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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 "contri

• foepys 6y ago
  I also bought a Sony Android TV for this reason. Then last month Google pushed an update for the "Android TV Home" app and now there are many people complaining about ads on the home screen [1]. This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth… https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-turn-off-staff-picks/ https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...
  • auggierose 6y ago
    Just buy an Apple TV, and then whatever TV you like.
    • nicolas_t 6y ago
      Apparently according to other comments a lot of TVs still do ACR on content received by the apple TV (or any hdmi signal) so we still need dumb tvs...
      • ah88 6y ago
        That's my current setup. TV with the network connection disabled running Apple TV.
      • ziml77 6y ago
        Disable the TV's network connection. Or if you really need it connected, decline as many of the ToS & privacy agreements as possible
    • jiggawatts 6y ago
      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. Just a few years ago. Now? It is unusable. It is beyond slow. Two to three second response time. Text input is just torture. Netflix crashes. YouTube mangles HDR in some weird way that makes people look like they were drawn by a kid with crayons. It's shocking to me that you can pay thousands of dollars to Samsung and have them destroy your investment with "updates", whereas you can pay a few hundred dollars to Apple and have a slick product that improves over time. What I don't understand is the executives at other companies. Companies that aren't the #1 biggest in the world. How do they not get it!? Just copy Apple! Stop fucking over your customers, and maybe they'll give you more money! I know I give Apple more money every year! It's not that hard. It really isn't.
      • Swenrekcah 6y ago
        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 remote, make it work ffs.
        • remote_phone 6y ago
          Use voice dictation. It works remarkably well for entering text
          • Swenrekcah 6y ago
            Well, thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know it was an option. But what if I need to input a language that's not supported or I just don't want to yell at my TV to search a video?
    • brulard 6y ago
      I have ads on my Apple TV, don't you? Some movie trailers running in the background that I really don't want to see. And every time I miss-swipe somehow the Apple TV remote in an application, I get to that "home" screen watching another movie trailer :|
      • sjs382 6y ago
        No. I don't use the "TV" app though, so that may be the difference. Unless you mean trailers for whatever the cursor is on, inside of an app like Netflix? If so, some of those can be disabled, but I actually like them—they're "ads" for content that I already have access to but may not have known about otherwise.
      • quit32 6y ago
        As mentioned at the end of the original article, you can disable the apple TV recommendations.
      • ascagnel_ 6y ago
        There are two ways to disable this: - Remove the “TV” app from the top bar. - You can change the behavior from the “Settings” app to show your “TV” app’s watch queue instead of trailers. You can’t disable the Music app videos, though.
        • radley 6y ago
          I can agree that the ads are dependent on the apps in your top bar. I hve Plex, Prime, Netflix, Disney, & YouTube in mine and I don't see any ads.
      • fluffything 6y ago
        No, I don't have those. Maybe they can be disabled? I don't recall disabling them.
    • nelaboras 6y ago
      Well, try to buy a high end non-smart TV. Near impossible
      • quit32 6y ago
        Just don't connect it to the internet. Also great solution for cheap subsidized TVs where they are banking on your connecting to your network so only charge $100. Plug in an apple TV and you are set.
        • ascagnel_ 6y ago
          > 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 folks. You also have to worry about ethernet-over-HDMI unintentionally exposing the TV to the wider internet.
          • coldpie 6y ago
            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.
            • nickflood 6y ago
              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.
            • ascagnel_ 6y ago
              I set up a TCL Roku TV in 2019 for my parents; it presented no option to skip connecting to WiFi.
    • robszumski 6y ago
      And (this important) never hook the TV with Android up to a network connection. Only the Apple TV can get to the internet.
    • davidwparker 6y ago
      Or my preference is a Chromecast, whatever TV you like. Then you don't have to deal with Apple's UX or Google's. At that point your phone is the remote.
      • reaperducer 6y ago
        I tried that, but didn't like how the Chromecast phoned home all the time to make sure I was authorized to play the phone was also authorized to be played on a TV. I was surprised that some apps specifically disallowed this. I ended up with an AppleTV. So far, if it plays on my phone, it will play on the TV, too.
