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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

#201
I've wondered for a bit now: Why isn't jailbreaking TV's a bigger thing? I know there are a few projects, but it isn't nearly as widespread as XBMC was back in the day, for example.

Then again, I don't have a TV for the exact reason listed in this article, I use a big monitor.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#202
post #46

Yet another example of the customer coming last. Are TV's that force ads on customers heavily discounted? If not, the manufacturers are earning extra revenue while the customer loses their privacy and gets nothing in return other than annoyance. It's a good illustration of why privacy is so complicated: most people wouldn't think that in buying a TV they're compromising their privacy because they don't know about ACR…

This is so stupid. When I bought my TV it didn't behave like this, but now for some stupid reason I need to get ads on it? I mean, normal TV it's 90% ads 10% content, do we need to watch even more ads? Anyone has any idea on how adding a filter like AdBlocker to your router? Never thought about this but it's getting useful af.

I do this and it's been somewhat useful - you need to disable blackhole rules periodically to get app updates though (and the TV will send a storm of DNS queries your way if you dare to block queries)

Frustratingly, recently the latest Plex app stopped working with the block rules I had in place, so I've had to allow through a lot more of the TV's traffic to samsung domains than I'd like.

My primary annoyance is Samsung's monitoring of what I do on my TV, and secondarily their IPTV service, which it seems to default to on startup (I only use apps and PC/game console sources, the TV isn't plugged into or tuned for any channels).

Realistically I need to switch to a Shield TV and hope that nVidia's privacy policies are better... and never buy a samsung tv ever again.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#203

I have a Samsung TV and the best decision I made was buying the Apple TV; right now I don’t care about the applications it has, the fact that Netflix has been removed for my model as it’s already 4 years old, etc. My next TV will be as dumb as possible as Smart-TVs are a pain in the ass and never as intelligent as an Apple TV or similar.

Unfortunately you will likely find that if you want anything towards the high-end, a dumb TV just won't be an option.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just thinking what would happen if I block connection to Ads services in my router...

That's pretty much what a pi-hole is. According to my friends who use a pi-hole to filter their connection, it makes almost everything ad-free

Ads on my Samsung TV is the entire reason I decided to finally pi-hole my entire home network. It's wonderful. No ads on my TV and much less on my tablet, phone and PC. Too bad pi-hole doesn't stop Youtube ads.

The only complaint is from my wife who sometimes Googles stuff and clicks on the top result, which is often an ad and will end up blocked. She now has to scroll down a bit to the real results.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#206
post #31

Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company. There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the…

> This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra…

[deleted]

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#207
post #46

Yet another example of the customer coming last. Are TV's that force ads on customers heavily discounted? If not, the manufacturers are earning extra revenue while the customer loses their privacy and gets nothing in return other than annoyance. It's a good illustration of why privacy is so complicated: most people wouldn't think that in buying a TV they're compromising their privacy because they don't know about ACR…

    Yet another example of the customer coming last. 
Unfortunately, it's worse than that. It's more like a case of the consumer coming first.

The vast majority of consumers don't care about this. They're trying to get the biggest screen for the least money. And TV manufacturers are giving it to them.

However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue. So, we get TVs with ads.

This isn't a dystopian thing forced upon us by evil TV manufacturers. This is a dystopian thing we've asked for.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so stupid. When I bought my TV it didn't behave like this, but now for some stupid reason I need to get ads on it? I mean, normal TV it's 90% ads 10% content, do we need to watch even more ads? Anyone has any idea on how adding a filter like AdBlocker to your router? Never thought about this but it's getting useful af.

Pi-Hole would probably do the trick: https://pi-hole.net/

Just an fyi, it's good to setup firewall redirection from suspicious devices as well.

For my Roku I have setup a redirection for all DNS port queries to my pihole as some app developers are getting wise to this and using their own DNS.

It won't be long until they encrypt this traffic and lock us out completely though.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I recently built a HTPC/home server based on a Gemini Lake Celeron ITX board in a compact case. The CPU/GPU is passively cooled and can decode 4 simultaneous 4K streams in realtime. It has hardware decoding of x264, x265, VP8/9. All-in, aside from the storage disks (for a Btrfs RAID1 pool) that I took from my desktop PC, it cost me less than a QNAP/Synology NAS with room for a similar number of disks. I still use my…

This was my setup recently too but then Amazon disabled their cast button inside their prime website a few months ago which meant we had to switch to the app route. Despite their fuckery, we've found streaming from the phone apps (Amazon, Netflix, + Plex for torrents) is actually a better experience than the laptop on the couch or wireless keyboard option. Also YouTube Vanced + nextdns.io takes care of YouTube ads.
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