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

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

#281

Post by jordanpg »

kadoban wrote: post #241
Workaccount2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard, spikey, jagged, foul tasting pill to swallow then: Society needs to pay directly for content.

Much of society either is paying or is willing to pay. Note that even in places that we _do_ pay, for example cable TV, we still get ads.

There is also a class component to ads.

I find ads intolerable, but I am privileged enough to be able to afford to make them go away in almost all cases.

For those on a very tight budget, Disney+ with ads, Kindle with ads, podcasts with ads, etc. are the only thing that is affordable.

I suspect for many in the lowest income brackets, traditional cable TV with good old fashioned commercials is a primary source of entertainment.

Thus, we also need to keep in mind that those who cannot afford to make commercials go away are subsidizing this further for those who can in an unfortunate irony.

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

#282

Post by blueflow »

scarface74 wrote: post #263
blueflow wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other people shouldn't watch it either. Where did i suggest that? I only showed that what i did is a possible path. At no point i judged the other paths. Watch my phrasing.. "... is an option", "you don't have to ...". I suspect you are reading too much between my lines.

Yes because without such great insight, everyone would have thought that TV was a necessity in life like food water and shelter…

Worse, they think they need an TV because its "used by 95% homes in the US".

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

#283

Post by JumpCrisscross »

1ncorrect wrote: post #117
rendall wrote: post #57

> 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 cancel…

Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking. It indiscriminately pollutes the environment, and inflicts harm on non participants by incentivising unbridled data collection.

> Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking

I’ll hold my drink while you convince America why it should pay 10x for a TV because ads are bad.

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

#284

Post by anonymousab »

delecti wrote: post #171
anonymousab wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you cannot turn off much of the smart tv junk, including things like ads. Paired with features such as the tv refusing to work if you don't periodically give it a valid internet connection (for it to send its cached metrics and download new ads, of course), which is slowly but surely becoming more common, and you're only marginally better off than just using the smart tv features.

> tv refusing to work [...] Is that really a thing? I'd never heard of it until this. Is that something that only kicks in if it has been connected at least once?

I've seen a few of them. They usually start with nudging for the first few weeks ("hey, you should really plug me in and get an OS update!") before eventually refusing to work at all.

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

#285

Post by themitigating »

ericmay wrote: post #253
Karsteski wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have meaning. I despise the insertion of ads in every form of media, but it is not violence. That's just silly.

We have precedent for mental and emotional harm. I'd argue that invasive advertisements including but not limited to ads that make you remember catchy jingles, billboards on highways, ads that specifically target you based on profiling ("addictive") etc. are or can be emotional and mental harm. Ever hear the phrase "stuck in my head"? This happens with commercial jingles all the time. What if I don't want it to be st…

If you asked most people, out of this context, if remembering an ad jingle or having one stuck if their head had a negative, positive, or neutral effect on them what would they say?

I don't have any studies, but this is the first time I've heard anyone state this as a negative. Most people don't seem bothered or might even associate a good time with some jingle.

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

#286

Post by saxonww »

vonseel wrote: post #254
kornhole wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you have been following the news about Apple expanding its advertising business. If you don't want a corporation collecting data about your viewing, you could modify your approach slightly and try kodi.tv. I have Librelec running on a RPI with attached SSD as house media server. The add-ons catalog is large and growing, but it won't have all the channels you might want.

Does kodi / librelec have decent Netflix/Prime/HBO Max/Apple TV+ apps? I was under the impression they don't really support the big streaming apps and aren't really of use outside of watching torrented content.

Kodi didn't the last time I checked.

Note that unless you're running Windows or Mac, 4k from Netflix is not available anyway. In fact, 1080p would not be available, according to their system requirements. Linux tops out at 720p on both Chrome and Firefox. I have to assume this would extend to Kodi on whatever platform you're running Kodi on.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

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

#287

Post by kadoban »

afavour wrote: post #259
kadoban wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of society either is paying or is willing to pay. Note that even in places that we _do_ pay, for example cable TV, we still get ads.

Right but that means you're not paying full price, since the ads subsidise it. So to modify the OP's point, people are going to need to be prepared to pay more for content and IMO we're already at price saturation point now.

Even that doesn't really work. I'm "not paying full price" only because they force upon me hundreds of channels that I don't want, including really pricey ones like every sport. The bullshit I actually watch, I'd be shocked if I'm not paying more than full price for.

The real problem is that content creation/disribution industries are addicted to ridiculous pricing and distribution policies. Nobody can buy what they want, at reasonable terms, we're stuck with them playing stupid games that hurt everyone (likely including themselves).

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

#288

Post by ospzfmbbzr »

reaperducer wrote: post #104
a4isms wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now, this appears to be feasible. And it will probably stay feasible as long as the number of people who do it is relatively miniscule. But economics being economics, we’re freeloading off the customers who hook their smart TVs up to the internet and provide manufacturers with enough revenue that they don’t care about us. But should the practice become widespread and manufacturers notice a material impact on thei…

they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled The real reason we "need" 5G, instead of better 4G, isn't so our cars can suddenly drive themselves and every hospital with be magically populated with surgery robots. It's so that every item we ever buy can spy on us.

If I try to reverse engineer the requirements for IPv6 and 5G it really seems like they are just key pillars of a world surveillance apparatus. Certainly IPv6 is completely unnecessary for most cases -- but if you criticize it you will get the hysterical tell tale vax or 'climate' treatment -- you are a bad person for stealing the last IPv4 from children or something!

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

#290

Post by Markoff »

uptown wrote: post #53

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 Wif…

same, except I go even further and instead other online thingy I just use USB driver loaded with movies/TV shows for me and kids, I don't understand nowadays people addiction to streaming, offline experience is much better/smoother, i decide what I wanna watch on computer and just load it to drive

but I guess some people can have moral reasons to pay for some service and/or it's not legal in their country to download and watch video content for free (though many EU countries allow this)

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