Intel’s New TV Box Equiped With Spy Camera

We reported on the smart tv that Samsung released back in the spring of 2012 (Read that story here).

Since that time. Sony, LG and many other companies have followed Samsung’s lead. In fact the Sony television sets have a built in camera “to monitor the room and shut of the display if it is abandoned for a specified duration. It will also display a big warning sign should children (or adults, really) get too close for safe viewing. That same sensor allows the TV’s optional “Ambience Sensor” to adjust the display’s brightness according to lighting conditions and can adjust picture based on viewers’ positions in the room, too. What the camera won’t do, however, is work with the TV’s built-in Skype capability.”
Source

Could there be anything more Orwellian, than having a television in your living room. That is watching everything that you do?

Intel has recently announced the launch of the Intel tv box, and surprise, surprise. They are not going to be left behind in the Orwellian surveillance racket.

Intel’s new TV box to point creepy spy camera at YOUR FACE
One day we’re gonna watch you like it’s 1984
By: Bill Ray
theregister.co.uk

Intel has confirmed it will be selling a set-top box direct to the public later this year, along with a streaming TV service designed to watch you while you’re watching it.

The device will come from Intel Media, a new group populated with staff nicked from Netflix/Apple/Google and so forth. Subscribers will get live and catch-up TV as well as on-demand content – all delivered direct from Intel over their broadband connections. It’s a move which will put Chipzilla firmly into US living room, and no doubt ignite a host of privacy concerns from those who want to watch without being watched.

The announcement, made during an interview at the AllThingsD conference in California, isn’t a great surprise; rumours of an Intel play have been swirling around for the last year and sure enough Erik Huggers (VP at Intel Media) admitted that the company has been working on the device, and associated service, for the last 12 months. He didn’t say what the service will be called, but did say that the US isn’t ready for entirely à la carte options and that Intel will be selling bundles of content – though we’ll have to wait to see what they comprise.

More controversial is the plan to use a camera on the box to look outward, to identify the faces staring at the goggle box… telescreen-stylie. Intel will use that to present personalised options and targeted advertising, in a process which seems immediately creepy but might make sense to anyone who has tuned in to NetFlix to be told “Because you watched Power Rangers Ninja Storm…” We’re used to being watched while we’re web surfing, and those using Google Docs know the composition process contributes to their profile, but being watched on camera might be a step too far for some.

Huggers points out that the camera will have a physical shutter on the front, which can be closed, and that having the box recognise the viewers is simply easier than maintaining separate accounts, but Intel accepts that there’s a public-relations challenge ahead.
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