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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

#551

Post by criddell »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #464
SteveGerencser wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, do people actually know that when they purchase? If it were clearly stated anywhere on the box/sales copy that "you will see ads on this device" while the other one says "we won't shove ads on your device" I would wager the $10 more would be a bargain to nearly everyone. But that information is never available at the point of purchase so most people get the surprise of see ads when they had no idea that was even…

I’d have less of a problem with this if they went about it the way Amazon sells ads on their Kindle e-readers: - You can buy the device for $X, and it’s marked as being sold “with special offers” (a euphemism for ads that would be more explicit in an ideal world) - You can buy the device for $X + $Y, and it’s marked as being sold “without special offers” - You can buy the device for $X “with special offers” today, bu…

Turning off the ads should also turn off the surveillance.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#552

Post by nobodyandproud »

Internet of things is a huge antipattern.

I don’t remember where I read this, but a United Labs for information security is overdue.

It won’t directly help with ad injection, but I think the security implications will put a damper on some of this (the cost of maintaining their firmware which Samsung barely does).

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#553

Post by radley »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #479
brulard wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have ads on my Apple TV, don't you? Some movie trailers running in the background that I really don't want to see. And every time I miss-swipe somehow the Apple TV remote in an application, I get to that "home" screen watching another movie trailer :|

There are two ways to disable this: - Remove the “TV” app from the top bar. - You can change the behavior from the “Settings” app to show your “TV” app’s watch queue instead of trailers. You can’t disable the Music app videos, though.

I can agree that the ads are dependent on the apps in your top bar. I hve Plex, Prime, Netflix, Disney, & YouTube in mine and I don't see any ads.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#554

Post by com2kid »

qcq36 wrote: post #226
tangjurine wrote: post #167

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…

There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are ho…

Samsung positions themselves as a high end brand. These ads are appearing on higher end tv models.

If their $300 bargain basement basement tv was ads supported to keep the price low, eeh, maybe.

But that isn't the case here.

Consumer Gmail is free. If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#555

Post by Liquix »

mywittyname wrote: post #446
Nbox9 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Automobiles already do this without your input.

I think the always-on IoT thing actually makes sense for life-and-death fields such as automotive/medical. There are cases where if an update does not reach the device in time human lives could be at stake.

It's definitely not for the consumer's benefit in most cases. No one is going to die because your Smart Keurig or 5G-TV goes unpatched for a month. Hopefully we can avoid the slippery slope and realize that these devices' internet capabilities are not for us - they are primarily for data collection/advertising purposes.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#556

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

tzs wrote: post #266
JorgeGT wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely Amazon is one of the few companies that make this explicit with their Kindle, here the Paperwhite without ads costs 10€ extra. I'm curious, does anyone know other examples?

I'm curious how many people pay extra for no Kindle ads. I originally bought Kindles without ads, but for my third Kindle I decided to buy it with ads to see how bad they were. You can pay the extra later to get rid of ads, so if it turns out buying the version with ads was a mistake it is easy to fix it. I don't see the sleep screen except briefly between the time I open the cover and the time the Kindle wakes up. I…

After a couple months of nothing but ads for bodice-ripper romance novels with semi-clothed, entwined bodies on the cover (based on my consumption of biographies and Fantasy?), I went to Amazon support to pay for the ads to be removed and they did it for free and gave me a rather large credit for kindle books.

I've done this with one other Kindle and several other people have done it based on my experience and they've all gotten ads removed for free and some have gotten store credit in various amounts.

I didn't even mention why I wanted the ads gone, I just asked how to remove them and they gave me free books and a typically $20 upgrade for free.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#557

Post by criddell »

gwern wrote: post #519
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…

Unfortunately, showing ads probably does increase long-term profit. Take a look at the randomized experiments measuring long-term retention & profit with various ad loads: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and of…

> Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.

It seems like the smart thing would be to have ads by default but allow the customer to turn them off. Most consumers would leave them on and be fine with it (like you said) and the haters would be happy too.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#558

Post by delecti »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #464
SteveGerencser wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, do people actually know that when they purchase? If it were clearly stated anywhere on the box/sales copy that "you will see ads on this device" while the other one says "we won't shove ads on your device" I would wager the $10 more would be a bargain to nearly everyone. But that information is never available at the point of purchase so most people get the surprise of see ads when they had no idea that was even…

I’d have less of a problem with this if they went about it the way Amazon sells ads on their Kindle e-readers: - You can buy the device for $X, and it’s marked as being sold “with special offers” (a euphemism for ads that would be more explicit in an ideal world) - You can buy the device for $X + $Y, and it’s marked as being sold “without special offers” - You can buy the device for $X “with special offers” today, bu…

The "Special Offers" also have the advantage of being super unobtrusive, especially when the device is actually in use. That's not really the case here.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#560

Post by loufe »

Sjonny wrote: post #258
m_eiman wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only reasonable solution. I've got an OLED LG "TV", connected to an Apple TV and a receiver for proper audio (using HDMI ARC). To turn everything on, I press a button on the Apple TV remote and everything is up and running within five seconds or so (from standby/sleep mode). Powering off the Apple TV also turns off the display and the receiver via HDMI CEC. Edit: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/power-on.mov

I found that my receiver was still using 50W while in "CEC-ready standby", while it's only 2W in normal standby, so I never use it. I'll just press a few more buttons.

That's incredible. 50W is wholy unnacceptable.
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