Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

flatpanelshd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

911–920 of 960 posts

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#911

Post by saruken »

quaa55 wrote: post #469
qz2 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well fuck. I didn’t know that. I was just about to buy a nice new 50” 4K Samsung smart TV. Purchase cancelled. Will keep my dumb Samsung 32” ass end model.

he's not saying don't buy that fancy tv. just use a roku/appleTV/etc. although those devices might also have their own privacy issues. :/ best of the bunch i guess?

From the article:

> Roku is hard at work turning its TV platform into a "next-generation ad platform" [0] while Amazon has been showing ads on FireTV devices for years. Most of these platforms have also been confirmed to use ACR, just like Samsung.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...)

Apple TV seems to be the only reasonable option at this point.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#912

Post by m-p-3 »

reaperducer wrote: post #363
taneq wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product "Amazing! The smaller we make the 'X' button, the more people love them!"

Or make the X button almost the same color as the background. TuneIn does this.

I got rid of TuneIn once they stripped the recording from the Pro version I paid for. Good riddance.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#913

Post by nickflood »

coldpie wrote: post #543
ascagnel_ wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just don't connect it to the internet. Smart TV manufacturers are relying on the ongoing revenue from their software side nowadays, so they’ll usually mandate setting up an internet connection as part of the device setup process, and then only give you the option to change networks instead of disabling it outright. If you’re tech savvy, you can take measures against this, but it’s not going to be simple for most fo…

How "usually" is this, actually? I bought an LG TV about a year ago, and it did not force me to connect to the Internet. I just turned it on, skipped the crap, and it works fine over HDMI.

Can confirm that both Samsung and LG cheap LCD panels (~$400) that I got this year do not force a network setup and work without it.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#914

Post by m463 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #259
dessant wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NVIDIA Shield TV, which runs Android TV, can no longer be initialized without signing in with a Google account, the setup screen will refuse to get past that step, even if you don't have an internet connection. The forced login is likely illegal, because there is no mention of a requirement for a Google account in their marketing materials or on their sales pages. The device stays perfectly functional if the the…

iOS 14 now requires an account to enable the phone. It literally just bricked my test iPhone SE.

I didn't try 14, but on 13 on the "sign in to apple id" screen, you say "don't have one", then say set up later.

has this been removed? It might be getting into GDPR violation territory.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#915

Post by m463 »

bluGill wrote: post #176
fxtentacle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'll start selling a little $50 box to emulate internet and route all update / advertisement requests to /dev/null :) Or maybe we (the tech community) just agree on one model and produce an open source firmware. If you look at MagicLantern for Canon, you'll see how amazingly far people will go to control their hardware.

It is called a monitor. Works just fine for whatever and people use it for work. The factory I work at had large one scattered around to show line information. Some of the information is safety critical and so if it is inyeruped with an ad there will be legal issues.

The problem with some monitors is that it gets tricky to get audio from hdmi that gets delivered to the screen

Sort of makes sense because a lot of people don't care about or plain don't want speakers on their monitor.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#916

Post by kalleboo »

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…

When I fly I definitely pay more to avoid certain airlines. For instance, when flying to the US, I avoid any US-based airline, as they all always have noticeably worse service and seats, and will pay maybe 10-20% more to fly a EU or asian airline.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#917

Post by supergirl »

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…

it's not his fault that corporations reward this. what should he do instead? purposely not work towards a promotion?

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#918

Post by leokennis »

hbcondo714 wrote: post #841
leokennis wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My alternative, as I actually like my Samsung TV (lots of features including AirPlay 2 and Apple TV for not a lot of money): block the shit out of any connection it makes using https://NextDNS.io . If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.

Agreed but would you mind sharing which Samsung connections you are blocking in order to prevent ads from being displayed on the TV? I'm running NextDNS.io too (router config) and their logs show a plethora of Samsung queries that are all allowed, but I also have a Samsung phone and refrigerator. The only one they block by default is smetrics.samsung.com

In the Privacy tab, you can specifically select a "block of rules" for Samsung devices. Also, EasyList will block a lot of requests.

Unfortunately, NextDNS will not show from what device a blocked request came unless you give it a name in the app, and of course there is no NextDNS app for Samsung TV's. Some suspicious domains I see often in my logs:

samsungads.com tvx.adgrx.com samsungcloudsolution.net

But, in short, I have loaded NextDNS with the most common blocklists (EasyList, Anudeep etc.) and added the "Samsung" list. Result is: no ads anywhere on my 2018 smart tv.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#919

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

chongli wrote: post #497
hibikir wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are: Having 8 kinds of lemon yogurt, each someone's favorite, while disposing of the products past the expiration date leads to either some of the highest prices in town, or closing down. Profitability in very small supermarket chains is small. Now, the models that the somewh…

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are Oh, no doubt. I'm not saying the spreadsheet guys aren't needed. They clearly are because competition is so stiff. So the reason store A needs spreadsheet guys is because store B has them. All of the spreadsheet guys, collectively, lock the grocery stores into a race to t…

Maybe independent grocery stores are the wrong model for a globally connected world? It's not that they are the producers of anything they offer, even if branded as such.

I often think that they are the source of endless waste and inefficiency, because they are working against each other and none of them stocks everything.

Personally I'd prefer fewer larger ones which stock really everything in every variety, instead of many smaller ones which don't.

This are really so called first world problems, it's still a cornucopia, though one could argue about the nutritional/health implications also. But again, 1st world problem.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#920

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #829
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a store in the early 90s with the registers set up that way. It is so much more efficient to pick directly from a cart so you can plan the best sequence of items for bagging. The IBM scanners of the era were much faster and more reliable than today's garbage. You could blast through, pulling items out with the right hand, tossing into the left, and blind scanning while reaching for the next item.

Seems to be a common thread in the past 20 years. The ergonomics of the product is garbage now. Partly because more compute is put into them, and with it comes bloated software that seems to be written by people who don't understand that their avoidance of "premature optimization" is just stealing people's lives by making the work go slower.

Where I live we are behind that point now, as in everything is OK and working fast again. Though sometimes it happens that when a cashier opens a new line, and the POS-thing boots for the first time that day, showing some update process running under Windows and makes my day, because I can't stop giggling.

Anyways, it's good for the cashier too, because time for smalltalk, maybe sipping some drink, or such.

To be up to date, it's your fate...to wait!

Post reply on HN