There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is.
This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet, and I don't use smart features on the TV anyway, so I don't plan on updating the software either. Hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm.
That would be really, really terrible.
A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up.
B: People don't like ads on their TV.
A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much .
B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?
A: No.
B: Does anyone here like ads?
A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors.
C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?
This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth…
https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...
Just don't connect it to the Internet.
The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.
Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra quid.
[1] Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
[2] Removal of "Other OS" feature from Playstation 3's after users had already bought them: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3088169/sony-agrees-to-pay-m...
They have the same contempt for software that they do on their phones.
They NEVER update their firmware. It's amazingly slow and latent.
When they DO occasionally update they usually break things that were working or remote features you used.
About 2 years ago they implemented some weird/stupid popover commercial thing which you could eventually disable but they hid the feature.
I'd be watching Game of Thrones or something and in the middle of the show they'd bring up a popup for a new TV show or something along those lines.
Usually I disagree about niche hardware in this way (for example, usual mentions about a similar approach for phones and laptops), but the dumb screen might just be dumb and cheap enough to make work at this limited scale?
They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.
The "home screen" of the TV (where it goes when you turn it on) was always the chromecast, which as I'm sure most people have seen, is rather nice; just endless pictures of art and landscapes, like a screensaver.
One day it updated without my consent, and that screen was replaced with Vizio's, I dont know, some piece of shit interface no human being on the planet wants. Ads for Crackle and other Vizio tvs mostly. Its so bad.
So, I'm never buying another Vizio TV.
True, not like this. But they've done worse things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit
After all, most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?
Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and often done anyway. The loss from equivalent ad burdens on TVs is probably much less. (People replace their smartphones more often than their TVs!) The ad revenue also lets them discount the upfront price of TVs (I think I saw an article on HN that the discount due to advertising is at least $50/set?). And then there's the time-value of money: $1 up front in exchange for $1.10 of lost sales 10 years from now when they (maybe) buy an alternative brand is a pretty sweet deal for the seller.
Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootki...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_roo...
Sony just pushed an update to the homescreen of android TVs that pushes ads for shows and services on the very top of the screen.
I knew something was fucky when smart TVs started to be sold for less than the dumb ones - all things being even, smart TVs had to cost more to produce, so something had to be subsidizing the prices.
Google is purely Ad company and is worth a trillion. Here is your context and reasoning, combined.
Ads are not shown, when the TV is asked to "reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it". And the TV is sold on its ability to show all sorts of things that are not just the signal passed to it. Like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the menus related to those services.
The Ads are shown when the TV is asked to show its menu of applications and features.
Still not great, but not at all what you are implying.
I went with the opposite approach- I paid the small bucks to buy an Avera display, and connect it to my own media box. Also, a decent soundbar, because the built-in speakers are terrible. Now I have better sound than any built-in speakers at any price, a decent display, and the best "smart" features (with no ads), all for a price much lower than a "Smart" TV.
Do we have any evidence Samsung TV sales have taken a hit from these measures?
By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it is only a matter of time until all of them show more aggressive ads.
But if you fully wipe it and then keep it fully offline, most TVs have a great screen and they can be configured with "gaming mode" to work like a low-latency HDMI / DisplayPort display. And without internet, there are not ads :) and no forced (useless) updates.
BTW, my LG OLED is completely ad-free, defaults to using HDMI port 1 and even has GSYNC. Just connect any barebone with an NVIDIA card and you have 100% control over what you see.
That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.
If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.
until all TVs will have built-in 5G SIM
I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking.
Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere?
If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.
My only concern is the longevity of OLED.
Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.
If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data.
This is a nice trite trope, but getting an affordable TV without these features might be nearly impossible for most people these days.
So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it should just act as if its not connected at all.
At least I know it's possible on all Sony AndroidTV models and most Samsung models (not sure about their latest Tizen).
I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and the picture quality is stil superb compared to recent models (except OLED). Its HD and not 4K, but it makes no difference, my eyesight is not getting any better and I might use it for the next 5 to 10 years probably. It's internet capabilities are laughable, pre-smart TV. Picked it up for 100 quid second hand, no doubt some idiot replaced it with a "smart" piece of junk with thinner frame, less durable LEDs, and now, good God, mandatory advertising.
