Contrary to lots of other opinions here, I bought a 65" Samsung TV at the beginning of covid and I sincerely don't have any significant complaints. The remote is easy to use, launching apps is straightforward, connecting an ARC soundbar was no problem, nor was connecting a Chromecast and an Xbox, and it "just works". Every once in a blue moon (maybe twice a year-ish) I've had to power cycle it to fix a wifi connectivity issue, which may well just be a result of DHCP lease expiration on my network.
I have a modern Sony Bravia, too, which is running "Google TV" natively. On the plus side, the UI is just about identical to what you get with a Google TV dongle (which I also have, plugged into an old 32" monitor in front of my bike trainer), but it's also a really heavy interface that's also increasingly rich in ads. If your household is like mine, and holds subscriptions to a half dozen or more streaming services, some of which are bundled and some of which are either discounted or comped via entirely different subscriptions (mobile phone) or membership (credit card), it's really not helpful to have Google show me subscriptions I might want to add-on to my Google TV sub, nor do I appreciate seeing ads for content from things I don't subscribe to. Also, the Sony remote has about 50 buttons -- not a fan.
All things considered, I end up having to fiddle with the Sony TV far more frequently than the Samsung one, usually because of network or app issues.
We have an old Roku stick plugged into an old tv in a spare room, too, and it's almost intolerably slow. It's primary use case is to plug into our projector for backyard movies in nice weather, so I keep it around, but man is it dog slow.
That's what all Samsung televisions do, and there is no way to turn it off. They advertise on their own web page that they monitor the content viewed on their televisions for targeted advertising.
This isn't via some sort of metadata, they take screenshots at regular intervals and upload them to very insecure hosting.
I hope you never look at any "sensitive" content on your TV!
I don't really care because I only use the TV to access other streaming apps, and I know they already see everything I watch anyway. I don't have either cable TV or a cable-like alternative (YTTV, Roku Live, Sling, etc). Periodically I'll use it to cast something to, but it's usually my kid's soccer matches from a website on a laptop.
Fwiw, to the best of my awareness, I don't receive any advertising from my Samsung TV other than perhaps the strip of suggested things to watch (half of which are "continue watching" linked to watch history in the app I'm hovering over) that lives above the app list. This is wildly different from Google TV, which has a core value prop of embedding advertising right in your face.
It's called automatic content recognition (ACR). Most systems take low resolution (about 640x480 or 320x240) black and white screenshots at regular intervals, compress them do death, and upload that to big brother. That's more than enough to determine what specific kink or style of porn you're into, if you make the mistake of thinking that watching that kind of stuff in the privacy of your own home is private.
I have a modern Sony Bravia, too, which is running "Google TV" natively. On the plus side, the UI is just about identical to what you get with a Google TV dongle (which I also have, plugged into an old 32" monitor in front of my bike trainer), but it's also a really heavy interface that's also increasingly rich in ads. If your household is like mine, and holds subscriptions to a half dozen or more streaming services, some of which are bundled and some of which are either discounted or comped via entirely different subscriptions (mobile phone) or membership (credit card), it's really not helpful to have Google show me subscriptions I might want to add-on to my Google TV sub, nor do I appreciate seeing ads for content from things I don't subscribe to. Also, the Sony remote has about 50 buttons -- not a fan.
All things considered, I end up having to fiddle with the Sony TV far more frequently than the Samsung one, usually because of network or app issues.
We have an old Roku stick plugged into an old tv in a spare room, too, and it's almost intolerably slow. It's primary use case is to plug into our projector for backyard movies in nice weather, so I keep it around, but man is it dog slow.