Rob Pegoraro

Special for USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS – Television vendors are still struggling to tune into privacy concerns.

The exhibits at CES here once again feature lusciously bright TVs, a little larger and a little thinner than last year’s crop and buzzing with even more streaming-media apps. But if you’re looking for TVs with less of an appetite for your viewing data and more ways to curb that hunger, this gadget gathering is mostly dead air.

That sets them apart from such tech firms as Apple and Google, which have either made privacy a core selling point or have given their customers more tools to limit how much of their data gets scooped up. Meanwhile, connected TVs continue to track what you watch to recommend other shows and movies and allow their vendors to make more money with targeted ads.

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Among the major television vendors, Samsung at least acknowledged privacy concerns in a press event Sunday evening.

Saying “We need to discuss privacy,” consumer-business executive vice president Joe Stinziano said the Korean firm would ship a Privacy Choices app to disclose what data its TVs collect and make it easier to control that.

But he didn’t describe its features further, and Samsung does not have this app available for inspection at its enormous exhibit in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In an interview after Samsung’s event Sunday, vice president of TV product marketing Andrew Sivori said Samsung would ship this app for TVs as old as 2015 models.

“We know how critical privacy is to consumers,” he said. “We want to make sure we're just being very transparent about us.”

Other TV manufacturers couldn’t even provide such a low-resolution picture of their privacy plans. For example, LG and Vizio didn’t mention the topic – even though Vizio paid $22 million in fines in 2017 for burying its sets’ data collection in an arcane and deceptive interface.

Representatives for those three firms did not answer questions about whether they would revise their privacy interfaces or adopt such data-minimization practices as doing more personalization on each TV instead of in the cloud – what Apple calls “on-device intelligence” and Google terms “federated learning.”

Recent surveys of the data-privacy tools provided on major brands of connected TVs suggests they fall well short of those in such streaming-media players as Roku and Amazon’s. The latter’s Fire TV models, for example, make tracking opt-outs available two clicks into their settings apps.

Amazon and Roku’s software also runs on some brands of connected TVs--TCL was an early adopter of Roku – and both firms announced more deals with TV vendors at CES.

But will users shop with privacy in mind? Two analysts suggested most won’t, considering how data collection subsidizes TV prices and demonstrated enthusiasm for always-listening smart speakers.

“The dirty little secret in the TV industry is that ever-lower prices are driven in part by payment for user data,” emailed Techsponential founder Avi Greengart.

“I think Samsung is trying to build a differentiator rather than responding to a strong market need,” emailed Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies. “We have so many screens and mics in our homes that if you are worried about privacy, you have more important data than the TV.”

Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.