I'd like separate boxes for video display, video signal switching, audio signal switching, stereo and surround sound decoding, speaker driving, OTA TV tuning, AM radio, FM radio.
I want these boxes to all support a common control protocol, with another box or boxes handling controlling the system.
My current system with a receiver that is 8 years old and a TV that is around 3 or 4 years old is fine, except for three things: (1) the receiver cannot handle 4K video, (2) the receiver does not work with any voice assistants, and (3) the TV does not work with any voice assistants.
With a modular system, I'd just replace the video switching with a 4K switching box, and replace the control box with one that supports a voice assistant (or add another control box...no reason a module system has to have only one such box).
With the current approach, I'd have to replace the receiver and the TV for that.
I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably can't see the 4K improvements from across the room anyway.
For instance, when an older PlayStation (3?) in an update made it so that one could no longer run Linux (which was advertised as possible), I know of people that got to return it and get their money back after the Norwegian Consumer Council ruled against Sony.
Luckily, Samsung was awesome about it and I was able to RMA through Best Buy, who just gave me my money back. I took that cash, put a bit on top, and bought an LG OLED. Best decision ever. OLED is absolutely dominant in TVs these days.
> Your browser is not Javascript enable or you have turn it off. We recommend you to activate for better security reason@SYSLOG: INTERNAL ERROR[2]
Oh well, if it's for better security reason, then… /s
Gimme a boring TV with open firmware so I can flash it with Linux or better yet, no need for firmware, just a few video ports and a power switch. I'll feed it with my video signal of choice.
Then a phone with stock android or ability to flash Linux or whatever with hardware kill switches because you cant trust anything electronic these days.
Then I'll take a car with a steering wheel, two pedals and a double din opening on the dash and some HVAC topped off with a downloadable service manual right from the manufactures website please.
I'm tired of feeling this technology anxiety where I'm supposed to just give up my rights and dignity and capitulate to the corporate gods. Go away already.
Yes, the xbox and PS4 home screens have 'ads' (promoted games and stuff mostly), but they're not 1/10th as annoying in my opinion. And Microsoft and Sony have a much higher likelihood of keeping the operating systems properly patched and up to date on a 5, 10 year time scale.
1. why?
2. the ps4/xbox pale in comparison to my lg's apps. functionalities, quality of streams, the voice search. they're all much better on the lg apps.
- vcfd1.giraffic.net, vcfd2.giraffic.net: adaptive Video acceleration (seems to be used for internet TV)
- GB.lgtvsdp.com, ngfts.lge.com: don't know what this does.
- GB.ibs.lgappstv.com: needed to download apps and updates
- snu.lge.com: used to check for software updates?
- lgtvonline.lge.com: likely for the TV recommendations feature that remembers what you watch and gives you recommendations based on it
- GB.info.lgsmartad.com: ads
- yahoo.com: no idea why the TV needs to talk to yahoo. Blocked.
- facebook.com: why!? Blocked.I'm shocked that you don't want facebook to know your viewing habits to show you more relevant ads. Its a feature to improve the ad experience for the users.
Also, sounds like a case of optimization creep - "I know a way to get even more revenue, we just sign up with this $more_shady_ad_network!". Displaying more and more creepy ads, no-one decreasing ads since they don't want to be the one decreasing ad revenue.
What? A month? Sale of goods act.
The panel was thin (with almost no bezels), the picture quality was superb and I was sold on the "Smart TV" features like having built in access to Netflix, etc. For a while it was great, then I noticed the ads showing up on the bottom left of the bottom menu. Now my TV is as slow as molasses and I hate it. Picture quality is still good, but Samsung ruined it with their software. I refuse to purchase another Samsung TV which really frustrates me because I love their panels.
I'm currently looking to disable the internet on it and use a Fire Stick, Roku, or other. Anyone have any suggestions?
I recently bought a Sony TV, it's an amazing display but I have zero patience for their janky android flavoured UI.
I never setup wifi, I have 3x HDMI ports connected:
1x port for a cable set top box
1x port with a raspberry pi running OSMC
1x port with a google Chromecast
I will use the cable for local news or documentaries. For Youtube/Netflix/Spotify streaming, I will use the Chromecast dongle. I use the OSMC media center for torrents, internet radio and some live TV channels from my home country.
