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I’m really pleased the author called out the Apple TV as a device that lets you avoid ads. We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Sti

I’m really pleased the author called out the Apple TV as a device that lets you avoid ads. We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place. There’s lots of griping about the cost of an Apple TV 4k, but I’ll pay that extra $100 to avoid ads and not be tracked so extensively.

secfirstmd 6y ago
Yep plus when you start to stretch the Fire Stick and a few other products you find a number of issues. For example I've spend probably in the region of 40 hours trying to fix issues with Firestick and Echo Studio. When they work well they are excellent value for money products. But then you get a glitch (like audio dropping because of a lack of sync) and it becomes a morass. Hours upon hours and no solution (eventually getting to, we need to send this to our Devs). Apple stuff just works. Not as cheap and maybe not as hackable in some ways but it just works.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  I never had a single issue with my roommates' Samsung smart TV (casting or otherwise) besides some buggy apps. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on "just works."
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    Great except for the fact that smart TVs connected to the Internet have all sorts of privacy concerns: * https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/ Samsung actually released a TV app to tell you what it's doing: * https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy-hacker/ https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy... Which is nice, in a way, but it'd be better if they just didn't. I'd be much more trusting of Apple TV being connected to the Internet than with a smart TV.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      As a bad alternative. By the smart TVs, add a Pihole to the network. Block port 53 if it isn’t from the Pihole and add an as list like the one below. It seems to work well. https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/SmartTV.txt https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/Smar...
      - throw0101a 6y ago
        1. I'm not going to tell my parents to get a Pihole. 2. Wait until your smart TV starts using DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) to by-pass it. (Paul Vixie will be proved right eventually IMHO.)
      - bitwize 6y ago
        That is a bad alternative, as in no alternative at all really. I don't want a device that requires me to do network engineering to prevent it from doing things I didn't ask for or want.
  - koolba 6y ago
    Just works vs. just works and also uploads screenshots of what you’re watching for ad targeting analysis isn’t much of a contest.
  - jeremy_wiebe 6y ago
    Bought a Samsung TV that purports to support Airplay. It works... except for some apps can’t stream to it. Turns out that some apps can only Airplay to official Apple devices and not the Samsung TVs despite marketing. I was planning to neuter the network from my TV and go with an Apple TV anyways, but that sealed the deal.
    - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
      I’m fairly sure that’s DRM getting in the way. I use an open source tool to emulate an airplay target but it won’t work on copyright content.
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    My parents have a Samsung TV and it’s incredibly slow to the point it’s difficult to change the volume. I think they pushed out OS updates that made it slower.
deadmutex 6y ago
Ehn, no vp9 though (last I checked)... so if you watch a lot of YT in 4K, it uses more bandwidth than say Google TV.
- pwthornton 6y ago
  I don't think most people care about vp9 or codec wars. It's not something on almost anyone's minds. h.264 and h.265 are the dominant codecs, regardless. And Netflix found that h.265 consumed less bandwidth than vp9, not more: https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=113346 https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...
  - summm 6y ago
    People should care if they want to watch YouTube in more than 720p resolution...
- yaml-ops-guy 6y ago
  tvOS has supported vp9 since last year, the youtube app however has been slow getting that message... https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/18/4k-youtube-videos-still-not-compatible-picture-in-picture-removed/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/18/4k-youtube-videos-still-not-c...
  - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
    Somehow, google has made it so that the best way to watch YouTube on an Apple TV is to open YouTube.com in a browser on another apple device and airplay to the Apple TV.
  - exsf0859 6y ago
    Looks like it's been supported since October 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500399/apple-tv-youtube-4k-iphone-ipad-hdr-30-fps https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500399/apple-tv-youtube...
anuragsoni 6y ago
I like the apple tv interface, but I really disliked the remote that ships with it. The touchpad like interface feels really awkward, i would lift it up the wrong way pretty much every time. I remember reading about an apple certified 3rd party remote that was more like a traditional tv remote but that was only sold in the european market for some reason. If they ever decide to switch back to a proper remote i'll take a look at apple tv again. I'll keep running a roku til that happens.
- ProfessorLayton 6y ago
  Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too. If you already own an extra gamepad, then it's worth a try and doesn't cost extra. There's a few gems in Apple Arcade, which was a surprise.
  - anuragsoni 6y ago
    > Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too. Thanks, this is nice to know! I'll keep this in mind for whenever I'm ready to replace my Roku.
- prepend 6y ago
  I didn’t like it at first, but now it’s my favorite tvbox remote ever. Mainly because it doesn’t take batteries, is flat, works great with my phone, and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark. I do pick it up the wrong way a lot, but it’s better than all other devices I’ve tried- fire, roku, tv, wd. Just not having to find doubleA batteries in the past few months has made me accept it.
  - anuragsoni 6y ago
    The built in batteries are indeed nice and I did like that aspect of the remote. > and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark. Interesting! This goes to show how the same design feels so different to different users :) I think I could've gotten used to the touchpad if I spent a lot more time with with the apple-tv/remote, but at the time it felt like a big regression. Compared to the roku remote, i'd lose a mute button, a headphone jack for private listening, and ended up with a touch heavy interface that was more frustrating than useful considering me and wife would pick it up the wrong way a lot. At the end of the day I decided to stick with a Roku and have something that doesn't frustrate my wife, instead of trying to get used to the remote just to have the apple tv interface :)
fossuser 6y ago
Yes - I wish Apple would just make a TV. Call it a living room screen or a living room monitor or something. Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?). This entire market is in desperate need of someone to make something decent. The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.
- randallsquared 6y ago
  > A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds I love that a sibling comment to yours calls out the remote as dealbreaker terrible, but I agree with the sentiment that I would love a remote that was really well-designed.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago
    You can go too far in the other direction too, however. Apple TV remote infamously has no mute functionality. And if you do an internet search on how to mute the Apple TV using the remote (because of course there’s a way, right? No one would design a TV remote that has volume control without mute) you get either one of two answers: - it’s impossible/difficult to do with current tech (not true) - the classic Apple forum response of “why would you want to do that?” This turned into a bit of a rant but I’ll conclude the thought by saying that there’s certainly some sort of happy medium between a gajillion buttons on the remote and lack of absolutely critical functionality. In fact if you invest a bit of extra money into the Sideclick add-on to Apple TV remote you achieve exactly that.
    - dexterdog 6y ago
      I never use the mute button. I just turn the volume down because I know where that button is without looking.
    - olliej 6y ago
      Personally I find the problem with the apple remote to be the symmetric design (I would have though the puck mouse would have taught that lesson)
mkoubaa 6y ago
To be fair tvs are a very low margin product and without the ads it would be profitless for anyone but apple (or another manufacturer that sold as a premium to avoid ads). I don't know how big the market for that is, personally I'm happy with a dumb tv connected to a video game console that has all my streaming services.
- prepend 6y ago
  To be fair, TVs are a decades old market that have paid off great for many companies and they didn’t have ads until recently.
  - m463 6y ago
    i can't help but think it is like bundleware and the PC, which would subsidize the cost of the system, maybe by $50. same thing is happening with TVs. This crap subsidizes the price of the TV, so then the $279 tv looks more attractive than the more expensive tvs without ads/tracking/data gathering (which then disappear)
  - devoutsalsa 6y ago
    TVs used to much more expensive, and they only became cheap when TV manufacturers realized there’s a ton of money to be made by selling your personal information. A manufacturer that doesn’t do this would not be competitively priced I’m afraid. “Why TVs Have Become So Inexpensive“ => https://youtu.be/NWwawTnT7LM https://youtu.be/NWwawTnT7LM
    - prepend 6y ago
      I don’t agree with this video. I bought a 55” plasma for $800 over 10 years ago. And I bought a Sony Triniton for $1000 around 2000. The price of TVs seems to be fixed around this price point and we seem to get more features, bigger screens, etc and the price stays about the same. The highest end TVs I see also have ads. So I don’t think this factors into the price at all. It’s just bonus profits on top of existing profits. If ad data subsidized prices significantly, I wouldn’t expect it in $4,000 TVs. Am I supposed to believe that the TV would be $4,050 without ads? It seems strange that high end TVs would care about these small amounts. I think this is just a cover story by marketers to garner sympathy.
jeswin 6y ago
I have been using an Apple TV and a Chromecast for a long time. I've never seen an ad on the Chromecast - it simply plays a stream as instructed by an app on the phone. Is it different with the Fire Stick?
- lostlogin 6y ago
  The Chromecast does some gross shit. You see it in Pihole if you force it to route its dns through the Pihole. It has some black magic whereby it ignores local dns setting as far as I can tell. I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole. Good times.
