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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

#111

Post by joombaga »

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…

PlutoTV is the same. I used to put on the Geek & Sundry channel and get ads from my employer.

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

#112

Post by MisterTea »

snoman wrote: post #43
jdminhbg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. People always complain that the AppleTV is too expensive vs the competition, but stuff like this is exactly why.

I’ve had Roku, FireTV, and Chromecast, and I have had hdcp and/or performance issues with everything but Apple TV. I hate that I’ve turned into something of an fanboy but Apple TV follows the same old story from Apple: expensive but it consistently just works.

I just hook a nuc or similar sff Linux PC to my old 1080p Sony TV and I'm good. All the major streaming sites work in a browser. Best part is I can pause or open another tab and just surf the web in a normal up to date browser.

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

#113

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

whalesalad wrote: post #94
manicennui wrote: post #33

Are there any Smart TVs that aren't stuffed with ads? Apple TV might be the least bad, but it still allows apps to display recommended nonsense on the home screen when they are highlighted.

only for home row apps. tbh you’re being a lil over dramatic they aren’t ads they are showing a subset of available content. being able to swipe over the Netflix app and get a clean grid of the current top content on Netflix without opening it is a great feature.

> tbh you’re being a lil over dramatic they aren’t ads they are showing a subset of available content.

Including content you didn't ask for in apps you don't use? What's your definition of an ad?

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

#114

Post by wkat4242 »

genericacct wrote: post #67
RajT88 wrote: post #3

My wife and I bought a Fire TV for a particular use case: - The hot tub room in the winter - The outdoor patio in the summer It was so cheap, we don't mind the ads on the home screen. If it dies from the moisture, we'll just buy another one. The apps are the key anyways, as I use a few totally ad-free apps to stream stuff: - JellyFin - VLC - HDHomeRun (for my antenna on the roof) PlutoTV is not ad-free, but has so mu…

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.

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

#115

Post by tokamak-teapot »

sneak wrote: post #102
whalesalad wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a setting to choose what the home button does. My Home Screen looks just like a grid of icons. No ads or anything. The Apple TV app is not the same as the Home Screen.

No, the home screen displays ads in the hero unit for the currently selected app. By default the first app on the home screen is an Apple one, so going to the home screen displays ads on the home screen from the selected Apple app. You can change the apps in the first row to prevent this, but by default the behavior is the same: home screen ads.

Ads, or suggestions for content you could watch on the device you just bought, one of the main features of which is allowing you to subscribe to content providers, rent content, and ‘buy’ content.

Calling this ‘ads’ is disingenuous.

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

#116

Post by jwells89 »

snoman wrote: post #43
jdminhbg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. People always complain that the AppleTV is too expensive vs the competition, but stuff like this is exactly why.

I’ve had Roku, FireTV, and Chromecast, and I have had hdcp and/or performance issues with everything but Apple TV. I hate that I’ve turned into something of an fanboy but Apple TV follows the same old story from Apple: expensive but it consistently just works.

The other nice thing about Apple TVs is that their hardware isn’t so terribly underpowered compared to other streaming boxes, which is why my Apple TV 4K first gen from 2017 is still snappy running current tvOS, as well as why it can play back media encoded in formats that aren’t hardware accelerated without hiccups.

So yes, it cost me more than a competing box would’ve in 2017, but it’s given me smooth problem free operation the entire time and there’s no sign of that changing any time soon.

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

#117

Post by whalesalad »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #113
whalesalad wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only for home row apps. tbh you’re being a lil over dramatic they aren’t ads they are showing a subset of available content. being able to swipe over the Netflix app and get a clean grid of the current top content on Netflix without opening it is a great feature.

> tbh you’re being a lil over dramatic they aren’t ads they are showing a subset of available content. Including content you didn't ask for in apps you don't use? What's your definition of an ad?

Re: apps I don’t use - I uninstall those :)

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

#118

Post by grishka »

ceejayoz wrote: post #54
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.

At some point they're gonna put a cheap cellular modem or something like Amazon Sidewalk in all new TVs.

Then you open up the TV and disconnect the modem.

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

#120

Post by lotsofpulp »

sneak wrote: post #106
lotsofpulp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pay for more aerials. I don’t understand why they are limited to so few, and if I could eliminate N.Y.C./London/Hong Kong/SF/other major cities, and get some lesser seen areas, that would be awesome.

It’s quite difficult to get permission to fly a drone over an active LAX (to say nothing of Times Square or London). The fact that they got to do this (and show it off via screensaver) is one of my favorite “we have unlimited money and power” Apple flexes. The amount of time, money, and planning to produce these is staggering. They’re slow motion, probably shot in 8K, and are drone shots with expensive cinema lenses.…

Thanks for the suggestion!
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