It sounds convoluted but I find it easier to just toogle HDMI ports and have a solution that is optimal for I want to do, rather than to try use any of the solutions out there that claim they can do everything but end up falling short.
200 years ago it was probably legal for a food company to put a bit of cocaine in the food to make it more addictive. Nowadays I think you would go to jail for that.
Similarly, if we ever make it to the year 2220, the act of making a product that forces users to view certain content or that spies on users will be something you go to jail for, not something that gets you a promotion.
All the technical fixes that people are proposing (disconnect internet, pi hole, etc) are bandaid solutions and eventually the companies will bother to break those fixes. The company is a million times more powerful than any given individual and individuals are uncoordinated, so absent regulation the individuals will maximally lose the game - Black-Mirror-esque
On top of all these ads and snooping, there are so few TVs with a smooth, responsive UI. Seriously, even in top brands the UI chugs along at a snail's pace. And most of the time the UI design itself is terrible.
Who cares about 8K if the UI takes 8 seconds to load.
Volume controls used to be instantaneous. Why the degradation of user experience alongside incredible progress in technology?
I myself was a pretty loyal customer up until very recently when it came time to buy a TV and I specifically wanted one without ads ruining the experience.
I'm reasonably certain this will make this many peoples last Samsung TV.
Their corporate executives clearly have no ethics whatsoever.
But that's not the only problem. My coworkers have been to Samsung's headquarters and worked on their core IT infrastructure. They both rattled off an endless horror show of security lapses and outright violations of common sense that would make your eyes pop out of your head.
There is zero chance that your data is "safe" with Samsung. None. They will get hacked. They're almost certainly hacked already, and don't know it. Or they know it and simply don't care.
It's a good illustration of why privacy is so complicated: most people wouldn't think that in buying a TV they're compromising their privacy because they don't know about ACR and such. The manufacturers, of course, know all about it, but it's not in their interest to share the information - specifically, to do so in a way that empowers the consumer to make an educated decision at purchase time. (Or am I wrong and they do in fact explain everything "on the box"? I haven't had to buy a TV in a long time.)
I mean, normal TV it's 90% ads 10% content, do we need to watch even more ads?
Anyone has any idea on how adding a filter like AdBlocker to your router? Never thought about this but it's getting useful af.
Yet another example of the customer coming last.
The vast majority of consumers don't care about this. They're trying to get the biggest screen for the least money. And TV manufacturers are giving it to them.
However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue. So, we get TVs with ads.
This isn't a dystopian thing forced upon us by evil TV manufacturers. This is a dystopian thing we've asked for.
For all the bad press it got, I'm happy to have GDPR because it very firmly puts the consumers in control of their data.
Enforcement isn't fully there yet, but with Oracle getting sued and pulling the plug on the European side of their Blukai data sales business things are moving in the right direction.
As a side note, they do not make a "dumb" TV anymore. I feel like this is a huge market opportunity for a manufacturer to make one as I and many others would be very interested in one. I don't want google play or any tracking crapware on my TV and can gate these things with either apple TV or Roku/media server.
But then the adverts started. We paid $3000 for this TV. Not a low end “ad-supported tv” The only way to “opt out” is to disable the “smart” TV function which I have done. Any smarts now comes from my Apple TV which does not thrust averts in my face. Needless to say, my last Samsung purchase ever.
[1] https://gist.github.com/zaerl/e3c24a9c21e5c15138e92a43ccd534...
One click and no more ads:
Buyer BEWARE!
- This thing has an anti virus scanner installed
- There is a task manager that shows you the current cpu and memory consumption
- Disabling automatic brightness adaption requires you to enter the debug menu which you can only enter via a normal remote and not the included smart remote (which costs 50 to replace and does not have any number keys!). So I had to buy one off amazon. If you don’t do that you _will_ notice annoying brightness changes.
- Oh and also disable everything with auto or smart in the picture settings
I bought an AppleTV even before the Samsung arrived. Worth it.
And friends don’t let friends connect their TVs to WiFi
Pro tip: if your work uses TVs in meeting rooms and the font looks weird, adjust the sharpness.
After I found that out everything in previous meeting rooms made sense. When you unbox a normal TV for computer use you gotta turn down the sharpness and nobody does
Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market are an alternative option to a large monitor, especially at larger sizes. They're less likely to spew advertising than consumer Smart TVs, but are probably less likely to stay clean than a monitor with no Internet connectivity.
