Podcast #1277: An All Matter Home and Now Samsung is Spying on You

On this week’s show we look at how an all Matter home operates and if it's ready for prime time. And this week Samsung has a turn in the Spy Chair. We discuss ways in which you can stop your Samsung TV from spying on you. We also read your emails and take a look at the news.

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Today's Show:

News:

• Google takes down a botnet hiding in 1.3 million Android TV boxes
• Sony's glasses-free 3D display comes to consumers as a 6-inch desk gadget
• Amazon says Prime Video is now profitable and bringing in tens of billions a year
• Google Home's latest update shows Matter plug energy use and fixes Gemini's phantom replies
• Apple's HomeView may be able to double as a security camera
• Dutch Cinema Tries Cinema Hypnosis Experiment

Other:

• HT Guys Amazon Lists
• HT Guys Music Playlist on Apple Music
• HT Guys Music Playlist on Amazon Music
• HT Guys Music Playlist on Spotify
• Ara's Woodworking

One Month in an All-Matter Home: The Wins and the Gaps

Here's one for the smart home fans. Ward Zhou at Matter Alpha moved into a new apartment and spent his first month swapping almost all of his Zigbee gear for Matter devices. Lights, wall switches, sensors, and even a smart curtain track made the jump, with Home Assistant as the main controller and Apple Home, Google Home, and Alexa tied in.

But it's not all smooth. His Aqara wall switches lose features over Matter, and air conditioners bridged into Matter only control on/off, heat, and cool, with no fan speed or dry mode. He also says Matter TVs are still rare, and native Matter speakers are practically nonexistent. Still, his verdict is that an all-Matter home easily covers everyday needs.

One area we are really interested in seeing adopted that may take Matter over the top is Joint Fabric. It was added to Matter 1.6 this June, and it lets you set up a smart device once and have every platform in your house share it. Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa and SmartThings would all control it directly. Today you have to add a device to each platform separately, and support doesn't always match from one to the next. This is really what Matter promised from the beginning and when the following things happen we’ll be there:

• The big three need to catch up. Apple, Google and Amazon are still on Matter 1.3 or older, roughly two years behind.
• Platforms have to actually build Joint Fabric in. It's optional, and as of August none of the big platforms had committed to it, even in beta. SmartThings reportedly has 1.6 in testing, and Home Assistant already supports the new version.
• It has to work on both sides. Joint Fabric only works between two platforms when both of them support it.
• More types of devices need to be covered. Newer categories like cameras still have few products. Matter TVs are rare, and Matter speakers barely exist.
• New features need to arrive everywhere quickly. The head of the group behind Matter says it won't succeed "until everybody can use it at parity." Philips Hue's tech lead hopes platforms will pick up new features within a year.

We're seeing smaller companies get behind Joint Fabric because it gives them compatibility across every platform, and for them that's a huge win. For the big three, not so much. It's a cost they have to bear that doesn't really make them any money, and it probably creates more headaches. Worse, it makes it easier for you to leave. The less it matters which platform you're on, the less reason you have to stay on theirs.

Samsung's Turn in the Spy Chair, and the Fans Vibe-Coding Their TVs Clean

Samsung Gets Rooted

Not long ago it was LG in the hot seat (we covered this in Podcast #1269). This week it's Samsung's turn. Stan and Byron both sent us emails on this so we figured it would make a good topic for today’s show..

According to FlatpanelsHD, a security researcher who goes by log4j rooted his own 2025 Samsung TV after noticing "weirdly targeted ads." His list of findings is long. He says the TV's microphone can stay on and classify sounds in your home, like a dog barking or a baby crying, and report those events back to Samsung. If the TV has no mic of its own, he says it will look for one on a connected device like a soundbar. He also found that ACR, the feature that fingerprints what's on your screen (even over HDMI), doesn't reliably stop when you switch it off in the menu. Add to that facial-recognition code, home network scanning, and data sharing set up with roughly 400 partners.

One big caveat: not all of this has been independently verified. But it lines up with plenty of what we've talked about before, including our ACR discussions in #1250 and #1251.

Fans Are Vibe-Coding Their Way Out

Joe sent us the other half of this story. The Verge reports that people are fed up enough to start using AI coding tools to clean up their TVs. Projects like cleanyourtv, tv-detox, and dumbtv remove sponsored ads, trim bloat so the TV runs faster, block some tracking, and swap in a simpler home screen. They work on Android TV and Google TV sets from brands like TCL, Hisense, and Sony, using the TV's built-in developer mode and ADB. No root required, and the changes can be undone.

Here's the catch. There's nothing equivalent for Samsung's Tizen, LG's webOS, Roku, or Vizio. And one person who tried to vibe-hack a Samsung TV with an AI assistant and bricked it. PCWorld offers a fair counterpoint: running unvetted scripts can leave a TV stuck in a boot loop, and you can get most of the benefit by turning off ACR and installing a well-known launcher from the Google Play Store.

What We'd Actually Do

If privacy is what keeps you up at night, here's our short list:

• Keep the TV offline. If it never touches the internet, it can't phone home.
• Update the firmware with a USB stick instead of over Wi-Fi.
• Stream from an Apple TV, which doesn't use ACR.
• Block the chatter at the network level with a Pi-hole or UniFi gear.

Will TV Makers Take the Hint?

That's the big question. When regular viewers are willing to plug their TV into a laptop and let an AI loose on it just to get a clean home screen, that sends a message. We'd love to see a simple "clean mode" setting: no ads, no ACR, no tracking, just a great picture. Will this little rebellion push Samsung, LG, and the rest to offer one? We're not holding our breath, but we'd love to be wrong. Let us know what you think.

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