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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> The vast majority of consumers don't care about this. You may be right, but how exactly is someone meant to make an informed decision when they don't know what their TV is doing? It's unreasonable to expect the average person on the street to be an expert on the subject and to have fully researched everything before walking into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say anything about the subject, how do they l…

    It's unreasonable to expect the average person 
    on the street to be an expert on the subject and 
    to have fully researched everything before walking 
    into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say 
    anything about the subject, how do they learn?
I 100% agree with you that the current solution stinks and is unfair.

The solution depends on who you ask.

Some would say that it's up to the consumer to be educated. Like you, I don't think this is realistic. It's not realistic to expect every consumer to become an expert in the nuances of every single thing they might buy.

Others would say that if it's really important to customers, we'll vote with our dollars and demand alternatives to the current situation.

Some would say that the government should ban the practice or at least require some sort of very clear disclosure.

What would you like to see?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#392
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…

I sometimes wonder if someone at the top is trying to drive people away from TV/film/video. Yes there's more content than ever before but as regards drama etc. the writing is generally dreadful and the stories lack originality, on YouTube the adverts are becoming obnoxious and if extremely one-sided political messaging isn't to your taste, well, good luck finding a single programme that isn't stuffed to the gills with it.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#393
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like, there are a lot of opinions out there. I often hear, what i can do on my phone i also want to see on tv. May it be playing music, movies, series, etc.. So a seamless integration from the start without another device like apple tv is a plus. Same happens to screen in cars.

In cars, you usually just connect your phone with a cable. I would be happy to connect my phone to a TV and then just have it mirror the screen.

Some phones have HDMI out.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#394
As much as Apple can be annoying for developers, at least they have been pro consumer in certain areas:

-AppleTV will not do this, and likely never will -iPhones do not have ads all over them put in place by the carriers (I still can’t believe this happened)

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#395
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…

I think the best way to fix this before it creates legs is to have a huge backslash. They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.

Samsung TVs in the US have had ACR since 2012.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#396
post #300

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.

This is not the solution. Adding a PiHole to your network is not the solution. Disabling features in other places of your network is not the solution. What if Samsung decides that it will try to connect to open networks for updates or what not? What then? Ask your neighbour to install PiHole on his network? No. This is an example of a game of cat and mouse that shouldn't exist - you pay money for a TV and that's not…

I’m concerned that in the future devices I do not want to be connected to the internet (let my TV) will come with 5g or some other technology and be able to connect itself. I think with IoT and a desire for ease of setup this might be possible if the price of mobile internet drops enough.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#397

Can someone with 1st hand experience reassure me I would be able to use a commercial digital signage as a TV?? From what I learned so far the difficulties are: [please also correct me on these] - stand is not included (need to buy that separately / do a wall mount) - hard to find a seller - prices are higher than for equivalent consumer TVs - brightness is higher -> more power consumption - there is no antenna (terre…

everything you said is more or less right, but not everything is a problem.

- There are more difficult to buy, as they are a b2b product, but on amazon they sell some models.

- brightness is higher, depending on the purpose of the monitor, there are monitors for sun facing storefronts, which are way brighter, but those also have fans and are noisier. The ones purposed for indoor are more or less the same brightness of the tvs, and sometimes have sensors for changing the brightness depending the environment, which is actually a plus. - no antenna, some offer iptv, and others actually are android or linux based, so you may even install some apps, but you must configure them manually so much easier to use an external player.

- they are tougher panels, but they are designed for showing ads and static content, so no dark blacks, less contrast and usually less colour gamut coverage.

- not many 4k panels, the are designed to see from a distance, so many are fhd instead of 4k.

- another drawback is that many doesn't have speakers, so you have to hook up your own sound system.

Anyway, I'm in front of a storefront samsung om55n and watched some content and it's ludicrous, at night and the room seems illuminated like during the day.

Samsung also has a business line of tvs, are more like the domestic ones but designed for longer operating times and you can configure them to show slideshows or to have a ticker overlaped. They use the same basic tizen system, but the home screes is different and I doubt you will find ads on them.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: spreadsh…

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are: Having 8 kinds of lemon yogurt, each someone's favorite, while disposing of the products past the expiration date leads to either some of the highest prices in town, or closing down. Profitability in very small supermarket chains is small.

Now, the models that the somewhat sophisticated supermarkets use don't fit on a spreadsheet, and really try to guess which items really are people's favorites, look at profit margins, and risks of people just going to a different supermarket altogether because the competitor down the street still has your favorite, or charges 30% less for it. They check what happens when a product isn't in stock, or when a competitor has a significant discount. It's a difficult optimization problem, given all the differences among people's shopping lists.

Having a favorite product get discontinued sucks: It happens to me at least a couple of times a year, and sometimes straight from the manufacturer, so I can't even buy it online. But don't imagine that every supermarket out there is run by teams swimming in money. It's an extremely competitive business with many players, and there's not that much of a difference between the way the small chains run their operations today and having to close down because the lower prices of a larger competitor dropped sales just enough that they are losing money.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to do this, but dumb TVs pretty much top out at the upper-mid range. If you want a high end panel you're getting all the bullshit too, unfortunately.

Look at "digital signage" TVs built for business are available that don't have the consumer software. They are of course more expensive and optimized more for continuous usage (16hr/day 7days/week for samsung), but as of now I don't believe they get ads pushed to them. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

We were actually working on writing a scheduling system for the LG webOS ones for a time, I joked about taking one home with me.

If I'm not mistaken the LG ones were significantly more expensive than their consumer counterparts, but those Samsung ones don't seem all that much more expensive.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: spreadsh…

Sounds like the two of you may be "harbinger customers", the interesting economic phenomenon of people who tend to like products that flop.
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