#SAMBA INTERACTIVE TV BRAVIA HOW TO#
#SAMBA INTERACTIVE TV BRAVIA SOFTWARE#

It also underscored the need to keep an eye on this space. It made me wonder: If this type of tracking was so hard to pin down for someone who writes about this world for a living, how much would my friends and especially my parents understand when they set up a new TV? (I’m sure I join many people in moonlighting as occasional tech support for parents, who are brilliant but frequently digitally challenged.) “But what it does with respect to privacy is not something you really see on the marketing materials or the comparison review sites.” “When you’re thinking about buying a TV, you’re thinking about the resolution, the color depth, you think about the price,” said Jonathan Mayer, an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University and a former technology adviser at the Federal Communications Commission. The experience illustrated how difficult it is to discover how companies may be tracking people on their televisions, which many advertisers see as the final frontier of consumer data.

They can also consult guides like this one from Consumer Reports to change their settings without resetting their sets. Consumers who are worried about this can reset their TVs through their settings and navigate the set-up again, paying close attention to each screen. Samba TV, while standing by the clarity of its original setup message, told me through a spokesman that it had been rolling out a new, detailed message, which it sent to me over email. For someone who likes to do these things on my own, it was incredibly frustrating. And the controls vary even across their own models.

#SAMBA INTERACTIVE TV BRAVIA HOW TO#

While Sony and other companies do provide information on how to enable or disable “Samba Interactive TV,” Sony’s website didn’t show me how the service might appear during setup or explain what information it would be gathering. When I explained that I was concerned about privacy and data tracking on the sets, I was told - with a strange look - that I could visit the manufacturer’s website for that information. I was excited about playing detective as I strode into the Best Buy near Lincoln Center, but my confidence quickly gave way to disappointment when I was told that the TVs were on “demo mode” and could not be reset. One of my sources suggested visiting an electronics store and resetting a few televisions.

#SAMBA INTERACTIVE TV BRAVIA SOFTWARE#

But even if I did that, I could end up with models without Samba TV’s software (and the strange problem of a TV collection in the office). The best way, of course, would be to buy a bunch of TVs. Much of the data that Samba TV collects comes from people who have agreed to enable its recommendation software while setting up a TV from one of more than a dozen brands, including Sony and Sharp.īut it quickly became clear that it’s incredibly difficult to figure out what consumers see and agree to when they set up smart TVs.

But I asked dozens of friends about it, and they had never heard of the company. The company told us that it was collecting data from 13.5 million smart TVs in the United States.

A big question for us was how Samba TV was obtaining consumers’ permission to track their viewing habits.

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