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

arstechnica.com

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

#251

Post by underbluewaters »

neilv wrote: post #240

And on other devices, Prime Video is getting incrementally worse, in recent months and weeks. I tried Prime Video with-ads, and it was not only unpleasant sucking of my attention and interruption of the show, but creepy with the targeting/mis-targeting. When the whole purpose is to relax and wind down for the day. Once I've run out of ads-free good content on Prime Video, I'm going to have to go through my GnuCash, t…

Prime Video is by far the worst app on AppleTV. The are so cheap they don't even use 4k resolution icons and thumbnails. It shows how much they care about their customers.

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

#252

Post by kkielhofner »

graphe wrote: post #195
kkielhofner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> same old story from Apple: expensive but it consistently just works. Not to mention at least you know where they're hitting you - up front, on the hardware. It's like the people that complain about a Macbook being 20% more (or whatever), buying a PC-something, and then coming back complaining that Windows is loaded with ads or Linux has all kinds of issues on it. I'm with you - I went from being a die-hard Linux de…

Apple works unless you need something specific that every other devices supports but apple doesn't. I've never had a great experience with any laptop but at least I can't say I didn't get screwed on the price most of the time (non apple times). Who remembers how apple didn't admit or fix the Nvidia GPU on their laptop for years but it was easy to just get a new ipod?

I’m not going to universally defend Apple (because no one can) but when you have to go back 10 years to come up with an example that as other commenters have noted was a supplier issue it’s not as strong an argument as you may think.

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

#253

Post by adamomada »

wkat4242 wrote: post #114
genericacct wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recently realized you cant even start vlc if the fire cant connect to the internet. Bummer if your link is down

That's ridiculously stupid yes. Came across this too when my fibre was down.

You guys are just seeing a message from the home screen but you can bypass it by holding down HOME and pressing right to go to the app quick launcher. The home screen doesn’t work without internet but anything else that doesn’t need it will work

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

#254

Post by whynotmaybe »

gosub100 wrote: post #217
joezydeco wrote: post #88

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…

I recently bought a "smart TV" and I was pleased to see that it comes with essentially 'cable TV' (IPTV, I guess?) without even needing to run an app or set up an account. You just click CH+/- or guide and you watch another channel. One of the channels plays 21 Jump Street (the 80's show) and a few other 80's classics, another 2 just play 80's/90's music videos exclusively. I think it's kind of neat that the internet…

Funny thing I discovered with mine, when there's an ad during the show, I switch channel and come back. The ad is gone and I now have a "we'll be back in x seconds" screen.

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

#255

Post by jrockway »

gosub100 wrote: post #239
fragmede wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads, generically, are one thing. Car insurance when I'm not looking for car insurance. The problem with targeted advertising is when they're for something I didn't know I wanted. A band I like is coming to town, or a product that solves a problem I've been having. because then I'm spending money I wasn't previously going to spend.

Car insurance ads when you know they are paying those millions of dollars out of the premiums that you pay , just so they can tell you how cheap their premiums are. That's what ticks me off!

Insurance involves having a large pool of good drivers to subsidize the bad drivers. So the money they spend to make the pool larger could make things better from you; more good drivers, they pay out less claims, they charge you less. It's one business where the "network effect" really matters, and so it's not a guaranteed waste of money like advertising other products is.

(For example, it really doesn't matter whether you drink Coke or Pepsi. Those ads are just inflating the cost of the product; there are no more efficiencies to be had in the production of sugar water.)

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

#256

Post by adamomada »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #77
RajT88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll notice I did not mention what we do with it when done with it. Point of fact, we use the (many, free) electronics recycling programs available to us in our area. Thanks for making dumb and uncharitable assumptions.

Less than 1/5th of e-waste is actually recycled, and most of it ends up in places with little or no environmental regulation or health and safety protections for workers. And that's the stuff that makes it into the e-waste stream. Most of it just gets tossed in the garbage with everything else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVnu0doouJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axYKPbr9_MA

Saw where ewaste goes in Ontario at least – a 20 ft deep hole in the ground at the dump

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

#257

Post by babypuncher »

codedokode wrote: post #133
kkielhofner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> same old story from Apple: expensive but it consistently just works. Not to mention at least you know where they're hitting you - up front, on the hardware. It's like the people that complain about a Macbook being 20% more (or whatever), buying a PC-something, and then coming back complaining that Windows is loaded with ads or Linux has all kinds of issues on it. I'm with you - I went from being a die-hard Linux de…

Macbook costs like 3x compared to competitors. For example, Apple M1 8 Core score on cpubenchmark is about 14000. If you look for non-Apple laptops with equivalent CPU score, they would cost around $450. And they support Linux. The only good thing in Macbook is display, which covers more than 100% of sRGB color space and has giantic resolution. I wish it could be bought separately and installed into a normal laptop.

Performance is not the only meaningful metric when evaluating the total value of a laptop.

Screen, keyboard, build quality, and a whole host of other factors contribute to it.

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

#258

Post by babypuncher »

jdminhbg wrote: post #173
codedokode wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macbook costs like 3x compared to competitors. For example, Apple M1 8 Core score on cpubenchmark is about 14000. If you look for non-Apple laptops with equivalent CPU score, they would cost around $450. And they support Linux. The only good thing in Macbook is display, which covers more than 100% of sRGB color space and has giantic resolution. I wish it could be bought separately and installed into a normal laptop.

> If you look for non-Apple laptops with equivalent CPU score, they would cost around $450. And they support Linux. And their battery lasts almost two hours.

And they're made of cheap plastic, have horrible keyboard flexing, and their trackpads suck.

I am envious of gp though, I kind of miss being younger and thinking the only thing that mattered in a laptop was raw CPU/GPU performance.

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

#259

Post by babypuncher »

ensignavenger wrote: post #44
whalesalad wrote: post #7

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.

Do Apple TVs not display ads? I have Google TV devices, in part because I can install what er I want on them, including 3rd part launchers that don't have ads.

Apps pinned to the top row of the home screen can show their own custom content in the top portion of the screen when highlighted. By default, the Apple TV app is in that row and shows you slides for TV+ content. That is as close to built-in advertising as it gets.

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

#260

Post by adamomada »

beebeepka wrote: post #147

Honestly, that's what you get for not buying a cheap pc that can be hooked to any screen. It's easier, cheaper, and you don't have to deal with "apps". I am continuously amazed HTPCs are losing ground to commercial setups that are objectively worse by any conceivable metric. No, dealing with "apps" is not simpler.

It’s tough to get anything decent that will play 4kHDR with frame rate switching etc and included remote control (or work with existing TV remote control) for less than a fire stick. It’s mainly why they are popular and relevant
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