the market rejected cameras from companies that unironically file patents like US8246454B2. Can't imagine any possible reason people might have objections to things like that.
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"...1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods, systems and computer programs for adding content to streamed media, and more particularly, methods, systems and computer programs for embedding advertising within television programming.
Re: Surprising! (Score:1)
What if they just adked if I was vegetarian and stopped sending me so many meat ads?
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That would clear the way for them to send you more ads for things you'd be more likely to buy. Good thinking!
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Anyone who has read George Orwell's 1984 will be at best ambivalent about having such a device in their home, is "Big brother" AI?
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Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:
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People don't like having cameras streaming from their bedrooms and livingrooms.
Those same people also carry around a smartphone 18+ hours a day, armed with at least two HD cameras and a 3D microphone array. Boardrooms. Bedrooms. Bathrooms. Bathtubs. They carry that everywhere. At least the unread TV EULA only violates from the wall it's bolted to.
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked people are still shocked about people.
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Did you type this on your phone with the camera pointed at your face? The real reason is, we don't need it. The same reason I don't have a webcam on my home PC despite video calling family members weekly, I don't need it, I already have it in my hand, and I can get up and walk around with that one.
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People don't like having cameras streaming from their bedrooms and livingrooms. I'm shocked.
Without getting paid, anyways.
Why brick them? (Score:2)
"Sky will brick the cameras"
FFS, this is just spite. Sky won't be asking for the cameras back so what difference does it make to them if the cameras still work or not? The reimbursement should be for the removal of the service, not the hardware itself but no doubt if there's no confirmation of bricking there'll be no refund.
Yet more e-waste created by c-suite morons.
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Sky will brick the cameras and reimburse customers
That was the full sentence from the summary, either you stopped reading after five words (short attention span?) or the summary was changed after you read it.
Re: Why brick them? (Score:2)
You ever thought of reading a post before you reply to it? Just an idea.
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More likely they probably won't even bother to kill the camera, just create another press release saying they did.
Cost savings (Score:2)
Omitting the camera saves the consumer the minor cost of having to use up a square inch of electrical tape.
Yeah let's tie your viewing info with biometrics (Score:2)
I think it's pretty simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think most people think things through enough to even consider the privacy implications of having a camera on their television.
This just seemed like an obvious swing-and-miss on the part of the manufacturers. TVs are passive consumption devices, and that's exactly what people want them to be.
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Yeah, but the heart was in the right place - because videoconferencing is a thing after all (and was a thing pre-pandemic). So instead of everyone in a family gathering around a phone to say hi to grandma, they could do it from the living room sofa.
Conference bars are expensive - even if you go for the non-smart ones they're still pretty pricey
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Absolutely, they may post about it on Facebook while a camera points at their face, why should they care about the TV?
The reality is that most people simply consider it a downgrade. Why fix a camera used only for communication into the living room when you already have one in your hand which is portable.
I know where they've gone. (Score:2)
All the integrated cameras in "smart" TVs have gone straight to hell where they belong.
If I want a camera on my god damn TV, I'll very well plug one in via USB.
Zoom (Score:2)
It would be nice to use my TV for Zoom, but I certainly don't want the camera gathering data for its own purposes. The screen scraping that smart TVs do is bad enough.
Story reminds me of the Jimmy Carr joke... (Score:2)
He has a joke "You know I can see you" that he targets at live audience members who act like they are watching television.
Headline of the story is not helpful. Should have been "in-tv-cameras" or "cameras-with-TVs"...
But now I'm wondering if TikTok can watch back? Or is this just an idea for a fresh form of app perversion? You didn't notice that the ToS gives us the right to capture everything we can get from your front and back cameras, plus you gave us permission to use AI to search for the funniest bits
If they were up your ass you'd know where theywere (Score:1)
People don't want Telescreens (Score:2)
Cell phones bypassed the TV (Score:5, Interesting)
The phone is superior in most ways, from the perspective of the pushers - usually maps to a single person, always with them, location trackable, etc. About the only advantage of the TV is being a big screen, but that doesn't seem to matter for much.
Another big one is there's no central player to lay the rails and the big players have competing interests. But I really think the deciding factor is just that the money folks don't see a need for a QVC "buy now" button.
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There are multiple reasons, but I think the biggest is that a different interactive screen ate TV's lunch.
