"Hey. Put on that black bra, it's over there..."
Extremely cheap market research.
To be honest, I don’t see anything wrong with this capabiliy as long as users are aware it is there and are given the chance to opt in. The default should be “off”. And there should be a sizeable cash bonus or rebate for turning it on. If the new HDTV was $300 with it on vs. $600 with it off, a lot of people would go for it, and the company would have two revenue streams.
They were just cutting into the business of the cable, phone, and satellite companies that monitor through their set top boxes and then profit from the data. They must not have donated enough to the Clinton Foundation.
"Hey. Put on that black bra, it's over there..."
With cable or satellite, a tv is essentially just a monitor. Without relying on the tuning capabilities of the device, how can the manufacturer determine what is being viewed. We all know of course that third-party content providers know and archive viewing habits.
Why does The FTC get the money?
1984 was a “How to” book.......................
I’ve got a Vizio, but I’ve never hooked up to the Internet, and probably never will.
This is what pisses me off about fines like this, import/export taxes, luxury tax, etc. The gov’t does nothing productive in this, but collects the money. The Visio people should get the money, not the FTC. Look at the windfall profits tax the gov’t collected on oil. You and I saw no relief at the pump, but the gov’t pocketed the taxes. Why is it obscene for an oil company to earn 9% on gross revenue and take all those risks to produce oil which finds the tree-huggers cheering, but those idiots feel it’s perfectly okay for the gov’t to levy a 15% tax on each gallon of distillate fuels taking no risk and producing nothing? Yeah, I know that some of that goes toward roads, but it’s a small percentage. Some portion of it ends up buying votes via the free cell phone for deadbeats and similar programs. Idiots...
In America, television watches you.
Almost all devices that connect to the internet collect data. Where it goes from the pot is unknown. Personally I could care less. What gets me “upset” is when the data collection interferes with my speed and connectivity and I end up paying for it through data charges. I have two ad blockers on my Firefox browser that prevent ads from interfering.