Live data from Hacker News

After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

arstechnica.com

31–40 of 292 posts

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#31
post #22

The trick is to never give your TV access to the internet and to pair it with an Apple TV. If you buy a TV and it won't even boot or work without an internet connection - return it and get a different one.

Apple TVs in the default configuration show large video ads for Apple stuff in the hero unit on the homescreen, same as Amazon is being accused of doing in TFA.

They do? I have not seen that on any of mine. We don’t spend much time on the Home Screen though.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works fine with a TV. I bought one knowing that the "smart" features weren't all that great. I tried connecting it to the internet, and it felt more sluggish, although it's a brand new 2023 model. I was able to reset it to factory defaults and it's working well enough for what I bought it for (the image is very good, at least for my needs). For reference, it's a TCL with Google TV. But the Fire TV TFA talks abou…

you can still stream stuff - just use something else and just leverage it as a cheap display. Unless it won't work if not connected to the internet (wouldn't put it past them). I bought my Xbox mainly because it was the best/cheapest option for a 4K bluray player. I think I've loaded a game on it a handful of times at best, but watched lots of movies and other content with it. Thanks gamers for subsidizing a great BR…

The FireTV is not an actual television set. It's the "something else" that you use to stream content to a screen with no internet connection.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#34

Google has started to do the same thing making my nvidia shield a paperweight to me.

I have a fairly expensive Google TV and I have to navigate past rows of promoted content to get to the streaming apps I actually installed and want to use.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#35

Well don't worry. You buy a premium "lifestyle tv" like a Samsung Frame, and the moment you connect it to the internet, it too slams every user interface panel full of advertising. This amazon is shit egregious, but par for the course. They're hardly the only ones. TVs are enshittified pretty badly. Thankfully my Samsung forgot those ads after wiping it to factory defaults. So now it is only connected to the apple tv…

I just bought a Bravia A95L and even though it's gorgeous, I see more advertising then back when I just had cable -- 20 years ago. I wasn't planning to offload everything to an HTPC when I bought this, but that's certainly my next move.

And I don't know why Google TV has it in for PLEX but it buries it all the way at the end of my apps list so that I have to press like 20 buttons just to use it.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#36
post #23

Well don't worry. You buy a premium "lifestyle tv" like a Samsung Frame, and the moment you connect it to the internet, it too slams every user interface panel full of advertising. This amazon is shit egregious, but par for the course. They're hardly the only ones. TVs are enshittified pretty badly. Thankfully my Samsung forgot those ads after wiping it to factory defaults. So now it is only connected to the apple tv…

Why connect any tv to internet?

To access content.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#37
post #22

The trick is to never give your TV access to the internet and to pair it with an Apple TV. If you buy a TV and it won't even boot or work without an internet connection - return it and get a different one.

Apple TVs in the default configuration show large video ads for Apple stuff in the hero unit on the homescreen, same as Amazon is being accused of doing in TFA.

owned an apple tv for many years (many models) and i've never seen this

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#38

The trick is to never give your TV access to the internet and to pair it with an Apple TV. If you buy a TV and it won't even boot or work without an internet connection - return it and get a different one.

Even if it requires an internet connection, it surely has an option to start up on the Apple TV input, bypassing the home screen.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#39
post #30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can still stream stuff - just use something else and just leverage it as a cheap display. Unless it won't work if not connected to the internet (wouldn't put it past them). I bought my Xbox mainly because it was the best/cheapest option for a 4K bluray player. I think I've loaded a game on it a handful of times at best, but watched lots of movies and other content with it. Thanks gamers for subsidizing a great BR…

The key is to verify that the TV will return to just showing "HDMI 1" or whatever after power off. Because the smart TVs have a history of returning to whatever ads they want to show after power on.

My particular TV, if it's never been connected to the internet, will not show any ads. It will show a notification that it isn't connected to the internet when you turn it on, but it will work fine otherwise. It'll even switch to the correct video input if you power it on through that port, say through a firetv stick. Otherwise, there's a setting for power on behaviour: 1. go to home screen 2. Go to last used input.

Re: After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

#40

Google has started to do the same thing making my nvidia shield a paperweight to me.

I have a fairly expensive Google TV and I have to navigate past rows of promoted content to get to the streaming apps I actually installed and want to use.

I'm dreading the day my LG TV decides it doesn't want to allow me to disable ads.
Post reply on HN