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Given that it's easily possible to simply not use the "smart" features as you describe, what's the advantage to these manufactures spending extra money/resource
by shawnz 7y ago
Given that it's easily possible to simply not use the "smart" features as you describe, what's the advantage to these manufactures spending extra money/resources maintaining the "dumb" SKUs? Wouldn't it be a better value for everyone involved to just make sure the "smart" features can be turned off?
- salawat 7y agoThe problem there is that they'd rather just do everything in software. Hardware kill switches went out of vogue even before THERAC-25.
- deogeo 7y agoIf the smart features can be turned off, then they won't be able to force ads onto you [1,2], or spy on you [3]. They are antifeatures, taking control of your TV so they may extract more money from you, one way or another. Being able to turn them off would completely defeat that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201561 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202138 [3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/lg-smart-tvs-send-viewing-habits-filenames-back-to-manufacturer/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/lg-smart-tvs-send-viewing-habi...
- shawnz 7y agoAlthough troubling, I don't think this is something for which smart TV technology itself is at fault. Plenty of smart TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable.
- deogeo 7y agoI agree, it's not the technology itself. I think it's due to the industry maturing and consolidating, and simply optimizing - they look for new avenues of profit, and they happened to have found user-hostile ones. But be careful with "TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable" - 'profitable' won't stop them if adding ads means they could be more profitable.