The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool

You have gravitated toward Roku even though the CEO outright admitted in a podcast interview (referenced in the article) that Roku is an advertising company not a hardware company?

You see those four hard coded buttons on your Roku remote that are shortcuts to streaming services? They went to the highest bidder. You see that non removable banner ad on the right side of your Home Screen? You see the advertisement for the Game of Thrones prequel right in your menu?

Roku is the worse offender. Yes we have multiple Roku TVs and I recommend them to almost anyone because they are cheap, Roku has the best SmartTV operating system, support for every streaming service comes to it first, and it has a long history of updating its software. But, the two TVs I use most frequently also have AppleTV 4Ks attached.

I also take a Roku stick when I’m traveling because it works with captive networks that require a login. With the AppleTV I would have to configure a travel router.

At home, I've never connected my TV to my network. The few firmware updates I've needed to do were applied using a thumb drive, and I use an AppleTV as my interface.

When I travel, I bring along an AppleTV and plug the HDMI port into their set. This lets me keep the services I subscribe-to and use them with their display. This has worked great until my most-recent rental, which had a RokuTV -- presumably setup on Wifi.

When content was streaming from my AppleTV, Roku would overlay a panel along the bottom-part of the screen proposing that I can watch what I'm currently watching from a variety of other providers. This must mean that the TV set is analyzing the video or audio signal to fingerprint what the content contained, then matching it against a library of content to feed into its profile of my use.

This is the first time I've seen something like this. I'd always assumed that if you used the TV's UI and if it was connected to the internet, then you'd probably be subject to their ads and data analysis, but it never crossed my mind that they'd perform the same data-analysis over any signal passing through its silicon.

Is this commonplace or is Roku the first of what's likely to be many doing the same?

Then it will be the classic "Do you want to opt-in?" popup with two options: "Yes" and "Ask later" with a lack of a No button. Just show this every time the TV is powered on, and getting "consent" is a matter of weeks at best.

> Some may argue that there's no need to be dramatic and that there's nothing wrong in seeing an occasional ad every now and then.

Oh, no, I am very dramatic about this. I will go to any lengths not to see advertising. I will entirely forgo any platform that shows me even one ad, especially when I pay them. Amazon Prime video is already pushing it with their preroll previews. The second it's something else I'm canceling and going back to P2P. Fuck 'em.

And I would be surprised if they did... the belief in these sorts of tech urban legends/conspiracy theories that some seemingly techie people have is cringeworthy.

And no, Facebook/Instagram aren't listening to users either, it would need too much bandwidth/server power to process all those conversations, and if you say "they can do the speech recognition on the users' phones", the majority of users use budget phones that don't have that sort of power.