Your connected television may be quietly cataloguing everything that appears on its screen — not just the streaming apps you open, but also over-the-air broadcasts and whatever arrives through the HDMI port from a console or set-top box. The technology behind this is Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), and a review of manufacturer documentation reveals a striking inconsistency: only one major brand provides an exact menu path for withdrawing consent, while the rest point vaguely to “settings” or bury the details in legal notices stored on the TV itself.
- What ACR does: It generates unique fingerprints of on-screen content and matches them against a database to identify what you are watching.
- What gets collected: Viewing history, device identifiers, IP addresses, and — per Roku — titles, games, ads and channels with timestamps and duration.
- The documentation gap: Roku spells out the opt-out route; Samsung and LG do not publish exact menu paths, and Google has no located ACR setting for Google TV.
- European rules: Under GDPR, consent must be as easy to withdraw as to give — a standard that current TV interfaces appear to strain against.
What ACR Captures and How It Works
ACR builds signatures from the images displayed on screen and compares them with a reference database to determine what is playing. Samsung describes the mechanism on its US support pages: the technology creates unique signatures that allow viewing information to be captured if the user accepted viewing-information services during TV setup.
According to Samsung, the data can include viewing history — the programs watched and time spent on each — along with TV identifiers, including a personalised service identifier, and the device’s IP address. The company states that it does not record or watch the content on screen, and that ACR is optional, functioning only if accepted during configuration or enabled later.
Roku goes further in its disclosures. Its privacy policy, updated on 6 November 2026, explains that ACR may log programs, video games, advertisements and channels, complete with date, time and duration, whether the content arrives via antenna, a decoder, a console or a connected player.
The distinction matters. Streaming apps know what you watch within their own walls; ACR can know what you watch across everything plugged into the television.
Brand-by-Brand: Who Explains How to Switch It Off
The short answer is that Roku documents the exact route, Samsung and LG do not in their publicly readable pages, and Google does not document an ACR setting for Google TV that could be located.
Roku
Roku is the clearest. Its policy states that users who enabled ACR can withdraw consent under Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience by unchecking Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). The same menu contains Content Viewing Disclosure, which governs the sharing of viewed titles. The fine print deserves attention: even with ACR disabled, Roku still receives information about activity on its home screen, its channel and third-party apps. The policy cited applies to the United States; owners of Roku TVs sold elsewhere should check their country’s version within the menu.
Samsung
Samsung’s support page says users can opt out of ACR at any time from the Settings menu and refers to the privacy notice for viewing-information services, consultable on the television itself. It does not provide the exact menu path. According to Samsung, the policy applies to all of its smart TVs.
LG
LG’s Spanish smart TV legal documents page includes a Viewing Information Agreement, separate from the privacy policy, and LG warns that applicable documents may vary by model and software version. No official LG page describing the deactivation route was found. Users should look in the TV settings for user agreements or privacy sections and review what they accepted.
Google TV and Android TV
No Google documentation of an ACR setting for Google TV was located. On televisions from other manufacturers running Google TV, any content-recognition service is managed by the TV maker — so the place to look is the manufacturer’s privacy settings and terms, not Google’s.
Other Brands
The practical rule is consistent: open privacy settings or user agreements and search for terms such as “viewing information”, “content recognition” or “ACR”. If everything was accepted in one go during setup, it is probably active.
The Regulatory Picture: Consent Must Be Easy to Take Back
European law offers two levers. The first is the General Data Protection Regulation: consent must be a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of will (Article 4.11), it can be withdrawn at any time, and withdrawal must be as easy as giving it (Article 7.3).
The second is the ePrivacy Directive, whose Article 5.3 permits storing information on a user’s device, or accessing information already there, only with consent given after clear and complete information — except where strictly necessary to provide a requested service.
The interpretation here, not a legal opinion, is straightforward: if accepting ACR took one button during initial setup, withdrawing it should not require hunting through legal notices with no documented path. Users who want to know what viewing data a manufacturer holds can exercise their GDPR right of access.
The same pattern recurs across other living-room devices, where cameras and sensors gather more than owners expect, and the decisive factor is again the settings nobody reviews.
ACR is a case study in privacy by default gone wrong. Manufacturers are correct that the feature is optional — but the option is presented at the worst possible moment, with the TV fresh out of the box and the remote in hand, and afterwards it is concealed. For anyone who has just set up a new television, the sensible move is to spend five minutes in the privacy menu during the first week and uncheck anything that is not understood; if a function stops working, it can always be switched back on.