    • criddell 6y ago
      That doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. The ads weren't there when I bought the TV. I found the support article from Sony on this: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587 https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587 If this is a TV that is used by very young children, ads with blood splatter as shown in their example seem pretty tasteless. Google's page on the introduction of ads has the same thing - an ad for Sesame Street followed up with the ad containing blood splatter. https://blog.google/products/android-tv/find-new-faves-faster/ https://blog.google/products/android-tv/find-new-faves-faste...
      • RHSeeger 6y ago
        > Subscriptions in a snap makes it easier for you to watch a must-see show from an app that you haven't subscribed to. Honestly, that's the thing I hate most about the Fire Stick, and why I don't use it's discovery feature at all... I don't want to see promotions for 4,000 services I don't subscribe to. Sure, if I search for a specific show, I don't mind results from those services ... but as general adverts for shows? No thank you.
      • hyperbovine 6y ago
        > Q3: Can I remove these suggestions? > A3: No, the suggestions cannot be removed. I keep hoping someone will file a class action over this. These dumbfuck ads just appeared one day on my Bravia X900E, about a year after purchase. I didn't opt in to this and I wouldn't have bought the damn thing if this "feature" existed at the time. Sign me up for the class!
    • glennpratt 6y ago
      So, buy a device that has ads to avoid a device that has ads? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208511 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208511
  • jlv2 6y ago
    My Sony TV from 2014 has ads in the TV Guide that gets content from the Internet.
  • dilippkumar 6y ago
    I bought a Sony Android TV in June. I refused to connect it to the internet and I skipped past the Android setup screens. I plugged in my Apple TV instead. Every now and then the Android TV pops up when I turn the TV on and asks me to complete the set up. I always tell it to fuck off. So far, no ads. It'll stay that way till the TV eventually dies - without ever connecting to the internet.
• walrus01 6y ago
  Imagine thinking that sony is in any way a more ethical company... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootkit-scandal-10-years-later.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootki... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_rootk.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_roo...
  • flohofwoe 6y ago
    "Ethical decisons" from a company made out of thousands of individuals caught up in the rat race is a bit much to expect. For users it doesn't really matter why an annoying feature hasn't been implemented, they don't have a say in that anyway. Most likely Sony is just lagging behind a few months or years in that regard. Enjoy while it lasts ;)
• cmckn 6y ago
  Totally agree, my Bravia was worth every (numerous) penny. I do update to get features like Airplay, but have never seen an ad. The $400 Samsung in my bedroom, however, starts streaming an ad-laden TV Guide equivalent automatically when I turn it on. Beyond awful.
  • tannhaeuser 6y ago
    Worth noting that Sony also produces Android TVs AFAIK which I guess have the same prob. My older Bravia doesn't, but then isn't all that smart ;) and the lcd technology is outdated.
    • cmckn 6y ago
      Mine is an Android OLED model from 2019 — I guess it’s more correct to say I haven’t _noticed_ an ad. I use my Apple TV exclusively for “smart” functions, and the TV wakes up and goes to the correct input whenever a connected device wakes. I never see the Android TV home. It’s still a far cry from the Samsung.
      • criddell 6y ago
        > I use my Apple TV exclusively for “smart” functions That's the difference then. I have a Bravia and use the Android TV functionality. It started showing ads on the home screen earlier this year and I can't figure out a way to disable them and still be able to use the apps I actually want to use. If the ads had been there on day one, I would have been tempted to return the TV.
  • boudin 6y ago
    I have a Sony Android TV from the 2015 generation. It always had a row to advertise random app I don't use (Netflix, Playstation Video, Disney something etc...) It also always advertise content from those platform, you have to disable "recommendations" from apps one after one as you can only disable recommendations for an app that pushed its crap at least once. The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide. My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.
• PaulKeeble 6y ago
  I actively avoided a Samsung TV for this reason a few years ago. They weren't even cheap for their capability level compared to their competitors given they included ads and the other TVs didn't. You could get equivalent TVs for the same price without the ads, I am not remotely seeing the value to a purchaser.
