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Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#21

Post by retSava »

mnw21cam wrote: post #8
retSava wrote: post #5

Do they wait with showing ads, say a month or so, until after the common return policy for most stores have expired? That would be a really evil thing to do, just struck my mind. Also, sounds like a case of optimization creep - "I know a way to get even more revenue, we just sign up with this $more_shady_ad_network!". Displaying more and more creepy ads, no-one decreasing ads since they don't want to be the one decre…

> Do they wait with showing ads, say a month or so, until after the common return policy for most stores have expired? What? A month? Sale of goods act.

Sorry, don't where you're at. Over here, it's commonly a month return policy of most stores (no law setting this, it's a voluntary thing).

Then there's quite generous warranty for 2 years, up to 3 years, but that's when things break.

In addition, I think this also includes if a sold item is unfit for advertised use, or perhaps even if substantially changed during ownership (eg Samsung mandatorily introducing ads), but I've never had to use that so don't know).

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#24

Post by FooHentai »

jmull3n wrote: post #19

Curious to see what HN users believe is the best smart TV to buy in terms of OS functionality, privacy and user experience?

Whatever has the best panel for the best price, then strap an apple TV (or your choice of NUC) onto it and completely ignore whatever on-board smarts exist.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#26

Post by nonninz »

Shivetya wrote: post #6
bleepblorp wrote: post #3

Just as the 's' in 'IoT' stands for 'security', the 'f' in 'IoT' stands for 'fairness to users.' Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.

Well that does get very difficult with TV since a large number of people stream, the app on my LG is actually better than my Apple TV but it is toss up with the Roku on the other TV. So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it shoul…

I have also a LG TV, and I used to keep it disconnected at all times as all my streaming comes from the nVidia Shield anyway.

However recently I wanted to setup my home automation system to automatically turn the TV off when I go to bed or outside, and for that I needed to connect it to the home network.

I solved this by confguring the router firewall to drop any package from the TV to the internet. It works!

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#27

Post by ComodoHacker »

tjungblut wrote: post #11

It's even worse when the ad server is down: it will completely lock-up your TV and you can't even watch it anymore. In the best case it makes it excruciatingly slow. That's why I turned off networking on my SmartTV already a year or two ago. No ads, works as a TV should.

I hope someone will figure out how to serve them fake 1-second black screen ads from your Pi-hole.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#28

Post by bleepblorp »

Shivetya wrote: post #6
bleepblorp wrote: post #3

Just as the 's' in 'IoT' stands for 'security', the 'f' in 'IoT' stands for 'fairness to users.' Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.

Well that does get very difficult with TV since a large number of people stream, the app on my LG is actually better than my Apple TV but it is toss up with the Roku on the other TV. So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it shoul…

It's just a matter of time until Smart TVs deactivate themselves if they can't connect to their telemetry and ad servers -- or the manufacturers enter into agreements with streaming services to proxy ads through the same IPs used to stream video.

This would not be without precedent. Some Samsung TVs already refuse to exit setup mode if they can't connect to the Internet after initial power-on to geo-lookup their IP to make sure that they're being used in the country they're sold for.

The best solution for streaming is a low-end PC with hardware video decoding and the ability to run Ublock Origin.

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Edit: I see from other comments that Samsung TVs already go into degraded functionality mode if they can't connect to their ad servers, and already serve some ads from endpoints used for necessary functionality.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#29

Post by walrus01 »

You should absolutely never give your 'smart' television the wifi password or plug it into a cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Use the things as dumb displays driven by an xbox or PS4 or a home theater PC.

Yes, the xbox and PS4 home screens have 'ads' (promoted games and stuff mostly), but they're not 1/10th as annoying in my opinion. And Microsoft and Sony have a much higher likelihood of keeping the operating systems properly patched and up to date on a 5, 10 year time scale.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#30

Post by ComodoHacker »

foepys wrote: post #15
pfundstein wrote: post #9

Here's wondering if these ads can be blocked simply with a DNS based blocker like PiHole.

As far as I know, not everything can be blocked. You were able to block everything in the past but no longer. Samsung catched on and now serves some ads over the same domains they distribute their firmware updates, install apps, get the program guide, and check the online status. If you block those domains the Samsung TV loses most of its internet features and also seems to go crazy and requests all domains multiple…

I think it is possible to serve fake ads from Pi-hole.
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