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by simoncion 3873 days ago
> ...unless they're starting to design TV's exactly for these "enhanced viewing experiences" and opening up a side-channel of profits to marketers and folks like Nielson.

This presumes two things:

1) Enough TVs are made with speakers that can reliably reproduce actually ultrasonic or subsonic vibrations.

2) Enough microphone ship on devices that can reliably detect actual ultrasonic or subsonic vibrations.

I don't see this happening any time soon.

Hell, it'll be easier [0] to get this sort of information from the cable company by way of the cable box attached to the TV, or easier and (probably) cheaper to get this info from video playing software [1] that runs on the TV, or the inbuilt CATV/OTA tuner. [2] Maybe mix in an approximate headcount from the camera embedded in the TV to "enrich" the data.

[0] From a market coordination perspective.

[1] YouTube or Netflix "tuners" or whatever.

[2] Assuming TVs even ship with those anymore...

1 comments

Cameras embedded in TVs? Apart from the Samsung "smart TVs" with an obvious camera that can be rolled in/out of use, are there really cameras on television sets? I've heard people talk about hidden cameras in set top boxes and tvs for at least a decade, but it always sounded like nonsense. It has the potential to go really bad if people discovered something like a camera hidden.
> Cameras embedded in TVs? ... I've heard people talk about hidden cameras in set top boxes and tvs for at least a decade, but it always sounded like nonsense.

I never asserted that the cameras would be hidden. :)

Like you said, cameras are embedded in at least one model of "modern" television. Either laziness or "gamification" can be used to get many folks to keep the camera in the in-use position.