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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

#931

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

m463 wrote: post #914
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, good call, they merged this into "forgot password or don't have one". It still tries to talk you out of it with a pop up with a highlighted button of "sign up now".

Dark patterns... I can see why the older generation is scared of the hardware.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#932

Post by unfocused »

At my work, I'm responsible for the procurement of IT equipment, and for our boardrooms, we only buy "digital signage" televisions. Essentially, dumb TVs because we don't want any of our data to leave our building. https://na.panasonic.com/us/audio-video-solutions/profession...

It's pricier, e.g. 55" 4k is $3000 CAD, but worth the privacy. We actually got some large ones at a discount because they were all 1080p, and for meeting rooms, nobody needs Powerpoint or Word in 4K, so it was perfect. Just a thought if anyone is looking for good quality TV sets. I also think the limited warranty starts at 3 years.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#933

Post by LexGray »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #881
simonh wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound right. You do need an iCloud account to enable some functionality, for example to enable seamlessly switching AirPods between different Apple devices.

I started the phone, put the pin in and triggered the upgrade. After the upgrade completed there is an only an option to put in a email/password for icloud and there is no "skip" or "do later" button I could find. I'm pretty derpy but I can tell you it is true.

Sounds like you picked up the SE used and it had an activation lock. One of the more annoying things Apple has done was to take down the page for checking that before purchase.

That or you put in an iCloud account at some point but it did not get removed successfully.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#934

Post by JohnBooty »

tolbish wrote: post #741
JohnBooty wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" are a tiny minority. The vast majority of people just don't care and want the most TV for the least money. It's a "tyranny of the majority" kind of situation. For TV manufacturers, it's not worth catering to the tiny minority of customers who think like us.

How do you know that? I am going to go out on a limb here and say you have not done background research on TV manufacturers who focus exclusively on inexpensive dumb TVs, so how can you know it's not worth it to them? It is entirely possible there are other factors as to why we are not buying from them right now, such as supplier-related issues unbeknownst to us. In short, the economy is more complex than claiming "d…

I have almost never heard anybody outside of the tech world express concern about this sort of data collection, and even most tech-savvy people I know explicitly reject the idea of caring about it.

Yes, admittedly this is anecdotal, but I am talking about an extended family/social circle of hundreds of people over the course of quite a few years. The odds of it being a massively unrepresentative sample are rather low.

Let's turn it around. How do you know that people are concerned about data collection?

All available evidence points to my assertion being correct. All sorts of "smart" devices, chock full of phone-home tracking, are flying off the shelves. There are alternatives, but they are quite niche.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#935

Post by TeMPOraL »

taneq wrote: post #893
TeMPOraL wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. I think the core observation behind the job of the spreadsheet guys is that, at scale, the choices within a family of products will approximate a normal distribution - so there will be a "best product" within each family; with a limited shelf space and a lot of different products to sell, this gives them a clear way to optimize for maximum reve…

That's probably their thinking, but unless their aggregates include all of the other products that each customer who buys an item also buys (which it should, they have the data thanks to fly-buys schemes) they can't properly assess the overall impact of a given product. As a trivial example, just looking at the profitability of individual items would lead them to discontinue selling milk (I mean, there's no profit in…

That's a fair point. But I'd imagine it's a multi-step process. Step 1: group products into families, like "milk" or "ketchup". Step 2: optimize shelf space with whatever rules you have applied to product families. Within a product family, pick the N best-selling products.

The loss leader in this scenario is the "milk" family, not a particular brand of milk.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#936

Post by TeMPOraL »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #920
TeMPOraL wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I met my wife through smalltalk at the cash register, so I can attest that some slack in these jobs serves an important function in society!

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#937

Post by JohnBooty »

ta8964586 wrote: post #299
JohnBooty wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market are an alternative option to a large monitor, especially at larger sizes Do you have experience running one of these? I'm very curious about the pros and cons. I've seen it mentioned that they tend to lack features like HDR and may not have remote controls. Any other downsides? I would be fine with the lack of a remote, and probably even HDR. I would also be willing…

No experience running them, but looking at samsung digital signage, HDR looks to be a feature of their high end models and extremely expensive. ~$4,500 for a 55" 4K TV [0]. The more competitively priced displays[1] (~$1300 for 70" 4K) don't seem to offer it. [0]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/pro-tv... [1]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

I think street prices might be quite a bit lower than what we're seeing on Samsung's site.

Amazon has a bunch of affordable models from Samsung. Haven't clicked through them all but here's a 65" with HDR for $600.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Business-Software-Speakers-LH...

However, it's probably not the sort of "dumb" TV we want:

    Setup your TV with custom content quickly 
    and easily using the Biz TV app - available 
    for Android and iOS
Seems like this is interfacing with some sort of app on the TV, so I suppose it's not a dumb display.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#938

Post by ketralnis »

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…

In the Kindle case I did pay the extra for the advertising-free version and they happily advertise on it anyway, including push notifications in the middle of the night that make noise. Infuriating.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#940

Post by tomjen3 »

72deluxe wrote: post #864
cgriswald wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only an ad problem, but the sliders reminded me of a really bad UI feature I see everywhere: ambiguous highlighting when there are only two options.

I find some of the sliders for on/off are impossible to read. You can't work out what is on or off. Windows 3.11 / 95 UI seems such a good idea by comparison to today's UIs - checkboxes with obvious tick marks or X marks in them, radio buttons, buttons that look like actual buttons, scrollbars you can see without having to flail the mouse around just for them to appear, scrollbars that go the right way when you use t…

I don't know why everybody went to a flat design. Seriously Apple should have stuck with their it looks like things design.
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