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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

#461

Post by SECProto »

saxonww wrote: post #440
andrepd wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> for the privilege of installing spyware on your machine Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p. But, because of their choices here - or the terms of the content deals they've signed, idk - Netflix doesn't get as much money from me as they could. 720p is not sufficiently better than 480p (to me) to warrant paying them for 'standard' service, let alone their premium tier at $20/mo. So I just get the…

> Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p.

Don't you have to enable widevine to get Netflix in Firefox?

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

#462

Post by a4isms »

a4isms wrote: post #239
vlunkr wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled There’s no need to start jumping at shadows here.

Samsung and other manufacturers have already announced 5G-enabled Smart TVs. You’re right there’s no need to jump at shadows, but if this looks like a shadow, well… https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to...

Key quote:

The news of Samsung's upcoming TV will likely be a blow to Huawei, which is reportedly working on its own 5G 8K TV. Sharp is also working on its own 8K+5G initiative – both companies will need to hurry up if they want to beat Samsung to the punch, though.

5G TVs may not be in our homes yet, but they're on our doorstep.

And this comment is late to the conversation, but with 5G TVs, all of your streaming will go over 5G. No opportunity to use tooling to block ads or inspect what is being "phoned home." There are a good number of people whose primary uses for home internet are streaming and web browsing.

If these same TVs have a "WiFi hotspot app" that turns on a hotspot for an extra subscription, the TV manufacturers and their telecom partners will execute an end-around on the wired connectivity business.

Competition is good, but not when it's offering cheap internet in exchange for stripping consumers of any control whatsoever over their privacy.

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

#463

Post by toastal »

sergiotapia wrote: post #61

If you have children you have a moral imperative to pirate content and prevent this from infecting their lives. Search for a plexshare. $20 for everything, zero ads. Screw these greedy bastards.

Same reason why Facebook still pervades here in Thailand. Facebook offers 'free' internet access to their site. The have discounted 'social' bundles for data plans (providers necessarily have to snoop your traffic to see what you're using). People grow up with it as the 'normal'. Teaching kids that data collection is just a part of the internet does have moral implications—just like we should stop training kids on Microsoft and Adobe software or letting Google's Chromebooks invade the education space.

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

#464

Post by bluedino »

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…

> every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates

My Samsung TV just seems buggy. Certain apps like YouTube will choke on certain videos, down to the point of just randomly rebooting the TV.

And newer apps (like Peacock) never get released for the version of the software that runs on my TV.

I guess at some point we'll just either buy a new TV, or maybe now that Apple 'fixed' the remote I'll dig the Apple TV back out.

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

#465

Post by filoleg »

dylan604 wrote: post #457
reset-password wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worry I have is TVs also embedding an Amazon Sidewalk chip. Seems like it would be easy for them to egress your data through your neighbor's spy device with something like that.

Is that really a specific chip or just their Alexa devices creating a shared WiFi network?

I assume it is the latter, because that's what Alexa Sidewalk is. But that's a speculation, because neither of those currently exist in TVs, and I don't see LG or Samsung go along with it.

EDIT: I stand corrected, Sidewalk isn't a wifi network, it is it's own LoRa network that's limited to barely 1Kbps (which, imo, only strengthens my original point). Thanks for pointing out that technical detail in the replies.

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

#466

Post by zerocrates »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
rendall wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Thanks for the head's up. I have Disney+ and have not yet seen this, but I'm done as soon as it does.

It’s not true. Disney+ is adding a lower cost ad free tier. The current plan doesn’t have ads.

They're just actually introducing the ads at the current pricing level, and adding a higher "no ads" level. Of course they would have ended up there soon enough anyhow, but they're just doing it immediately.

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

#468

Post by cma »

rightbyte wrote: post #291
xoa wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better. I'd be worried that's a losing battle long term though (maybe even short/medium term?), same with other hacks like running your own DNS and blackholing ad stuff that way. At the ultimate level, cellular modules and fixed data plans are getting real cheap, a…

> But I could definitely see a point where everything comes with its own 4G module just for advertising usage I guess those Google Maps cars can hook up to everything they can while driving around your block without the need for sim cards.

Before long a loose dog can run by with a smart tag and pick it up (Amazon Sidewalk).

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

#469

Post by jollyllama »

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…

I worked at a place where they conference room TV's were showing ads for games, netflix. Everybody else looked at it as normal but my TV at home doesn't show ads, so it seemed ridiculously unprofessional to me. Just like when Windows shows ads in the start menu, etc. I don't see how people get used to it.

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

#470

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

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…

From what I've learned the key to search for is "hospitality display".

First result from brave search: https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-di...

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