About & sourcing

The rule

Every claim on this site has a source attached. No source means it shows as unverified, not a guess — even when that's a less satisfying answer than a clean yes or no. Year and platform version are safe to work out from a model number. Whether a specific TV has a microphone isn't, so that one only ever comes from a source, never an inference.

What this site covers

Opt Out Of explains what the devices you use collect, and exactly which settings change it. It starts with TVs: for each model, whether it has a built-in microphone, whether it runs automatic content recognition (ACR), whether it's reported to scan the local network, and whether it still gets updates, with a source for each answer. The answers depend heavily on the model, not just the brand.

We distinguish designed behavior (documented in a manufacturer's own settings and privacy policy, like LG's ACR, "Live Plus") from research findings on modified devices. For example, a 2026 Gamers Nexus / Level1Techs report on LG TVs recording audio in standby came from a TV the researchers had rooted, which is a different claim from what a stock TV does. Where possible we cite the manufacturer's own documentation over descriptions of it.

What this site is not

Not affiliated with or endorsed by LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, VIZIO Inc., Roku Inc., Sky UK Limited, TCL Technology, Hisense Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation, Philips, TP Vision, Panasonic Corporation, Walmart Inc., Best Buy Co., Inc., Toshiba Corporation, Amazon.com, Inc., or Element Electronics.
Not a general TV review or buying guide.
Not commercial — no ads, no affiliate links, no sponsorship.
No cookies, no ads, no third-party requests beyond what's disclosed here. This is a static page with a JSON file. Page views are counted using Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies, doesn't fingerprint your device, and doesn't track you across other sites — it just gives us an aggregate count of visits and which pages get read. Separately, there's one narrow, opt-in exception: if a search doesn't match anything and you click "Report this missing model," the text you typed is sent to us so we know what to add next. Nothing is sent unless you click that button; typing or an empty search result sends nothing on its own. What we store is just that text and which brand's page you were on, no IP address, no cookie, no other identifier, and it's automatically deleted after 30 days regardless of whether anyone's looked at it.

Scope

LG, Samsung, Vizio, Roku, Sky, TCL, Hisense, Sony, Philips, Panasonic, onn., Insignia, Toshiba, Amazon, and Element, for now, each researched and verified independently — one brand's naming scheme, ACR branding, or update policy is never assumed to carry over to another's. "Roku" here means Roku's own-branded TVs specifically, not the many other manufacturers (TCL, Hisense, onn., and others) that license the Roku TV platform under their own brand name. TCL and Hisense are the messier cases: unlike the single-platform brands here, each ships the same hardware brand running more than one smart-TV platform — Google TV, Roku TV, and Fire TV for TCL; mostly Google TV and Fire TV for Hisense, sometimes switching between them from one model year to the next within the same series — so each model page for those two brands states which platform that specific model actually runs, rather than assuming one platform for the whole brand. onn. is messier still: it's Walmart's private-label brand rather than a manufacturer, and different onn. TVs run three separately licensed platforms outright — Roku TV, Google TV, and actual VIZIO OS software under the "Powered by VIZIO" line — built by different contract manufacturers depending on tier. Sony is architecturally simpler (Google TV only in the US), but its ACR evidence is unusually complicated: Sony documents Samba Interactive TV on a named list of older sets, while a current Texas lawsuit alleges wider use without identifying each series covered here. Those allegations are reported but are not used as model-specific proof. Sky Glass is UK-only; Philips has separately researched UK Titan OS and US Google TV and Roku TV records. Panasonic includes a mainstream UK W95B model and separately sourced UK and US Z95B records. The remaining catalogue is primarily US-market. Other brands number their models differently and need their own research too; adding one means doing that research properly, never bolting on a shallow entry just to have a row in the table. Amazon's own Fire TV hardware (Omni QLED, 2-Series) is listed separately from the many other brands that merely license Fire TV software — Amazon's own device documentation is unusually precise about exactly what microphone hardware (if any) ships in each of its own models. We'd rather ship fifteen accurate lists than thirty shallow ones.

Coverage right now

A small number of series are verified so far. Building this table out properly — one series, one citation at a time — is the actual work behind this project and is expected to take a while. See the raw data at/tv/data.json.

Corrections

If you can source a correction — including confirming or updating a field currently marked unverified — it's genuinely useful. Point to something checkable: an LG spec sheet, a manual, a firmware changelog, a teardown, or your own testing against a physical unit with enough detail that someone else could redo it.