  • systemBuilder 6y ago
    I scream with laughter because most Samsung TVs are sold at MSRP which is 50% more than the competition and you see moron tv buyers going bananas for a trivial discount which makes them 35% more than the competition!
• huhtenberg 6y ago
  > 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.
  • fxtentacle 6y ago
    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.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • huhtenberg 6y ago
      That won't last long either if at all. They will just require an SSL connectivity to their servers with a custom CA root. The end.
      • adriancr 6y ago
        so... 1. Order TV. 2. test if it works without agreeing to anything and without internet. 3. return if that's not the case. I have yet to accept EULA on samsung on anything and it works... Right now the ACR is troubling. Telling a remote server what you're watching... Only solution I found - not connected + hdmi to Linux box I control.
        • belorn 6y ago
          As an older comment mention, they can easily add an delay that makes it work without an connection only for the duration in which an return is possible. It is very hard to win against hostile design.
• skocznymroczny 6y ago
  I don't trust most smart TVs, that's why I bought a dumb TV from TCL. If I want any fancy smart functions, I'll just connect an android box via HDMI.
  • m463 6y ago
    I worry that these manufacturers will collude with xfinity to do an "iot workaround" to exfiltrate "customer preferences"
  • joosters 6y ago
    But why do you think your android device will have fewer ads and spyware? Unless you rolled your own OS, it probably is infested with crud.
    • dan1234 6y ago
      Presumably the Android box is cheap enough to simply swap out with competing tech, should it become annoying, so you don't need to dump the whole TV.
  • deergomoo 6y ago
    I would love to do this, but dumb TVs pretty much top out at the upper-mid range. If you want a high end panel you're getting all the bullshit too, unfortunately.
    • ta8964586 6y ago
      Look at "digital signage" TVs built for business are available that don't have the consumer software. They are of course more expensive and optimized more for continuous usage (16hr/day 7days/week for samsung), but as of now I don't believe they get ads pushed to them. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd/ https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...
      • paulus_magnus2 6y ago
• avian 6y ago
  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 your TV? A: No. B: Does anyone here like ads? A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors. C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?
  • tangjurine 6y ago
    We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe. Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).
    • Siira 6y ago
      This is a general counterargument to anything different from the status quo. You should never trust general counterarguments.
      • jskdvsksnb 6y ago
        > You should never trust general counterarguments. Noted.
    • qcq36 6y ago
      There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are horrible is slowly becoming more obvious to the people who engineer more clever ways to collect data and serve advertisements to enable those business models (or who work in a cost center orbiting such an organization). Samsung learned from the industry represented here and it’s disconcerting to observe the lack of self-awareness in the vitriol being leveled at them from here. Equally disconcerting is that the same people rending their clothes over this probably overlook their Gmail messages being scanned and ads in their inbox, but a television, mein gott, a bridge too far. This is your world, HN. We all live in it now. Sucks, no?
• hnlmorg 6y ago
  > This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra quid. [1] Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... [2] Removal of "Other OS" feature from Playstation 3's after users had already bought them: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3088169/sony-agrees-to-pay-millions-for-removing-linux-support-from-the-playstation-3.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3088169/sony-agrees-to-pay-m...
  • jhfdbkofdcho 6y ago
    I just bought a Sony and it’s running google android TV and it has suddenly got ads for “staff picks” now. “Free” movies on YouTube. https://streamingclarity.com/android-tv-staff-pick-highlights-ads-bad-reviews/ https://streamingclarity.com/android-tv-staff-pick-highlight...
    • reaperducer 6y ago
      “staff picks” I guess we're supposed to think "movie buffs who really know their stuff." When the reality is "[Sales] staff picks."
    • nucleardog 6y ago
      Not sure if it changed, but my 1-2 year old Sony with Android TV was fine with not being connected to the internet at all. No idea if it's full of some sort of baked in ads because, after the initial setup, I've used it exclusively as... a TV. It turns on, shows me things I give it over HDMI, and turns off. I haven't actually seen the menu/apps/whatever after the first day. It's not optimal, I'd rather it just be a dumb TV obviously, but in a sea of bad options it's been... fine.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• felipelemos 6y ago
  I think the best way to fix this before it creates legs is to have a huge backslash. They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.
