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

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#691

Post by ascot_attn_atol » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #545

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.

> 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. Do any of the airfare search sites allow you to sort/filter by legroom? I would love that feature.

Isn't sorting by class effectively that?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#692

Post by noisy_boy » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

ptersilie wrote: post #271

When I bought my LG TV a few years back it did the same. The ads were mostly for apps you can download on the LG app store (so no yoghurts or anything). But they were still annoying enough for me to look into the DNS queries the TV does and block some of them. In case it's useful for some of you, here's what I found out and ended up blocking: - vcfd1.giraffic.net, vcfd2.giraffic.net: adaptive Video acceleration (seem…

> facebook.com: why!? Blocked.

I'm shocked that you don't want facebook to know your viewing habits to show you more relevant ads. Its a feature to improve the ad experience for the users.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#693

Post by myself248 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:44 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.

Just wait 'til they get a blanket connection to Amazon Sidewalk for their nefarious deeds, and the only way to disable it will involve a soldering iron.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#694

Post by aloer » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

I have recently bought my first ever TV. A samsung The Serif 2019. Last years model because cheap. Amazing picture. Nice design. Absolutely shitty software

- This thing has an anti virus scanner installed

- There is a task manager that shows you the current cpu and memory consumption

- Disabling automatic brightness adaption requires you to enter the debug menu which you can only enter via a normal remote and not the included smart remote (which costs 50 to replace and does not have any number keys!). So I had to buy one off amazon. If you don’t do that you _will_ notice annoying brightness changes.

- Oh and also disable everything with auto or smart in the picture settings

I bought an AppleTV even before the Samsung arrived. Worth it.

And friends don’t let friends connect their TVs to WiFi

Pro tip: if your work uses TVs in meeting rooms and the font looks weird, adjust the sharpness.

After I found that out everything in previous meeting rooms made sense. When you unbox a normal TV for computer use you gotta turn down the sharpness and nobody does

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#695

Post by myself248 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #298

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…

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.

If the flight-booking website offered a "sort by legroom", I'd click that. The trouble is there's no good way for me to know as a consumer which planes from which operators (and which affiliates) have which legroom, so it's not a meaningful choice I can make.

If someone would roll out such a feature, I'd use the hell out of just as soon as I feel like packing my butt into a petri-dish again.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#696

Post by tryptophan » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

thekyle wrote: post #426

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.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy phone and one thing I've noticed is that almost all the stock apps (Samsung Health, Samsung Music, Galaxy Store, etc.) have ads. Their apps are actually kinda nice, but the ads are a huge turn off.

Yeah, this is super annoying, especially considering I bought an expensive flagship model.

My s8 will be my last Samsung phone unless they stop shoving ads into everything.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#697

Post by ploxiln » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #79

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…

> 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.

I actually ran into one of these recently. I stayed at an AirBnB which had a super-cheapy small-ish TCL+Roku TV in the living room, with a super-cheapy thin antenna thing. The internet was "acting up" (95% of packets dropped, unusable) so we tried to watch some broadcast TV. You had to either sign in with a Roku account, or as "Guest", but "Guest" had to accept a couple long EULA, and it needed internet for that to work, but the internet was fubar ... I had to use my phone as a hot-spot for the TV to get it to display broadcasts! That left the TV's wifi config such that it definitely won't work for the next person, lol ...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#698

Post by throwaway9870 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

TwoHeadedBeast wrote: post #585

butterfi wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I bother updating software for a TV if the TV is already working? Whats the motivation?

Think of it as unpatched computer on your network, possibly with a built in microphone and camera.

Why put it on a network?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#699

Post by burtonator » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:50 PM 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…

NEVER buy a Samsung TV... they're horrible.

They have the same contempt for software that they do on their phones.

They NEVER update their firmware. It's amazingly slow and latent.

When they DO occasionally update they usually break things that were working or remote features you used.

About 2 years ago they implemented some weird/stupid popover commercial thing which you could eventually disable but they hid the feature.

I'd be watching Game of Thrones or something and in the middle of the show they'd bring up a popup for a new TV show or something along those lines.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#700

Post by chipotle_coyote » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #489

auggierose wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple TV has bluetooth, so if this is really an issue for you, why not get a dedicated TV keyboard?

Why can't they just fix their user interface? Nobody in the world I have talked to thinks this is the best choice of interfaces. I don't need a dedicated TV keyboard. As I said, I work around it by using the TV apps, but it's annoying, and the most annoying part is that it's probably annoying on purpose to get people more on their phone.

I doubt it's annoying on purpose to get more people on the phone. I could be wrong about that, but that's not usually the way Apple's particular kind of hubris tends to manifest. There's almost certainly people at the company -- and it only takes one or two in the right places -- who like the current UI for text selection, and would probably explain why they think so. Now, they may literally be the same people who think the Apple TV remote is good in the first place, so I want to make it clear I'm not saying they're right. :)

And, Apple should be better at UI design than this. They were once, and not that long ago, but I think the UI team they've had for the last, oh, let's say seven or eight years -- going back semi-arbitrarily to iOS 7, but steadily infecting all other platforms -- have prioritized aesthetics over usability.