Sorry, I was being a bit lazy in my comment. I didn't specify, but I don't really suspect they are sending full frames back if for no other reason than bandwidth. But, honestly fingerprinting is so similar it might as well be the same thing. Though thankfully, yes, the fingerprint calculated for something personal probably is meaningless to them, but possibly could be replaced with a reversible option
One danger is that videos can now "phone home" with the TV they're viewed on. You could torrent through Tor and take all sorts of precautions, then watch on your TV at home and leak your viewing habits. Or worse, get someone else targeted for copyright enforcement if you watch pirated content on their TV.
I guess it would be a watermark style change through all the video frames which affects the hashes - e.g. brightness or contrast or sharpness or some combination of that kind of thing - then seed that on torrent sites, and advertisers get to see which TVs watched the torrented film vs the official film.
I don't think fingerprints are the same at all. While still having privacy implications, fingerprints to match against broadcast content aren't uploading your family photo or caps from your home movie if that's what you're showing on screen.