  • thakoppno 6y ago
    Samsung TVs in the US have had ACR since 2012.
    • Miraste 6y ago
      Consumers can't be made to care about ACR. Giant blatant ads are a different story.
  • Hokusai 6y ago
    > They should feel social pressure That rarely works. For each consumer that has the time and understanding to not buy the brand there is a thousand that are not aware. The way to go is lobbying for stronger regulations and to limit where Ads and recollection of data can be done. Day after day we have more and more connected devices. Samsung is the tip of the iceberg, even if there was consumer backslash for one company the problem will still be there.
• wodenokoto 6y ago
  Just to play the devils advocate: Ads are not shown, when the TV is asked to "reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it". And the TV is sold on its ability to show all sorts of things that are not just the signal passed to it. Like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the menus related to those services. The Ads are shown when the TV is asked to show its menu of applications and features. Still not great, but not at all what you are implying.
• wastedhours 6y ago
  The thing with TV panels is that they're essentially a commodity, right? Once every TV from a large brand becomes "smart", would the next logical step be for a small privacy-minded collective to go to an OEM and commission them to start making dumb TVs? Usually I disagree about niche hardware in this way (for example, usual mentions about a similar approach for phones and laptops), but the dumb screen might just be dumb and cheap enough to make work at this limited scale?
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    In theory, that's how the free market should work; in practice, it's very hard for a new player on the market to get brand recognition and a share of the market. It can be done, I think, but it has to be VERY well funded - you need to send salespeople / lobbyists to the various on- and offline shops selling TVs, you need "SEO experts" to try and beat the competition's "SEO experts" on the internet and e.g. Amazon's search results, and you need a legal team to help with the inevitable heap of lawsuits you'll get (patents, design infringement, etc). And then you'll have to deal with the competition pushing the prices of their devices below yours; Samsung can afford to sell TVs below market value for decades if need be, JUST to push out that shitty newcomer that does ad-free TVs, and they'll make money off of the ads + subscription services they offer in the meantime.
    • wastedhours 6y ago
      I mean, marketing's my background so I get that. But you see small brands like Pine64 and System76 doing it for specific types of (often generalised OEM, "off the shelf") hardware. If they can pull it off for more sophisticated integrated solutions like phones, tablets and laptops, I'd have thought that a TV brand would be even easier. Surely buying a commodity panel off of an existing OEM would negate a lot of the legal issues, and going DTC to the kinds of people who are specifically looking for a dumb TV is quite a decent niche to market to?
      • coldpie 6y ago
        I feel like a pre-order or KickStarter type situation might work. Do a small batch initially, get good reviews, do another, larger batch next year, keep cycling until you have enough cash to maintain an inventory.
• notyourwork 6y ago
  This is why my tv stays offline and isn’t setup. My Nvidia shield runs to hdmi and is the only playback source.
  • slashmike 6y ago
    Does the Nvidia Shield not utilize ACR like the smart TVs? I hear they're great but they run Android so I'm skeptical.
    • notyourwork 6y ago
      I'm not sure currently. If not, it wouldn't surprise me if its added.
  • alienfilesystem 6y ago
    Pi-hole. Works like a charm. Also does the same for every device in your house. Moreover, if you don't mind spending an additional $5 a month, set up your Pi-hole in a Digital Ocean droplet and you can blocks ads everywhere YOU happen to be, even on your mobile device.
    • CameronNemo 6y ago
      Running every dns request to a random DO droplet sounds like it would cause latency. Is there not some public DNS option that blocks ads?
      • alienfilesystem 6y ago
        There is very little latency, actually. If it just for you and/or your family, there is zero appreciable difference.
    • 72deluxe 6y ago
      I run one and it works very well, but I fear the rise of DoH and devices just bypassing your network's DNS settings to query the manufacturer's DNS servers. I think Google devices do this. A sad world we live in when you have to fight the devices you paid for.