I use a Linux PC as a media decode device. It works, but I have no interest in 4K (hardware video decode is sketchy on Linux, which makes 4K difficult) or paid streaming services (if I wanted to watch sewage I'd take up urban exploration into wastewater facilities).
edit: Also, aside from netflix, a local plex server with rtorrent/irssi to auto-download tv series I followl
They are not "smart", but less is better, so in terms of OS functionaliry, privacy, and user experience; they top the charts.
It's kinda sad that people are just now noticing how bad the ads are. They were bad back 6+ years ago - especially when they tried to sneak ads into videos played back from plex.
That’s the only way I see a golden goose killing ux change making into one of the industry leading products in a cut throat ever changing sector.
I’ll now browse the comments to see if any other plausible explanations have been presented.
The good news is you can block the ads. Here are some domains I've blocked in my router. They might not all be necessary to block, but they don't seem to break anything else (except perhaps Disney+) and they do stop the ads from appearing.
(Note: The only ad I was seeing was an additional ad box that was inserted as one of the sources on the source selector. It was only an issue if you were going from display to the TV's settings because it had inserted itself in between the two, and you could accidentally click on it. Blocking the following domains got rid of This.)
samsungads.com
ads.samsung.com
www.samsungotn.net
www.samsungrm.net
gpm.samsungqbe.com
samsungacr.com
samsungcloudsolution.com
samsungcloudsolution.net
samsungotn.net
The bad news is that the Disney+ app may not function properly if you block these domains. The obvious workaround is to use Disney+ from a browser, but that produces surprising results with this TV. Certain video sources, such as Disney+ or the trailers on IMDB, cause my Samsung TV to flash the following message:
"We are adjusting the picture quality for you to experience a better uhd screen. You can change the settings in Settings > General > External Device Manager > HDMI UHD color"
The screen then goes black and the only way to restore function is to unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in. Very annoying.
The message describes settings that exist in the TV's configuration exactly as described, so it's definitely an error message produced by the TV set. Unfortunately, the settings referenced do nothing to eliminate this bug.
I've contacted Samsung's tech support a couple of times and they're utterly clueless about this issue. (Note: Not many people may report this error message because if flashes so fast that you need to photograph the screen in order to read it, and you have to have fast reflexes to do even that!)
All in all, despite the quality of the screen, these unresolved issues mean I will probably not buy another Samsung TV and recommend that others avoid this brand as well.
At this point, is it even possible to buy a high quality tv that isn't a smart tv? And will these smart TVs work properly if you keep them disconnected from the internet?
(Side note: this is why TVs are so much cheaper now, isn't it?)
The end.
Smart TVs can go to hell. Arguably updating the firmware wasn't even worth doing but whatever.
Seems dumb. Seeing this link has already made me to decide I actually won't buy a Samsung tv. I'll just get something else.
If we truly go the road of the dodo, I'll just make a side business rewiring "smart" tvs.
Second issue is that the average consumer wants smart TV's – they like that everything is integrated in the TV. Less remotes, less cabling etc.
As someone who doesn't really use the "smarts" on my smart TV, I'd quite like a well engineered (hardware + software), privacy preserving, smart TV. I see the appeal of an all-integrated solution. But none exists; most of the time the software is either garbage, or runs as if it was meant to run on hardware a few generations in the future. And as for privacy... sadly, few on both sides of the market prioritise it :(
Unfortunately they probably don't get the extra revenue from ads to be able to get placement in stores like Best Buy.
An additional benefit is that you get to log internet traffic and get shocked as you find out what your devices are really up to.
To block ads that are served over whitelisted / not blocked domains I’d need some kind of deep packet inspection. I’m not sure this kind of filtering even exists / would work as a lot of the ad traffic I see is served over https.
I imagine that would be the next logical step that device manufactures will go to to combat consumers setting up pi-holes.
Anyone remembers that TV screen in the wonderful Idiocracy docu... er.. movie? That is going to happen, soon or later.
https://i2.wp.com/scifiinterfaces.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
Excellent capture! Personally I'd wish for a "fan-edit" of that, melded with Wall-E :)
-AppleTV will not do this, and likely never will -iPhones do not have ads all over them put in place by the carriers (I still can’t believe this happened)
Before the great unplugging, I set the Internet connection on the TV to be to my iPhone. I almost never have my iPhone hotspot turned on, so I could do TV updates when needed, otherwise starve it for an Internet connection.
