221–230 of 960 posts
For all of them, their main money maker is ads on free video content. Most of them have a channel/section filled with free tv shows/movies (usuaully b level content) and they make the majority of their revenue showing ads on this content.
When I wrote about phones "Mass market is demanding products nonsensically thin to the detriment of other properties, because it was told to. It could be told otherwise." I got laughed off. That the market isn't going to serve my fancy preferences. But this is the same thing, the market is repeatedly told to ask for smart devices, even when dumb TV is all the users need.
i disagree. i think that age has passed and tvs without the netflix app will simply not be bought. for myself, having no 4k hdr, no netflix, apple tv, youtube, bbc, and many others is a deal breaker when it comes to buying a new tv.
Personally, I would pay more for a TV without this functionality. I'm running one of the last "dumb" consumer TVs, from 2015.
But the overwhelming majority of consumers just want smart TV stuff built right into their TVs.
It's like power windows and air conditioning in cars. They used to be premium features. Now, you really can't buy a car without them, at least in the USA.
(Pedantry note: As late as ~2014, you could still buy a Nissan Versa with manual windows; perhaps it's still possible)
i declined any agreement i could on a Samsung TV and it does not show those large banner ads to me but sometimes it shows some smaller ad near the source selection area. It looks like if you are paying enough you still get a spot there. Whats more it constantly installs some partner apps and puts them for quick start into the menu sometimes removing the applications i actually use from there in the process. I prefer…
Block samsungads.com and config.samsungads.com on your router, if you can. That will get rid of the small ad near the source list. Then, for the "Samsung Home" app that you can't move from spot number 1 that shows "Featured content" when you cursor over it, set up parental controls and lock access to that app. It will still be there, but it won't show anything when you navigate past it.
I didn't see this mentioned, and some of the posts imply that there are not smart TVs without ads, but my TCL TV running Roku TV bought last year and connected to the Internet does not have any ads.
:-s
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In some stupid meeting somewhere: A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up. B: People don't like ads on their TV. A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much . B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on you…
We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would…
Samsung learned from the industry represented here and it’s disconcerting to observe the lack of self-awareness in the vitriol being leveled at them from here. Equally disconcerting is that the same people rending their clothes over this probably overlook their Gmail messages being scanned and ads in their inbox, but a television, mein gott, a bridge too far.
This is your world, HN. We all live in it now. Sucks, no?
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> If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it Just don't connect it to the Internet. The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.
The NVIDIA Shield TV, which runs Android TV, can no longer be initialized without signing in with a Google account, the setup screen will refuse to get past that step, even if you don't have an internet connection. The forced login is likely illegal, because there is no mention of a requirement for a Google account in their marketing materials or on their sales pages. The device stays perfectly functional if the the…
A reminder that increasingly intrusive ads are one part of the problem. The other, and potentially bigger, part is automatic content recognition (ACR), which has been covered on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899491 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21657930
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> Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection. This is a nice trite trope, but getting an affordable TV without these features might be nearly impossible for most people these days.
Just looked at a price checking site, checking the oled and "no smart tv" boxes. Zero hits. It is not a question about affordable TV. The only ones that does not have smart features (as far as I can identify) are the cheapest LCD ones at the bottom of the price list. The best alternatives that I can find is projectors or monitors, as those seems to so far not expect an Internet connection.
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Even though if customers do have that right, I'd like to see how many % of the regular users actually demand it.
You have no idea how much I want Apple to be forced to allow me to restore my iPhone to its original firmware!