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

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#671

Post by chipotle_coyote » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

defnotashton2 wrote: post #356

kalleboo wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway" It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.

Airlines are controlled and limited by regulation to where its no longer "free" and you can't vote with your dollar cause you are a guarantee. There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. Same with telecoms. TV industry lacks competition in this regard as well but largely due to the centralized manufacturing. I also blame modern ip law as many of these companies have redicul…

I'm not sure I see the connection you're trying to draw between your first two sentences. Airlines are regulated, but their price and service are much less regulated now than they were about 40 years ago. Their prices are much lower, as perhaps expected, and their service is much worse, as perhaps less expected than easily predicted if you're a realist rather than an optimist. The vast majority of airlines nickel-and-dime customers on domestic flights, making virtually everything they can from baggage to legroom to boarding time into for-pay options, because they learned that no matter what customers say, they shop on base price. Since deregulation, various airlines have tried to offer better seating, service, etc., as all-inclusive and more expensive tickets, and time after time, customers just click on the cheapest thing they find on Priceline.

tl;dr: when it comes to crappy airline service, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our regulators, but ourselves.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#672

Post by Tyr42 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #156

walrus01 wrote: post #29

You should absolutely never give your 'smart' television the wifi password or plug it into a cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Use the things as dumb displays driven by an xbox or PS4 or a home theater PC. Yes, the xbox and PS4 home screens have 'ads' (promoted games and stuff mostly), but they're not 1/10th as annoying in my opinion. And Microsoft and Sony have a much higher likelihood of keeping the operating s…

> You should absolutely never give your 'smart' television the wifi password or plug it into a cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Use the things as dumb displays driven by an xbox or PS4 or a home theater PC. 1. why? 2. the ps4/xbox pale in comparison to my lg's apps. functionalities, quality of streams, the voice search. they're all much better on the lg apps.

Get an NVidea shield. Better than the tv's apps.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#673

Post by lostlogin » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #598

nullgeo wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Samsung TV auto-updates. It's infuriating as I cannot disable it.

Just disconnect it from your network (change the wifi password or remove the Ethernet cable) and it will be unable to auto-update. You may want to get an external device (Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or other media server) and plug that into your HDMI if you use the network from apps on the TV.

But if some apps are used that isn’t possible. I’d suggest a few all rule forcing all port 53 traffic through a Pihole, then block Samsung traffic.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by chipotle_coyote » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

rockinghigh wrote: post #654

defnotashton2 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines are controlled and limited by regulation to where its no longer "free" and you can't vote with your dollar cause you are a guarantee. There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. Same with telecoms. TV industry lacks competition in this regard as well but largely due to the centralized manufacturing. I also blame modern ip law as many of these companies have redicul…

> There are very few airlines that offer more legroom United Premium, United Premium Plus, Delta Premium Select, American Airlines Premium Economy, Lufthansa Premium Economy, Alaska Airlines Premium Class, Air France Premium Economy, Air China Premium Economy...

AFAIK, most of those aren't available on domestic US flights. If you're flying internationally, it's almost always been possible to spend more to get more space and service, sometimes up to rather eye-watering levels, but flights within the US tend to be limited to economy and first class. (Some economy seats do have more leg room than others and carry a premium charge, but the OP may still be technically correct based on the "very few" condition.)

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#675

Post by NationalPark » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #265

donatj wrote: post #138

I don't understand destroying your brand like this. Samsung from the early 2000s to ~2015 meant quality. Is it worth the short term gains from ad revenue over long term customer loyalty? I myself was a pretty loyal customer up until very recently when it came time to buy a TV and I specifically wanted one without ads ruining the experience. I'm reasonably certain this will make this many peoples last Samsung TV.

It's absolutely certain. I'm in the market for new, high-end OLED or equivalent TV. There is no way in hell I'm ever buying a Samsung, under any circumstances, ever. Their corporate executives clearly have no ethics whatsoever. But that's not the only problem. My coworkers have been to Samsung's headquarters and worked on their core IT infrastructure. They both rattled off an endless horror show of security lapses an…

You're safe, Samsung doesn't even make OLED televisions! However all OLED TVs on the market do come with smart features and adware, so maybe not so safe after all.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by qppo » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

akerro wrote: post #667

qppo wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, most cable television has ads. It's also more expensive than streaming services. But I'm talking about is in the menus for navigating the service with the remote.

I tried cutting the cable two years ago and went back last year. Live sports isn't there yet.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by lostlogin » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

aronpye wrote: post #184

lucasverra wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also https://nextdns.io/ on the cloud. I run my ios devices with no ads thanks to this honest service. Can i modify the DNS resolver on a samsung tv (i do not intend to have one ever)

> you can but if it cant resolve it will fallback to googles resolver automatically. At least this is what happened on my model. I built my own router with a raspberry pi. I installed pi-hole and use that as a dns resolver. I then use an iptables rule to NAT / forward all dns traffic on port 53 to the pi-hole resolver, similar to how ISPs often intercept dns requests. This prevents IOT devices from bypassing the dns…

This method works really well.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by adamparsons » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #294

jiggawatts wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got one today. It's so much better than the "Smart" Samsung TV it is plugged into that it's not even funny. The remote control has touch. I can use my phone to type text input. It's fast . It's elegant and slick. It has no ads. It has options that I care about. It doesn't waste my time with options I don't care about. The Samsung TV on the other hand was a flagship model. Top of the line. Best of the best. Jus…

There is one thing Apple TV has so backwards that I can't even. Text input. All the letters lined alphabetically with only left-right movement allowed. Takes ages to input anything. Also no corrections allowed. I actually exit appleTV and use the built in TV apps for when I need youtube and the like, because their input mechanism is not insane. I know there is a remote app for iPhones, but you do provide an actual re…

Very strangely enough, the original 2D keyboard still exists in the OS. If you have one of those old silver Apple remotes from the Apple TV 1/2/3, clicking anywhere replaces the crappy long keyboard with the nicer grid one. Very bizarre Easter egg

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by untog » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #620

choward wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know they aren't tracking that either? Your TV has a computer inside that has the capability of watching whatever is being displayed on your screen.

TCL Roku models will do this. They have some kind of content matching running on the display signal.

Thankfully they let you disable it. But mine has the internet connection disabled entirely anyway.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Post by tikiman163 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

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…

You're right about most of it, but companies by AdWords on their own brand name so that competitors won't get that spot. Basically, the first 2 results listed by Google are paid ads. So if they don't buy AdWords for their own brand the top 2 displayed results could be any similar item. So that case isn't about increased conversion, it's about not letting competitors snipe their sales by offering a lower price for a comparable item even when searching by brand name.