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Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

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Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#241
post #194
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's fair to describe cable TV as convenience. Netflix costs about a tenth as much as cable TV (though it does require Internet so if you'd otherwise not have Internet maybe bump it up to half the cost) and provides a generally better service. People are paying out of laziness.

Netflix is worth 10 times less. Netflix thinks a season is 10 episodes or less. Popular shows get cancelled a few get kept but seasons take years to come out. The availability of content goes down every year. I'm not sure it's worth what they are charging for compared to Prime, etc With cable you get to pick a channel and let them broadcast to you. You don't select the next episode you select a channel. The benefit o…

I think that the opinion of what streaming or cable service is the best is very much a personal preference. You've got Netflix, Hulu (still around I think?), CBC Gem and Acorn as the ones I hear about most often - the price to access any one of those services is a fraction of cable's cost - either half (if you assume you'd otherwise be without internet) or a tenth (if you're part of the vast majority of people that will pay for internet either way). So I think it's more fair to assume that somewhere out there there's a streaming service for you and it's going to be somewhere between 10-15 USD/mo.

> When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.

No.

I have ADHD and ads absolutely destroy me. For some people ads might be a nice time to meditate, for me they absolutely destroy the enjoyability of any program because in those few minutes I'm going to start playing a game or reading an article or cleaning something.

Even beside my ADHD - ads don't give you "peaceful time". If you want a snippet of peaceful time then pause the stream every once in a while and go outside and be at true peace - don't come up with excuses to justify advertisements being shoved down your throat. The act of spamming adverts like that disrespects you as a person and your time, it borders on offensive.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#242

Stallman told you so.

Stallman actually helped bring this about. The ad companies all run their massive data farms on open source software. Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions. For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead. Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free o…

>For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.

What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#243

I wonder if a Pi-hole with a good adlist could stop those ads from appearing - sadly/luckily i don't own a NVidia Shield. Maybe someone else can weigh in if that approach does work (maybe with additionally setting up your router to redirect everything DNS back to the Pi-hole)?

It could work, until they push a DNS over HTTPS update, or something similar.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#244
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’ve had that set to show “Up Next” for a while. I use it mainly as quick access to series I’m watching. Which is why having MLB games show up in the middle of them is frustrating.

Is the MLB app installed? Is it in the top row?

Nope, not sure it’s ever been installed (not 100% sure, but it’s definitely not installed now). Like I said, clicking any of the MLB games in the bar will ask me to install the app.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#245

If you don't pay for it, you are the product. If you pay for it, you are still the product. You are always the product, phone carriers you pay monthly contract to collect your location data and sell it, TVs spy on your TV watching, Netflix/Spotify/... record everything you do, you will be monetized even if you already paid.

Not sure why downvoted - this is the truth. The only way to maybe stop this is via legislation, because that levels the playing field. Otherwise, the one with the abusive strategy will come out ahead.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#247

Every time I disconnect from technology, I get a little happier. I don't own a TV, so I can't get TV ads. I'm disconnecting from "streaming services", so I won't get ads in my music, audio books, or movies. I'm disconnecting from Google so I won't be subjected to annoying product "features" I didn't ask for. Eventually I will disable text messaging on my phone, though it also means I won't be able to login to half th…

I think the key is to be strong enough, and brave enough, to voluntarily bring about change. Every time you disconnect, you get a little happier. And I bet coming back feels good too. To let go of a state of mind is scary, seems risky, and undesirable. But a mind, like the body, needs a varied diet of states to be healthy. It's make it more flexible, agreeable to change, tolerant to adversity, and therefore bring about contentedness and happiness.

So I think that your plan to gradually disconnect is something good. I wish you best of luck with it.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#248
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. I have a Sony Bravia TV and it uses Android TV as well. It's had the homescreen ads for a while now and I really dislike it. https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587 The funny thing about that page is that the image used to be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has blood splatter in the background (you can sti…

You actually think they care? I get ads for apps I already have installed. YouTube says "time to revisit this app". Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.

That has long bothered me as well, like we have some of the brightest minds in CS working on…how to collect, analyze, and extract value from telemetry via targeted advertising, yet so much of it is still so awful and irrelevant. The best kind of ads would be like a great salesman IMO - help me solve a real problem that I’m having and teach me something that is actually valuable to me in a non-condescending pressure-free way, then let me conclude that I must have whatever it is. Ads today a lot of times just go off of keywords that I’ve interacted with recently. Example: I recently purchased my second double-edge safety razor. I now own two. I don’t need any more. Now I see tons of ads for other razors that I have an approximately 0% chance of buying. I might be open to trying some new shaving cream, moisturizer, or other skincare products, but all the ad algorithms understand is “user searched for / clicked on an ad for a razor, so show them ads for new razors for the next xx days”. There seems to be zero understanding of potential customer needs in the actual targeting. I supposed it’s better than showing cigarette ads to non-smokers, but it still feels so irrelevant that it’s just super annoying.

Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using it on herself to get people interested) even though I was making fun of it.

TL;DR it’s disappointing both that so much investment goes into ad tech yet it’s still leading to so many irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted which would potentially make them less annoying if they actually helped people find things they’re interested in.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#249
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Apple's terms aren't that great for some users.

How so?

As a really simple example, the App Store does not have a torrent remote app while the Play Store and F-Droid have them.

Re: Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV

#250
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly part of the Android TV certification requirements include only using their launcher.

Hopefully there's some negotiation going on. If Google insists that the ad-laden launcher MUST be the default, they are killing any possibility of an "upscale Android TV". Seems dumb to purposefully kill that market.

I was thinking the other day about the Hollywood red carpet event backdrops that are plastered with logos and how tacky that makes the photos look. People even pay thousands for designer fashion goods that have “all-over” logo prints (e.g. most LV stuff, Supreme, Gucci, etc). I get that for some it’s desirable for the virtue signaling, but to me it just looks tacky. Let the quality of the leather and design of the handbag speak for themselves. It’s not as if an Eames chair has leather embossed with the Herman Miller logo every few inches, yet it’s still an iconic and recognizable design. Related: https://www.businessinsider.com/discreet-wealth-logos-status...

Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?

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