Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by acomjean » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #154

Waterluvian wrote: post #72

Speaking of this, YouTube changed recently for me and now unskippable ads are 15 seconds and if you watch them on a chromecast you can’t skip them from your phone anymore. You have to go into “remote control mode” and navigate the on-screen UI. Nothing grinds my gears worse than stuff you buy and integrate into your life unnecessarily degrading in performance/behaviour. I might actually be about done with YouTube, wh…

The correct thing to do for YouTube is to pay for the ad-free Premium version ( which also supports "content creators" more). A lot of people say they'd pay if they were given the option to remove ads, yet surprisingly few people opt to do it for YouTube ( which you can even share with friends and family up to 5 accounts, so it can be a decent deal). Why?

I pay for youtube. Its nice to not have ads. Its not cheap, but it does come with Youtube Music (which is more like spotify.. eg its not music videos, though it does have those.)

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

#252

Post by meowster » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #170

ossusermivami wrote: post #74

I switched over kodi+torrents over an RPI because of this, I would have been an happy with android tv and whatever streaming service. Companies spend their times screwing their customers, so if you screw me I screw you! and I have my conscience for me.

I did this with odroids instead of RPI and got sick of dealing with issues. Shield TV has been great as a kodi-and-netflix-and-nothing-else box up until now.

I recently set up a Plex server and use Kodi on a RPi with the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on. Very easy to set up, and no issues so far.

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

#253

Post by meowster » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #189

Apropos of avoiding such shenanigans: Can I use a spare rpi3/4 to watch netflix on a spectre non-smart tv I have?

There's an unofficial Netflix add-on for Kodi. LibreELEC makes it simple to run Kodi on a RPi. I just set up a Plex server and use Kodi on a RPi with the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on.

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

#254

Post by meowster » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

likeclockwork wrote: post #235

hitchhikerr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a NUC or some kind of mini PC and install Kodi on it

And where does the content you will play with Kodi come from?

There's an unofficial Netflix add-on, but I just set up a Plex server and use PlexKodiConnect (PKC) Kodi add-on.

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

#255

Post by oliwarner » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

wildrhythms wrote: post #13

It's really incredible how the average American home spends some $116/mo for television[1], and is still subjected to 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment. [1] https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-doxo...

> 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment

It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.

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

#256

Post by vinay427 » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

kelchm wrote: post #232

Legion wrote: post #29

I strongly prefer the Apple TV UI approach over all the rest. The whole content recommendation view is contained withing the Apple TV application, instead of the home screen. The home screen gives me an unsullied grid of applications. If I want to have the content recommendation view be my default, the settings gives me the option of defaulting to it instead of the home screen.

I'm really surprised at just how much I like my Apple TV. I (wrongly) assumed it was a bit of a joke of a product for many years. The latest 4k model is ridiculously fast (despite using an 'old' A12 SoC). Across the board it just works better than any Android TV, Fire TV or Roku I've ever used.

The Apple TV is really good, but have you tried the Nvidia Shield (Pro)? The launcher leaves something to be desired, and just mever felt entirely optimized for the remote and device even before this ads issue, but at least in my experience applications run extremely quickly even compared to my Apple TV which is already fast. On my Shield, that's while running a webcam recorder (NVR) with two simultaneous network streams 24/7 in the background, which makes it even more impressive to me.

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

#257

Post by beezischillin » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

There’s a very disturbing trend wherein nowadays you own less and less of the things you pay for. Hardware and paid software shouldn’t be stuffed full of ads.

I don’t have anything against an ad supported cheaper version like Amazon did with the Kindle but trying to sneak in extra revenue on top of something you’ve already paid for is not only annoying but full on shady as heck.

Facebook/Oculus started doing similar experiments with paid apps and games on their VR platform and people aren’t happy there either.

Personally, I’m extremely worried about this becoming normal, the same way micro transactions did in games.

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

#258

Post by abacadaba » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #46

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an iOS user, there's a couple weird ones: Apple prohibits apps from putting ads in notifications, but sends a notification ad for every new Apple TV+ show. "Rules for thee, but not for me"

For those of you not on iOS, here's what one of those notification spams from Apple looks like: https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1393380938642563072 See also: Ads for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple's fitness thing at the top of the Settings app. https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955 Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap on the Apple Arcade button to show you a su…

!$#!#@

just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and switch to iOS you tell me this..

save us pinephone

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

#259

Post by charwalker » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

Unwanted content discovery is unwanted advertising therefore content discovery is advertising if only for chosen services.

I don't care if Black Widow is now available even if I have the app downloaded. I'll open the app to find that content or use a web site to compare indexes and identify which service, if I have it, has that content.

Or I'll continue to flex Plex/etc to remove ads and keep the content I want on hand. If I pay for it I shouldn't see ads, ever, that's the deal. Show me an ad after my check has cleared then I'll move on.

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

#260

Post by tomc1985 » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

meowster wrote: post #252

tomc1985 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this with odroids instead of RPI and got sick of dealing with issues. Shield TV has been great as a kodi-and-netflix-and-nothing-else box up until now.

I recently set up a Plex server and use Kodi on a RPi with the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on. Very easy to set up, and no issues so far.

The problems were never with kodi, it was always the platform or the hardware. I've been running the same Kodi setup (basically just setting up SMB access to a shared network drive) since XBMC on my modded Xbox. Odroid on both their Ubuntu distro and Odrobian (Debian fork) was the absolute worst experience. 2D would be super slow but 3D would be fine, or the opposite, or it just wouldn't start after sitting unused for a few months. `apt-get upgrade` breaking stuff. Such a PITA...

I guess I should try again on a newer RPi, if the driver support is 100% and the hardware somewhat reliable then I might be interested. Last time I checked 4K and USB 3.0 weren't available on RPi so I was turned off from the platform.

But up until now Shield has been the sweet spot.