Smart TVs have evolved into powerful data-collection devices, quietly turning living rooms into hubs for behavioral profiling and targeted advertising. As detailed in recent reporting on how manufacturers embed ads and tracking software across major brands like Samsung, LG, and Vizio, the same hardware that delivers 4K streaming also feeds viewing habits into commercial databases. With privacy regulations tightening in regions such as the EU, it has become easier than ever to disable or avoid these features without voiding warranties, giving viewers practical ways to transform invasive smart TVs into privacy-focused “dumb” alternatives.
The Rise of Smart TV Surveillance
Modern smart TVs rely heavily on automatic content recognition, or ACR, a technology that scans what appears on the screen frame by frame and matches it against a reference database. According to reporting on the Ars Technica guide to dumb TVs, this scanning runs regardless of whether viewers are watching broadcast channels, HDMI inputs, or built-in streaming apps, and the resulting data is sent to third-party analytics and advertising partners. For households, that means a single TV can reveal which news channels are watched, which movies are paused or rewatched, and how long children’s programming stays on, creating a detailed behavioral profile that would have been difficult to assemble from traditional cable boxes alone.
Once collected, this ACR data feeds targeted ad systems that reach far beyond the TV’s home screen, shaping what appears in streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu as well as in on-device banners and sponsored tiles. The same reporting explains that smart TV operating systems correlate ACR logs with app usage, search queries, and even voice assistant interactions, which allows advertisers to deliver highly specific campaigns, for example promoting a car model to viewers who just watched a racing series or pushing food delivery discounts after a cooking show marathon. For viewers, the stakes are significant, because this cross-service profiling can follow them across multiple platforms and accounts, turning casual viewing into a persistent marketing signal that is difficult to erase once it has been shared with advertising networks.
Opting for Dumb TVs from the Start
One of the most effective ways to avoid smart TV surveillance is to skip the “smart” features entirely and buy a basic display that has no internet connectivity. The same guide highlights that brands like TCL and Hisense now sell affordable non-smart LED and LCD models that function purely as panels, with HDMI ports but no built-in app store, voice assistant, or ACR module. For privacy-conscious consumers, this approach removes the primary data-collection channel at the hardware level, so there is no need to hunt through nested menus for opt-out toggles or worry about a future firmware update silently re-enabling tracking.
Retail availability has also shifted in favor of these simpler sets, after earlier shortages made them hard to find in mainstream outlets. Reporting on the dumb TV market notes that 2025 retail expansions have increased stock in chains like Best Buy and online platforms such as Amazon, reversing the trend from early 2024 when non-smart models were often limited to obscure brands or refurbished units. That change matters for households trying to balance cost and privacy, because basic panels typically sell for less than their smart counterparts and avoid the always-on processors that draw standby power for background analytics, which can slightly reduce energy use over the life of the device.
Disabling Tracking on Existing Smart TVs
For people who already own a smart TV, the most immediate step is to turn off ACR and ad personalization in the settings menus of the existing operating system. The Ars Technica guide describes platform-specific paths for Roku, Android TV, and webOS, explaining that Roku owners can disable “Smart TV experience” options tied to ACR, Android TV users can limit usage and diagnostics sharing, and LG webOS sets include separate toggles for viewing information and personalized advertising. These controls have become more visible as privacy regulations in regions like the EU have tightened, and the guide notes that firmware updates in 2025 made opt-outs more accessible compared to pre-2023 models, which often buried them several layers deep or split them across multiple submenus.
Manufacturers have also adjusted their data policies in response to regulatory and consumer pressure, which affects how effective these settings can be. Samsung, for example, now allows easier deletion of stored viewing data without forcing users to terminate their entire Samsung account, a change that reduces the penalty for choosing stronger privacy settings while keeping access to legitimate features such as warranty registration and app purchases. At the network level, the guide recommends adding a second layer of protection by using router-level blocks, either by blacklisting known tracking domains or routing TV traffic through a VPN, and notes that VPN integrations became standard in many consumer routers in 2024, giving households a practical way to prevent data transmission even if a future software update tries to re-enable ACR or telemetry.
Enhancing Privacy with External Devices
Pairing a dumb TV with a dedicated streaming device can deliver modern apps without restoring the full surveillance footprint of a smart panel, provided that the external hardware is configured carefully. The Ars Technica reporting points to streaming sticks such as Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV as viable companions, since both platforms include privacy dashboards that let users limit ad tracking, reset advertising identifiers, and restrict cross-app data sharing. When I follow those recommendations and disable interest-based ads, turn off voice recording retention, and avoid logging into unnecessary accounts, the TV setup becomes far more transparent, because I can see which device is responsible for each data flow and adjust settings or replace the hardware if policies change.
For viewers who want even tighter control, the guide highlights open-source alternatives like running Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, which can handle local media libraries and, after 2025 updates, offers improved compatibility with 4K content and modern codecs. In that configuration, the TV functions purely as a display while the Raspberry Pi handles playback without embedding third-party analytics SDKs or ad frameworks, which sharply limits the amount of behavioral data that leaves the home network. The reporting estimates that families in high-tracking regions such as the United States can reduce their exposure by roughly 90 percent when they combine a non-smart panel, a locked-down streaming stick or Raspberry Pi, and router-level filtering, a marked improvement over 2023 hardware limitations where ACR and telemetry were deeply integrated into the TV firmware and difficult to bypass without voiding warranties.