• swiley 6y ago
  This is always the way commercial software works. If we can't legislate it then the only way to help people is by educating them.
• humaniania 6y ago
  The PS4 is full of ads for apps. I find it to be less enjoyable of an experience than the PS3. It's good to hear that their TVs haven't been corrupted yet.
• growlist 6y ago
  I sometimes wonder if someone at the top is trying to drive people away from TV/film/video. Yes there's more content than ever before but as regards drama etc. the writing is generally dreadful and the stories lack originality, on YouTube the adverts are becoming obnoxious and if extremely one-sided political messaging isn't to your taste, well, good luck finding a single programme that isn't stuffed to the gills with it.
  • 72deluxe 6y ago
    YouTube adverts have been obnoxious for a long time, but it's got far far far worse this year. Unfortunately, I think it is necessary to support the media industry thanks to the diminishing returns from sales of music/film due to the proliferation of "art is disposable and very cheap" $9.99-a-month streaming services, plus the fact that every new album ends up on YouTube within a week these days as an "entire album" upload. The sheer amount of content available these days is probably what you are noticing regarding dramas / films; I can remember very few decent Hollywood films recently as utter garbage seems to make billions of dollars, so the studios believe it's what people want. It isn't a new issue though - "Penny Dreadfuls" were the old poor-quality entertainment of yesteryear where I suspect people were saying the same things that we are saying now. The only difference now is the availability of immense volumes of instantly accessible tripe. As for political messaging, I am entirely apolitical but do see a lot of ideologies being promoted/pushed in programmes, with an opposing stance on any "modern" issue descending rapidly into a shouting match instead of a reasonable, logical debate; it then turns into a witch hunt regarding the opposing party's behaviour instead of a balanced discussion of the first issue raised. Exercise your free will and turn the rubbish off like I do!
• 20after4 6y ago
  It appears that this has already become the norm.
• adoxyz 6y ago
  What recent Sony TV doesn't come with Android TV?
• nuker 6y ago
  > showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is Google is purely Ad company and is worth a trillion. Here is your context and reasoning, combined.
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm Do we have any evidence Samsung TV sales have taken a hit from these measures?
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    The TV market isn’t that elastic. If there’s a backlash, it’ll take months to years to shake out.
• ericd 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure the up-front price is at least somewhat subsidized by the ad revenue.
• gwern 6y ago
  Unfortunately, showing ads probably does increase long-term profit. Take a look at the randomized experiments measuring long-term retention & profit with various ad loads: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and often done anyway. The loss from equivalent ad burdens on TVs is probably much less. (People replace their smartphones more often than their TVs!) The ad revenue also lets them discount the upfront price of TVs (I think I saw an article on HN that the discount due to advertising is at least $50/set?). And then there's the time-value of money: $1 up front in exchange for $1.10 of lost sales 10 years from now when they (maybe) buy an alternative brand is a pretty sweet deal for the seller. Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.
  • criddell 6y ago
    > Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were. It seems like the smart thing would be to have ads by default but allow the customer to turn them off. Most consumers would leave them on and be fine with it (like you said) and the haters would be happy too.
• fluidcruft 6y ago
  If you want a dumb box, can't you just un-network the TV itself? I don't see the point of smart TV's personally. It's way easier to just use a Roku or AppleTV or w/e. We have Sony's and the built-in smart TV platform is a horrible experience compared to Roku.
• mtw 6y ago
  Well you see Google selling Pixels which is supposed to be an idiot box to reproduce voice signals but it turns out it's loaded with ads and trackers. Samsung probably followed along the lines that Google pioneered
  • nitrogen 6y ago
    An ad company calling something a "pixel" (as in "tracking pixel") ought to give you an idea of what it does.
  • lern_too_spel 6y ago
    All of that is disableable, so the user can make it as "dumb" or as "smart" as they want, unlike the iPhone, which has tons of data collection that you can't turn off and survives in the face of much better competition only through luxury marketing or tricking people into believing it has reasonable privacy.
• chrisweekly 6y ago
  Let's not forget Sony's rootkit debacle.
• tremon 6y ago
  went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet True, not like this. But they've done worse things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit After all, most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?
