Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#41

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

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.

I'm guessing that in addition to them pushing their data stats to AWS they don't make that data available to you for free or indefinitely? (kinda like how Nest only lets you see 10 days' worth of thermostat data via their own service with absolutely no option or ability to download a CSV of all data since day 1 even though they have that data in a SpannerDB somewhere in a Google datacenter)

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#42

Post by izacus » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

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.

> 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.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#43

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

neya wrote: 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…

Imagine thinking that sony is in any way a more ethical company...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootki...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_roo...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#44

Post by Kelteseth » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

olorton wrote: post #14

I've had my Samsung TV for 3-4 years, it works just as well as well today as the first day that I bought it. I've never connected it to the internet and get streaming capabilities using 3rd party devices. Dumb TVs are much better than shit ones.

This. Just buy an NVidia shield and use your TV as a monitor. The UI and the fact that it uses AndroidTV and not some shitty Samsung OS is reason alone to buy it. Also my Samsung TV gets a start signal from my NVidida Shield so I do not even have to bother with using 2 remotes :)

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#45

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

silon42 wrote: post #35

silon42 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 have Samsung TV(s), never connected to internet, never will.

I just fear they will start doing Internet via TV box via HDMI... it will be time to cancel that too, or use it via VGA converter.

a lot of people don't know that HDMI can carry the equivalent of 100BaseTX Ethernet, which is definitely a threat in this scenario.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#46

Post by obscura » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

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 and such. The manufacturers, of course, know all about it, but it's not in their interest to share the information - specifically, to do so in a way that empowers the consumer to make an educated decision at purchase time. (Or am I wrong and they do in fact explain everything "on the box"? I haven't had to buy a TV in a long time.)

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#47

Post by matt-attack » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

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’m shocked to hear you say that the smart TVs ui is better than an AppleTV. Would love to know more.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#48

Post by vanderZwan » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #42

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.

> 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.

How ridiculous is it that it's harder to get a product without extra nonsense added?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#49

Post by izacus » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

One tip I've found useful - most TVs have a so-called "Hotel mode" (or a Service mode) where they can have most of their smart features disabled and can be locked to a single HDMI input (e.g. AppleTV / ShieldTV / Chromecast). That makes them into rather dumb panels that usually also disable those ads.

At least I know it's possible on all Sony AndroidTV models and most Samsung models (not sure about their latest Tizen).

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#50

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

adamparsons wrote: post #13

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…

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)?