Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

flatpanelshd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 960 posts

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#231

Post by Nextgrid »

detaro wrote: post #216
undebuggable wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.

Is there any device you might connect your TV to that actually provides Ethernet over HDMI (at all? unprompted?)? People keep citing that ability, but I can't remember ever actually encountering devices that do it.

Even if this actually becomes widespread (indeed I am not aware of any consumer device providing pass-through network access through its HDMI port), I'd expect most devices to have a toggle for this or a privacy-friendly company like Apple might even make the lack of that "feature" a selling point.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#232

Post by nicolas_t »

auggierose wrote: post #172
foepys wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also bought a Sony Android TV for this reason. Then last month Google pushed an update for the "Android TV Home" app and now there are many people complaining about ads on the home screen [1]. This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth… https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...

Just buy an Apple TV, and then whatever TV you like.

Apparently according to other comments a lot of TVs still do ACR on content received by the apple TV (or any hdmi signal) so we still need dumb tvs...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#233

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #50
adamparsons wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They retrospectively updated panels going back to 2016 to "improve" the experience. Truly evil shit.

Do they have the right to do that? Do customers in any country have a right to demand a product's firmware be restored to factory-state (on the grounds that what they received isn't what they were sold)?

I’ve used Australian consumer affairs laws to return products well outside the return date when they’ve been updated to remove/modify features I specifically wanted.

I returned a Bose speaker when it stopped letting you cast to it without their app, and have returned my Ring external camera when they removed customisable motion zones (I need to block a specific tree that moves in the wind). Plus more.

I’ve never had a problem doing so, I’m always polite and just explain that it’s no longer as advertised and print out the product update notes showing that they removed/changed x or y feature.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#234

Post by wycy »

fyfy18 wrote: post #124
fxtentacle wrote: post #84

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it i…

How do you force WebOS to default to HDMI? I replaced my parents TV with a LG LED last year, and it defaults to showing "No signal found" when turned on, then you have to switch to HDMI.

I dealt with getting blasted with the "No signal" thing on my LG webOS TV for several months before finally figuring it out. I wish I could remember how and tell you, but I can't recall. But don't give up! It is possible.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure if I got it to default to HDMI but I did definitely get it to show something other than no signal. Try using the picture frame feature (where it shows art in a picture frame). After so doing, I think it at least defaults to the picture frame. I also have a Roku connected that seems to be capable of telling the TV "hey switch to me", so sometimes I get the Roku HDMI and sometimes I get picture frame, but at least I never get No Signal anymore.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#235

Post by Nextgrid »

kmlx wrote: post #158
antsar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that the YouTube app forces its ads and shitty recommendations down your throat. A NUC running Kodi sounds nicer. (Yeah, yeah, pi-hole. It’s a bandaid, IMHO) Also, Apple‘s streaming services being ever more annoyingly shoved in your face on menu screens.

it doesn't have any ads if you buy Youtube Premium

This requires accepting their ToS & "privacy" policy and providing validated billing data to Google, an advertising company already stalking everything you do on the web.

Some people might not be comfortable with this, or not even trust them to begin with. I personally don't mind paying but there's no way in hell I am providing any personal information to Google.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#237

Post by chongli »

tangjurine wrote: post #167
avian wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was this the essay you were referring to [1]? I think you’re bang on with this comparison. My dad and I have long complained how (for example) grocery stores seem to constantly cancel our favourite products. We know it’s not the manufacturer because the product is still on their website. My dad and I even have a term for the people in the head office who make the decision to phase out our favourite products: spreadsheet guys.

It really captures the inanity of a person who just sits around crunching numbers all day and killing off people’s beloved products and showing small percentage quarterly gains... while destroying goodwill and long term customer loyalty in the process.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#238

Post by nicolas_t »

m463 wrote: post #198
huhtenberg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think that will just create a market opportunity. There was a company that made just a good tv, no smarts, but I can't find it right offhand. It think it was a european company

JVC does this for their video projector (which are also pretty damn good). I've seen people complain about that though so not sure how long that'll last.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#239

Post by TooCreative »

sschueller wrote: post #32
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.

I had to blacklist my wifi controlled air purifier on my router as it was sending data every few seconds to Amazon's DCs. If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data.

Blacklist? How did it get the password to your router in the first place?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#240

Post by rthomas6 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #84

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it i…

I use a pi-hole to block that traffic.
Post reply on HN