BTW, no TV works for us because we stream to my wife’s large iPad Pro and she bought a fancy stand that can position the iPad anywhere in space. We site next to each other and place the iPad just under three feet away. We like this setup.
[1]NextDNS https://nextdns.io/?from=rj4b2nfn
The issue is the built in youtube app constantly had to be logged out and back in. Otherwise advertisements start to show. Sometimes as often as wcey 4 minutes. And they are the worst sorts of advertisements geared to kids to ask parents to buy pointless plastic shit.
I am failey sure this bug is not being fixed because it would lower somebodiws revenue, or metric.
I seriously doubt this is true. It's probably rational behaviour for Samsung to push this trend as far as it goes and then retreat a little if negative reaction shows in the bottom line. Or maybe limit the offending products to lower price category.
The options seem very limited. I may end up using a computer monitor with a streaming box and or a tv tumer card on an old computer. I already have a good OTA signal from an outdoor antenna that is used by the main TV in the house and can easily run a splitter.
Any low cost recommendations?
If it involves code it is going to be terrible for the customer.
It's pricier, e.g. 55" 4k is $3000 CAD, but worth the privacy. We actually got some large ones at a discount because they were all 1080p, and for meeting rooms, nobody needs Powerpoint or Word in 4K, so it was perfect. Just a thought if anyone is looking for good quality TV sets. I also think the limited warranty starts at 3 years.
Then again, I don't have a TV for the exact reason listed in this article, I use a big monitor.
I don’t remember where I read this, but a United Labs for information security is overdue.
It won’t directly help with ad injection, but I think the security implications will put a damper on some of this (the cost of maintaining their firmware which Samsung barely does).
Anyone that researches can get a TV without ads for hundreds of dollars.
I don't buy anything from Samsung, it sounds like a user issue. Samsung is notorious for being awful.
From what I learned so far the difficulties are: [please also correct me on these]
- stand is not included (need to buy that separately / do a wall mount)
- hard to find a seller
- prices are higher than for equivalent consumer TVs
- brightness is higher -> more power consumption
- there is no antenna (terrestial DVB-T/T2, satellite input) so you have to drive content from USB or PC / Raspberry / xxxCast dongle
The benefit is that you get a "dumb" panel with no spying, ads, software taking snapshots of what you watch. The TV is then also designed to last more hours - commercial panels are on 20h/day.
Make sure they actually do what you want, even things that every consumer model has had for years. The situation may have improved in the last year. Also, I only looked at 82-85” models, so the situation may be better on smaller models.
- There are more difficult to buy, as they are a b2b product, but on amazon they sell some models.
- brightness is higher, depending on the purpose of the monitor, there are monitors for sun facing storefronts, which are way brighter, but those also have fans and are noisier. The ones purposed for indoor are more or less the same brightness of the tvs, and sometimes have sensors for changing the brightness depending the environment, which is actually a plus. - no antenna, some offer iptv, and others actually are android or linux based, so you may even install some apps, but you must configure them manually so much easier to use an external player.
- they are tougher panels, but they are designed for showing ads and static content, so no dark blacks, less contrast and usually less colour gamut coverage.
- not many 4k panels, the are designed to see from a distance, so many are fhd instead of 4k.
- another drawback is that many doesn't have speakers, so you have to hook up your own sound system.
Anyway, I'm in front of a storefront samsung om55n and watched some content and it's ludicrous, at night and the room seems illuminated like during the day.
Samsung also has a business line of tvs, are more like the domestic ones but designed for longer operating times and you can configure them to show slideshows or to have a ticker overlaped. They use the same basic tizen system, but the home screes is different and I doubt you will find ads on them.
Whats more it constantly installs some partner apps and puts them for quick start into the menu sometimes removing the applications i actually use from there in the process. I prefer using these apps for Netflix and co but every time i plugged it into the ether i feel like i should not and a fear of it getting even worse somehow.
Then, for the "Samsung Home" app that you can't move from spot number 1 that shows "Featured content" when you cursor over it, set up parental controls and lock access to that app. It will still be there, but it won't show anything when you navigate past it.