• C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Exactly!, our down stairs Samsung's TV UI looks like it was designed by a group of toddlers who over dosed on E supplements and decided to use all the crayons in the box
• atomicfiredoll 6y ago
  It would be great if it were just one middle level manager. But, this sort of behavior seems to permeate a their offerings. For me Samsung and all of it's products have gone from mildly annoying (bloatware with a couple cool features) to something I won't even consider when making a new electronics purchase. It was frustrating for a while, because I like the hardware, but I'm past it now.
• 013a 6y ago
  I have an old (like 2015, not that old) Vizio TV with a built-in Chromecast, which was always handy. Saves me a couple bucks and an HDMI port. The "home screen" of the TV (where it goes when you turn it on) was always the chromecast, which as I'm sure most people have seen, is rather nice; just endless pictures of art and landscapes, like a screensaver. One day it updated without my consent, and that screen was replaced with Vizio's, I dont know, some piece of shit interface no human being on the planet wants. Ads for Crackle and other Vizio tvs mostly. Its so bad. So, I'm never buying another Vizio TV.
• burtonator 6y ago
  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.
  • disown 6y ago
    > NEVER buy a Samsung TV... they're horrible. NEVER buy a TV. Even better. They are all horrible. I thought that TVs would be a thing of the past like landline phones, but looks like I was wrong. It's incredible that the gullible are swarming to "smart" TVs.
    • VHRanger 6y ago
      I mean you can get a TV much like you get a computer monitor except bigger. That screen has no business connecting to the internet. Even better is a home projector.
      • potta_coffee 6y ago
        Have an recommendations for a home projector setup? I have a really good space for a projector now but idk what I want.
        • VHRanger 6y ago
          I have the BenQ ht2050a and I like it. It's only 1080p but 16ms response times and 120hz make it good for gaming. The color resolution is also great for movies.
          • potta_coffee 6y ago
• AgloeDreams 6y ago
  Lol Sony just pushed an update to the homescreen of android TVs that pushes ads for shows and services on the very top of the screen.
  • Shihan 6y ago
    They do it, because we let them do it. They obviously can get away with it.
    • AgloeDreams 6y ago
      In fairness, how would people even react? Almost all major TV platforms have ads and all of this is on products long after sale. If everyone is guilty, how does anyone get punished?
      • foxrider 6y ago
        Well we aren't just consumers, we are also citizens. Forcing ads into your devices sounds like a collective action waiting to happen, especially if it's done via an update. And further down the road some sort of advocacy group/lobbying may be in order.
• Mandatum 6y ago
  Sony support within my region (Asia Pacific) is 10x better than any of their competitors too. They ship new TV's when there's a minor defect, and they price match directly so you don't have to worry about the retailer going out of business if your TV breaks. Admittedly I've yet to use Sony support personally - nothing has broken.
• thelastdev 6y ago
  I own a 250$ 4k TV that doesn't do this. Samsung does this shit with their cell phones too. Rocking a cheaper brand Android phone now. Also helps I'm not being forced to keep Facebook installed
• sedatk 6y ago
  I have an LG Smart TV. I didn't consent to any of the tracking features and haven't seen a single ad for years. I strongly recommend it as an alternative to Sony.
• ensignavenger 6y ago
  > This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead I went with the opposite approach- I paid the small bucks to buy an Avera display, and connect it to my own media box. Also, a decent soundbar, because the built-in speakers are terrible. Now I have better sound than any built-in speakers at any price, a decent display, and the best "smart" features (with no ads), all for a price much lower than a "Smart" TV.
• sangnoir 6y ago
  > 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. I knew something was fucky when smart TVs started to be sold for less than the dumb ones - all things being even, smart TVs had to cost more to produce, so something had to be subsidizing the prices.
• sizzle 6y ago
  I have a huge Vizio Smartcast display (no tv tuner) and it doesn't have any advertisement displaying dark patterns. Crossing my fingers they don't sell out with ads.
• supergirl 6y ago
  it's not his fault that corporations reward this. what should he do instead? purposely not work towards a promotion?