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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

#381

Post by andrew_ »

yborg wrote: post #375
xoa wrote: post #87

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). B…

That NEC isn't a TV though, i.e. it has no tuner.

I wonder if something like this https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ could be used with the RPi capability

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

#382

Post by filoleg »

jacquesm wrote: post #230
dylan604 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, these devices will be smarter than you about this. They will recognize a WiFi connection that cannot access the internet, and prefer an open network instead.

They will simply come with a cellular modem built in and you won't be able to block it. These things are so cheap now, and with virtual sims I think this is pretty much inevitable. At some point everything will be internet connected just because the tech will cost pennies. We're not there yet, but for a big ticket item such as a TV or a car it's either already there or about to happen.

> They will come with a cellular modem built in, and you won't be able to block it.

Haha, joke's one them. I live in a nice apartment in the middle of a major US city, and in my last 3 apartments, cell signal reception was ranging between 1 bar and no signal reception at all. Good luck with a built-in cell modem here.

Thankfully, wifi calling is a thing working by default. So having almost no cell reception at home has exactly zero effect on my phone usage.

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

#383

Post by scarface74 »

drcongo wrote: post #366
scarface74 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in a Hilton hotel right now. You don’t get a standard Wifi password. You go to a web page where you enter your room number and last name and then your MAC address is allowed for a certain amount of time.

Ahh damn. Does signing in on the phone first not work? I'm struggling to remember what the captive screen wanted last time I did it, it's been a while.

No. It doesn’t. That’s where the travel router came in. It presents itself as one MAC address using one of its radios and exposes another interface for your devices. I was staying in an extended stay and we had computers and a WiFi printer set up. We were waiting for our house to be built.

I was just informed that Apple added support for captive networks in March.

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

#384

Post by andrepd »

saxonww wrote: post #286
vonseel wrote: post #254

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 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

Correct, if you use Linux you can pay a monthly fee to Netflix for the privilege of installing spyware on your machine to view 720p video.

Meanwhile torrents are a search away and they give me a no-nonsense .mkv file in 5 minutes, to watch wherever and whenever I want: phone, PC, TV, internet or no internet. The choice is easy.

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

#385

Post by ahelwer »

themitigating wrote: post #276
freeone3000 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Prime Video requires a paid Amazon Prime subscription. You are paying for the content. You also paid for the TV you watch it on, and you pay for the delivery service to your house. There's money every step of the way, so, having advertising on top of that? Insane.

Depending on the service you may be paying a subsidized price. Around 1994 my parents were paying $110~ USD for a cable package in suburban NY. It was basic cable, the extra premium channels, and HBO. Adjusted for inflation that's $210, I know that inflation doesn't always tell the entire economic story but now I'm paying Netflix $20, HBO $15, Disney+ $6.76, Hulu is free with my cell phone plan but let's say $10. Tha…

Subsidized doesn't mean anything in this context. These services aren't offered below cost, they're very profitable. Companies will always view not showing ads as leaving money on the table, regardless of how much profit they're already making.

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

#386

Post by Aloha »

SayMyName wrote: post #142
xoa wrote: post #87

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). B…

You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years. We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV. Sure I don't ge…

I dont like 120Hz refresh, it looks weird. I see it a whole lot on bad 4k transfers of older movies, they're either doing a 3:2 pulldown or something else to up convert the scan rate, but no matter what it is, it makes the motion look weird and excessively fluid.

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

#387

Post by BitwiseFool »

jasonjayr wrote: post #185
thunky wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I thought we well, but TFA seems to suggest that some TVs may overlay ads on top of any video source: "Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen and matched them to an existing database of content to find out what a user was watching and when" "pop-ups would reportedly appear halfway through the show and be injected into the users' own content, such as home videos"

"Automatic Content Recognition" is scary, and seems to work regardless of the source of the image. https://www.bannertag.com/guide-to-automatic-content-recogni... I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere in the tome of text you agree to when you startup or unpack the tv. So clearly, everyone is okay with it. /s

>"So clearly, everyone is okay with it. /s"

Cue the responses confidently dismissing the issue because there is some convoluted setup involving additional hardware and network configuration that any consumer can surely set up if they don't like what these products are doing.

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

#388

Post by earth_walker »

Markoff wrote: post #266
jtbayly wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you block internet if it will join open networks automatically?

break antenna would be easiest solution, but you might possibly void the warranty while opening TV

Not giving them your money in the first place would be the easiest solution.

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

#389

Post by scarface74 »

drcongo wrote: post #372
drcongo wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh damn. Does signing in on the phone first not work? I'm struggling to remember what the captive screen wanted last time I did it, it's been a while.

Also, I've never tried it, but can't one just tether the Apple TV to the phone?

Then you have to use your data plan. At least with the previous AppleTV, you could AirPlay directly from your iPhone to your AppleTV without the AppleTV being connected to an external Wifi network.

It didn’t work with all iPhone apps though. For instance it didn’t work with Netflix.

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

#390

Post by insightcheck »

SayMyName wrote: post #142
xoa wrote: post #87

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). B…

You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years. We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV. Sure I don't ge…

I was curious and looked up reviews for Sceptre, but according to some discussions on Reddit, they have build quality issues. One of the threads [0] had a discussion on picture quality and build quality issues.

Another subreddit [1] even has an automoderator comment that says getting a smart TV and not hooking it up to the internet is the best option. The automoderator also writes that if one is certain about going non-Smart, then one should "look at a projector or a Commercial Display. A projector means you will also 100% need audio with it. A Commercial Display or Hospitality TV you could pay up to twice or even more for the same TV (or worse) without smart features."

However, I'm not sure how reliable that automoderated comment on r/4kTV is.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/hometheater/comments/a25d5m/are_sce...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/4kTV/comments/qt9wvf/nonsmart_tvs/

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