Does it now even still do the ACR? Are they going to retroactively install me ads? Are there specific domain names one should block? Alternative firmwares?
For all of them, their main money maker is ads on free video content. Most of them have a channel/section filled with free tv shows/movies (usuaully b level content) and they make the majority of their revenue showing ads on this content.
I was stunned by the prominence and intrusiveness by the ads on my Roku, even with already knowing it calls home several times a minute.
Once everything was back up and running things were back to normal. My setup is a dumb Spectre with a great screen with a Roku connected for Netflix and Plex/Jellyfin. Combined with a pi-hole it makes for a pretty clean experience.
I don't think I'm buying things based on ads, at all, but the adtech guys would surely disagree. I also find it hard to square the near universal loathing of ads with the draw of Times Square. I too enjoyed the lights of the ads.
At home I don't have a smart TV (I use a JVC video projector and they've resisted adding those kind of useless feature so far) but my parents use a smart TV connected to an apple TV and so I'm curious what happens there.
I do wonder what kind of content it can detect and in which modes.
At least when I subscribe to a SaaS and they roll out changes I dislike, I can choose to stop paying them and move to a competitor.
Non security updates should always be opt-in.
But this is the same thing, the market is repeatedly told to ask for smart devices, even when dumb TV is all the users need.
for myself, having no 4k hdr, no netflix, apple tv, youtube, bbc, and many others is a deal breaker when it comes to buying a new tv.
Same happens to screen in cars.
But on the other hand, the argument "I paid all this money and I still get ads" is honestly something I've been hearing about cable companies for decades. In the end, if something can make money (as in, people will pay) that's sadly the way it will go.
I leave the intelligence to other devices which I connect to the TV.
I'm happy with my LG TV, which the only "ads" they have are:
- Highlighting new "TV Channels" which is ... acceptable. I don't know why anyone would want/care about the Hyundai TV channel
- installing Disney+ automatically
I have a feeling this will last about as long as it takes for consumers to get a sense for what models come with ads. No one wants this on a device they already paid for.
Yes I could disconnect it from the network but that would defeat one of the reasons I did buy it and which was mentioned in reviews: high-quality built in apps for Netflix and other services.
It's not smart to buy "smart" appliances, since any intelligence they have will work towards the interests of the companies that made them, not the purchasor.
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...
I hope it's only a matter of time.
you'll be thrilled how much data these "smart" tvs collect when you plug it to your local DNS server.
You were able to block everything in the past but no longer. Samsung catched on and now serves some ads over the same domains they distribute their firmware updates, install apps, get the program guide, and check the online status.
If you block those domains the Samsung TV loses most of its internet features and also seems to go crazy and requests all domains multiple times per second, defeating deep sleep of the TV.
I happen to only use my tv as a single input HDMI display, using my Roku for everything. I suppose they could still force ads in that situation, but I assume they haven't yet.
Building apps into a TV is a really nice idea, but there has to be a better way.
I declined everything and hooked it up to my Apple TV. Super happy.
Ill let my TV be a dumb TV that I can simply send a signal to.
It would only be fair to let people know what to expect!
Basic cable box (used rarely), roku, and PS4 provide plenty of "smarts" for me.
What's a good competitor that doesn't do this? Sony?
It may not work for the smart tv case, but I imagine a device or filter program that I can plug in that detects ads with a neutral network. It wouldn't turn off the ads, but instead transform them into unpleasant imagery that creates incredibly negative brand images. It would be designed to permanently subconsciously tarnish a brand.
McDonald's human trafficking
Nike genocide
Spouse-beating Walmart
Coca-cola rotten corpse
I want to deploy this widely to destroy advertising. If ads got detected and replaced with images designed to embed and evoke negative reactions, advertisers would stop.
We need something this drastic to fight back.
hopefully it ends badly for them on the long term
Samsung is cut from the same cloth as Apple. Huge advertising budgets to get the sale. Abuse of customers after purchase.
Every SciFi movie: The only use they can think of for AR is Ads
Of course, it's showing you advertising, that's what the internet is for according to the advertising scum of the world.
Maybe don't buy a 'smart' TV next time?
Anyone have recommendations for units they've bought this way? I've avoided upgrading my super old LCD because at least my current one is somewhat stupid and so long as I don't connect it to the network it mostly does what I bought it for: display the pixels.