Not so much ate the lunch, but invited people over for brunch beforehand leaving them full and uninterested for a second meal. We're talking about a feature being pushed only in the last 10ish years. The interesting part about that is that by this time everyone already had a phone.
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People were talking about it back in the 50s, probably earlier. But the earliest deployment in the US of something plausibly called interactive TV was Qube [wikipedia.org] in 1977.
There's a parallel universe in which the US ended up with a cable-TV-based version of Minitel [wikipedia.org].
No one wants their TV spying on them... (Score:2)
One of the things that stuckwith me is the point they made about vector for the most infected / hijacked electronic device genre in the world, which turned out to be "smart" TV's, refrigerators, washing machines and other home appliances that should have never had access to the internet.
Another thing that theypointed out, that I later learned in college when taking some EE classes related to the car canbus, is how little to non-existent most ma
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The same can be said about building automation systems, security systems, HVAC systems, etc. I worked in physical security (key cards, cameras, alarms and the like) for over a decade and a half and the utter lack of security on many of the products was appalling. For example AMAG, the second largest vendor of key card systems, only supported MSDE or SQL 2000 with no service packs until 2012. The most expensive security camera that I ever had to install had one user, root, with a hard coded password of 12
Tele-Vision is meant to be a passive device. (Score:2)
You in the corner- writing in your journal (Score:2)
Can't find it but there was an SNL skit where Steve Martin gets a free large screen tv installed, as part of big brother surveillance (late '70s - early '90s I think). That pretty much brought home dangers of cameras on tvs, to teenage me.
Because you have to support the apps that use them (Score:3)
I had a smart TV that included an integrated camera and a Skype app for video conferencing. The app worked for about two years until we received a notice that it was too old a version to use anymore. A newer version of Skype wasn't available for my smart TV series. Nor were any alternative video conferencing apps.
This is why I dismiss any smart features in a TV. The industry is notorious for orphaning their products. Why should I come to depend on a feature that will likely disappear in a year or three?
Similar view when it comes to smart infotainment systems in automobiles, too.
Planned obsolesence (Score:2)
What if instead of creating a device that lasts for a few decades, they made your TV something you replace every couple of years? Sure, they're subsidising the $3,000 e-waste slab with future ad sales of sports betting for your kids' play room, but the good numbers must go up. Samsung must meet quarterly earnings expectations or doom will happen.
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I wouldn't call this particular one as planned. It's a case of total disconnect between the move-fast-and-break-things crowd who set the online protocols ... and everyone else.
The TV makers are in the middle trying to glue it together. There was a great demonstration of this here in New Zealand a few years back when we co-hosted the Rugby World Cup with Australia. The largest local telco purchased the exclusive coverage rights and told the whole country they had to view it via streaming only.
After much p
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This is why I dismiss any smart features in a TV. The industry is notorious for orphaning their products.
So very much this. We have a TV with a Netflix app that can't watch Netflix. We have another TV with a SteamLink app that I can't play games with because a firmware update was rolled out that bound left stick up and down to the volume control on the TV making it impossible to play games using SteamLink. That was incidentally the last firmware update released.
For companies which largely have no problem supporting mobile phones for years on end they fucking suck at this TV thing.
People don't want telescreens (Score:2)
Although if the US government keeps up with it's current antics, it might force them down the people's throats in the future
Telescreens are from 1984 for George Orwell.
Maybe the cameras are still there... (Score:1)
They may have just stopped telling us they are there...
Wow, socking! (Score:2)
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"Security flaws" are not necessary in a lot of these cases, for the most part if you can reach the TV's IP address you can get to the camera because they put **NO** thought into securing it any further than that.
Maybe the microphones will go next (Score:2)
It always surprised me that people would allow an Internet-connected camera that they could not control into their house. I am surprised now that the TV companies are abandoning this rich and intrusive source of information about the people who buy their products, but I am pleased to see that it is happening. Maybe next they will remove the microphones that can spy on you from their TVs.
Where have the what gone? (Score:2)
I can't say (in Australia) I have ever seen a TV with a camera. I had to google, then gemini to confirm that this was even a thing. Apparently it is, but very much not a standard feature.
I can barely imagine a use case for this, why would you use a TV and not a computer?
People are crazy.