121–130 of 292 posts
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.
Yup. People always complain that the AppleTV is too expensive vs the competition, but stuff like this is exactly why.
What am I missing here? I mean, why not just not plug an ad box into the internet? Either use cable or a PC and voila, no ads. Or are they somehow tying basic functions like displaying images sent to the port with ads?
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One of my favorite parts of AppleTV is that it has those beautiful screensavers.
When we switched to the 4 from the 3, the 3 used to have a "photos of the day" screensaver, filled with an ever changing, curated selection of photos. For whatever reason, they dropped that in the 4. All of the screensavers (as far as I can tell) are static now, which is kind of a shame.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. People always complain that the AppleTV is too expensive vs the competition, but stuff like this is exactly why.
lol... give it time. Apple does NOT miss a nickel.
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.
The Kindle Fire tablet is an upseller's paradise. The OS walls the user into an experience was built on constantly FOMOing the user over today's new Amazon content. Given that it was supposed to help my kids study for school during covid, that was a hard pass. I won't buy Amazon OS goods again, but if other people are lured by the low prices and then just accept what Amazon offers then I can only assume it's done won…
A humbling experience.
If you own a FireTV stick or display you'll notice that the FreeVee streaming app has started to become more and more prominent. It's deceptively simple - they are taking old shows like Murder She Wrote and streaming them non-stop on a "channel" much like the old terrestrial broadcast networks did. They're solving the streaming problem for older customers that don't grok Netflix or Hulu. These shows take pseudo-comme…
This is so depressing. We're living in the future and it's awful.
If you own a FireTV stick or display you'll notice that the FreeVee streaming app has started to become more and more prominent. It's deceptively simple - they are taking old shows like Murder She Wrote and streaming them non-stop on a "channel" much like the old terrestrial broadcast networks did. They're solving the streaming problem for older customers that don't grok Netflix or Hulu. These shows take pseudo-comme…
PlutoTV is the same. I used to put on the Geek & Sundry channel and get ads from my employer.
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.
For cheapskates like me, Walmart sells an ONN Google TV box for like $20. Make sure to get the 2023 version, it's a much improved upgrade from one released a few years ago. I love that little thing, and if there are ads, I don't see or notice them. It's much nicer and more responsive than the actual Chromecast TV it replaced.
But, what you are doing, is selling your viewing history to marketers, albeit indirectly. For that $20 box, you are giving away everything you watch, when you watch, and very likely anything that goes through that box.
That said, you might be 100% ok w/that for the price and that's ok. But, you should go in eyes open about what these lower-cost pieces of hardware are doing to 'permit' you to pay less than they cost from competitors who may or may not be doing the same thing.