However, as far as anyone has shown, that audio data is only when the user uses the voice functionality on the TV. They just were bad about encryption, but to use voice search, it made sense that they were sent data. That is remarkably different than recording image data every second from every television and sending that back.

Not saying it's the same, just saying it's a potentially questionable (re privacy) thing Samsung has already been caught doing.

Not sure if they were selling any of those data, anonymized or not, either.

edit: It's also worth pointing out that while technical people (e.g. us) may see voice recognition tech and immediately suspect that it involves phoning home, most people probably have no idea that anything of what they say is leaving their living room.