Live data from Hacker News

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

adguard.com

321–330 of 579 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, it’s a moral imperative to show children that if you can’t legally get what you want just do it illegally…

Legal != moral.

So yes it’s your “moral right” to obtain content without paying for it because you don’t want ads.

Would you feel the same way if a commercial entity violated the GPL?

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just get any smart tv and add a android tv dongle . They don't cost much

If you care about privacy absolutely do not get an Android TV dongle. Get an Apple TV (though yes, they cost more. Maybe find a used one on eBay if you're particularly price sensitive)

Apple is planning on adding ads to the AppleTV.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...

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

#323
post #47

The new Google TV launcher complete with ads on an expensive TV or a Shield is getting a hammering in the ratings, shows how little they care about customer feedback. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... Bonus points for making the preview images in the store not show the ads you'll see. If any other app tried to mislead users like that they'd be banned from the store. Although it's not lik…

You can still adb your way to freedom but it's not a solution for average users.

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

#324

Downfall implies a failure or ending, it seems like they're still selling like hotcakes. This is why we need regulation to save us from surveillance, most consumers want cheap and don't understand/care that they're selling their privacy instead.

I quite like my android tv on my lg display. It’s responsive with a nice solid feeling remote. I think there are ads on the screen but I’ve never given them more than a passing glance except once or twice I was recommended a good tv show. Most people outside of the HN crowd really don’t think about this stuff at all.

To my knowledge, LG TVs don't run Android TV, but webOS instead.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my ATV 4K. But it’s useless for traveling since hotels require you to login and the AppleTV doesn’t have a browser. The Roku sticks get around this by temporarily exposing a pass through wifi connection that you can connect to from your phone/computer and log in to your hotel’s wifi. The only work around with the AppleTV is to buy a second travel router.

For travel, I have a Raspberry Pi with a second wifi stick to transmute hotel wifi into my own local network. This avoids having to modify every phone/tablet/Chromebook/Switch the family has in tow or fight with buggy hotspots. I keep meaning to add a VPN back to home (mostly for performance) but I haven't got around to it yet. An upgrade I keep looking for is an external directional antenna so I can get a stronger s…

You’re really over complicating things…

A travel router will do the trick.

https://a.co/d/4Y6UwOE

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, it’s a moral imperative to show children that if you can’t legally get what you want just do it illegally…

downloading video content copy for personal consumption without owning original is legal in many European countries, uploading/distributing would be very different matter, let alone software

> downloading video content copy for personal consumption without owning original is legal in many European countries

No it isn't.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't wait for the p2p download then you are already lost. Needing the latest an greatest or not being able to wait a year to watch something means they already have you firmly in their grip. Just pay the media troll toll if you can't wait.

Haven't a lot of torrent sites gotten in trouble or implemented rules to mitigate against their sites providing content before the official release since they come out so fast and not always from official sources? I've never heard of issues of having to wait any significant amount of time from an official release on the streaming companies.

Yea I've never seen a wait period after the official release either. This guy must be confused.

Torrenting is great but TBH I'm not going to waste my time setting up Sonarr/Radarr and maintaining tracker accounts to torrent stuff that I can watch through services I already have access to.

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

#328
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…

>At home, I've never connected my TV to my network The next (already there?) steps are the TV automatically scanning for open wifi network to leverage and/or having a built in 4g connection.

Not everyone lives in higher density housing, so open wifi networks are not always a given. Also a built-in cellular modem would be antithetical to having a lower cost TV set based on ad subsidies.

I would worry more about mesh networks like Amazon sidewalk

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

#329
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has Netflix and Amazon Prime apps that I've used. They get the job done, though they ain't pretty.

What's the advantage over Plex then? I've installed Kodi before but it didn't seem nearly as polished as Plex. Plex is doing away with plugins but I've never needed those anyways for Movie/TV content.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

People call me crazy for paying for reddit and YouTube premium. The fact is, they're some of the few places where I can pay directly to host the servers and pay the creators. I won't considering using any other social network where I can't contribute directly, versus indirectly with my data and eyeballs.
Post reply on HN