Your TV's microphone and the voice remote

Most current televisions have at least one microphone. Many have two: one in the remote and one in the set itself.

Where they are

In the remote. The usual case. It normally activates when you press the assistant button, and in that mode it only listens while you hold it. The less troubling case.

In the television. Present on models with "hands-free" or "far-field" support. This one does listen continuously for the wake word, exactly like a smart speaker.

To find out whether your set has its own microphone, look for a small hole in the bottom bezel, or check whether Settings has a "television microphone" option separate from the remote's.

What can be switched off

The physical switch. Some models have a switch underneath that cuts the microphone at the hardware level. It is the only real guarantee.

From the settings. Settings → Privacy → Microphone, or similar. Switch off both the television's and app access.

By removing the assistant, on an Android TV:

adb shell pm list packages | grep -iE "assistant|voice|katniss|speech"

katniss is the internal name for Google Assistant on Android TV, and it surprises people who search for "assistant" and find nothing.

An honest caveat

Removing the assistant package disables the assistant. It does not guarantee that no system component can reach the microphone: that depends on the firmware, and we do not touch firmware.

If your concern is a serious one, the only complete answer is the physical switch or not connecting the television at all. We say so plainly because promising more would be misleading you.

What you lose

Voice control, which on a television is genuinely convenient for searching titles. It is a real trade-off, not an obvious decision, and people land on different sides of it.