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Easy workaround would be to put it on a power strip or similar, and just switch it hard off whenever you're not using it. No amount of cleverness is going to make it able to spy on you without electricity (assuming any battery would be rapidly spotted by teardowns). As a bonus, you'll save a little electricity too.

Not that we should have to do this....

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In addition to that, you can purchase smart power strips that detect the drop/increase in power on one plug and turn off/on the other plugs.

I've been using one of these for several years now for our entertainment center. You just have to be sure you turn off any devices you don't want the power hard cut from before you turn off the television.

I wonder if there's a market for a power strip of this type that also presents a standard serial/USB UPS interface to the hardware, giving it a grace period to shutdown before the hard kill.

HDMI-CEC is probably the more appropriate interface for something like this.

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