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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

#661

Post by tootie »

nicwolff wrote: post #526
tootie wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not an economical choice but you can buy digital signage displays. They are typically more expensive but are built for maximum durability and don't include consumer features like streaming.

I bought an LG OLED Wallpaper signage display; it wasn't cheap, or easy to get, but it makes a fantastic TV, with no "apps" or "ads", just one HDMI input for an Apple TV (which I run through a Denon HEOS A/V receiver). 1080p, not 4K, but I'm 55 and couldn't see those pixels from 10 feet anyway ツ It doesn't have CEC, but it does wake on signal. Well worth the cost and trouble.

A lot of them have RJ45 and RS232 ports and you can send commands through them to make some DIY CEC. You'd need to do some hacking and I don't know if they have public APIs, but it's possible.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#662

Post by api »

Nextgrid wrote: post #211
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…

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was fo…

The ad/marketing driven economy is based on something simpler: consumers don't have any money, but corporations do. So you don't sell to consumers. You sell stuff at break even or a loss or even give it away to consumers and then sell the consumers to those who actually will pay.

The dominance of this kind of surveillance capitalist or ad-saturated model everywhere is a side effect of extreme wealth inequality and a generally demand constrained economy.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#663

Post by Grakel »

city41 wrote: post #366
yholio wrote: post #129

The life time of TVs is simply on a different time scale than most smart thingies you connect to them. It's an appliance like the air conditioner or dishwasher, not a gadget you throw into the bin and replace. The intelligence of your media center should be elsewhere, in a dedicated gadget that you can easily replace and upgrade, connected via a standard, dumb interface like HDMI. I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and th…

I have a 1080p Vizio from about 2013 or so. It's "smart", but doesn't phone home or anything. I use a Roku to get more modern apps for it (I block Roku's phoning home in my pihole). I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably c…

There's almost no 4k content anyway. And none on Netflix / Disney / Prime.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#664

Post by kpozin »

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…

You can also disable Kindle ads by never turning on the device's WiFi, just transferring books over USB.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#665

Post by bityard »

Liquix wrote: post #555
mywittyname wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> actually makes sense for life-and-death fields such as automotive/medical.

I cannot imagine a worse idea.

IoT devices are the richest source of hosts available for botnet operators to compromise because they are numerous and famously insecure. Today it's lightbulbs and security cameras. Tomorrow you wish it to be pacemakers and Toyotas?

We already know it is functionally impossible to write bug-free code which is also useful. We also know that attackers relentlessly probe systems until (that is a _when_, not an _if_) a weakness is found to exploit to gain control of that device. It is possible to write provably-correct code, but so far only for somewhat trivial applications.

Until this fundamental problem of software security can be solved, an air gap is the _only_ reliable thing that can protect life-critical software from external remote attack.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#666

Post by city41 »

Grakel wrote: post #663
city41 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 1080p Vizio from about 2013 or so. It's "smart", but doesn't phone home or anything. I use a Roku to get more modern apps for it (I block Roku's phoning home in my pihole). I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably c…

There's almost no 4k content anyway. And none on Netflix / Disney / Prime.

Netflix originals are mostly (or possibly all?) available in 4k. Or are you saying the 4k streams are not of good enough quality?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#667

Post by akerro »

qppo wrote: post #626
akerro wrote: post #614

Do you guys connect your TVs to internet? I know my TV has WiFi and Eth port, but I never thought about connecting it online, it's as useless as Euro Scart.

Yes. It would be highly inconvenient for me to connect it to my home PC which is in a different room, I don't want to buy or build a HTPC just to connect to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, I use my phone as a remote most of the time, and the tv wasn't too expensive. Not to mention, the ads on the home screen are less intrusive and far less numerous than on Comcast's cable box.

> Comcast's cable box.

Isn't Comcast also a paid service? You (US) get ads in tv broadcast you pay for?

I haven't seen any TV broadcast for over 10 years now, my TV has only chromecast and it only plays what I stream to it.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#668

Post by squarefoot »

Simple slution: don't buy "Smart" TVs, And the day all TVs will be "Smart" just don't connect them to the Internet (and don't leave open hotspots nearby or they'll do by themselves). They're becoming business platforms rather than devices the user can control, just like "Smart" phones and computers with non free operating systems.

Anyone remembers that TV screen in the wonderful Idiocracy docu... er.. movie? That is going to happen, soon or later.

https://i2.wp.com/scifiinterfaces.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#669

Post by marcosdumay »

robotnikman wrote: post #589
marcosdumay wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yes, brand awareness is a real thing. For example, a lot of people will avoid Samsung TVs right now.

My parents were thinking about getting a Samsung TV and I've always been under the impression they make great displays. Instead I will recommend Sony or LG now

Honestly, there are plenty of complaints about LG around, and I wouldn't trust Sony on about anything...

I have a Philips smart TV, so far it has no ads and just mildly annoying bugs, nothing really disruptive. But mine is an old model, it looks like the new ones aren't like that anymore.

A few years ago I brought some TVs to use as monitors because they were much better fit than the actual thing. Now it looks like the trends reversed, and I'll have to start buying monitors to use as TVs. Is there a good TV receptor that I can plug in a Raspberry Pi?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#670

Post by tachyonbeam »

fxtentacle wrote: post #328
ckastner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking. Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere? If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.

I checked the German models. And yes, it is a GDPR violation. Plus it makes the integrated 4k movie player stutter because the CPU use from the adware causes thermal throttling on the GPU. That's why I investigated in the first place...

Have you written an article or blog post about your investigation. This deserves to be more widely known. You could even try contacting publications like the New York Times, or at least tech magazines. Get the message out, and maybe job offers in the process.
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