  - nuker 6y ago
    > I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole Im betting my savings this is far from enough, its Google sw, they smart AF. Send that thing back to where you bought it better :)
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Better melt it down just to be sure :)
  - dijit 6y ago
    I don’t think it’s black magic. They just do DNS over HTTPS.
  - pridkett 6y ago
    At the rate things are going you're likely going to want to just blackhole all of the public DNS-over-https providers[0] to ensure that it's not switching to DoH to get around your rules. [0]: https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/dd13c8f4a3371a57f8dd82f531530b4e https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/dd13c8f4a3371a57f8dd82...
Egrodo 6y ago
The non-Apple equivalent is the Nvidia Shield TV. Excellent piece of hardware that gives you access to basically every streaming app, plus integrates with Android's casting setup. Also fun fact, the Shield TV is the longest supported Android device in existence (https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-shield-tv-25th-update-1150521/ https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-shield-tv-25th-updat...)
- jannes 6y ago
  > Android I wouldn’t trust the world’s biggest tracking company not to track me. You’re kind of moving laterally there. (From trusting Smart TV to trusting Google.)
  - throwawei369 6y ago
    All brands of smart TVs track you. Regardless of operating system. With this reasoning, one should not even look at any modern equipped TV.
rishav_sharan 6y ago
Are ads on firestick a US only thing or have I been blind to not notice any ads in my firestick?
- barrkel 6y ago
  The only ads I see are the banners, but I don't pay any attention to those. There aren't any video ads, which is all I really care about. (My dumb TV is a projector, one of the best decisions we've made in the past 5 years.)
  - abendy 6y ago
    Which projector did you go with?
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
What kind of ads do you have on the fire stick? I am curious because in France at least there is only the top banner on the home screen, which I do not even see as I directly jump into an app.
jhoechtl 6y ago
You know you are tracked, right? It's just all the tracking information goes to one big monopolist instead of multiple providers. This may make it feel as if there is less tracking going on but it really isn't.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  You can adjust the privacy settings so that you’re not tracked: https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/adjust-privacy-settings-atvb66239fa1/tvos https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/adjust-privacy-settings-a... Beyond Apple, you should expect individual Apple TV apps to track by default.
- gurkendoktor 6y ago
  I agree that you are still being tracked on an Apple TV, but that's because the YouTube app is still made by Google, and the Netflix app is made by Netflix, etc. Apple probably has some sort of tracking system, but they're hardly a tracking monopolist, not even on their own devices.
chovybizzass 6y ago
apple still tracking you. i like the fire tv because you can side load apps that aren't in the store. great for us hackers.
ValentineC 6y ago
> We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place. If we're talking about the original, non-4k Fire TV Stick, then yes. The 4k version is speedy, but still laden with ads. I recently purchased a Roku Streaming Stick Plus ($39 USD on Amazon — that's ~20% the price of an Apple TV) because I found out that they natively supported AirPlay 2. If you're looking for an ad-free experience, VPN out to an unsupported country and create a Roku account there. You'll be able to add less "channels", but Roku also stops trying to hard-sell you on subscriptions.

secfirstmd 6y ago

Yep plus when you start to stretch the Fire Stick and a few other products you find a number of issues. For example I've spend probably in the region of 40 hours trying to fix issues with Firestick and Echo Studio. When they work well they are excellent value for money products. But then you get a glitch (like audio dropping because of a lack of sync) and it becomes a morass. Hours upon hours and no solution (eventually getting to, we need to send this to our Devs). Apple stuff just works. Not as cheap and maybe not as hackable in some ways but it just works.

jimmaswell 6y ago
I never had a single issue with my roommates' Samsung smart TV (casting or otherwise) besides some buggy apps. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on "just works."
- throw0101a 6y ago
  Great except for the fact that smart TVs connected to the Internet have all sorts of privacy concerns: * https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/ Samsung actually released a TV app to tell you what it's doing: * https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy-hacker/ https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy... Which is nice, in a way, but it'd be better if they just didn't. I'd be much more trusting of Apple TV being connected to the Internet than with a smart TV.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    As a bad alternative. By the smart TVs, add a Pihole to the network. Block port 53 if it isn’t from the Pihole and add an as list like the one below. It seems to work well. https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/SmartTV.txt https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/Smar...
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      1. I'm not going to tell my parents to get a Pihole. 2. Wait until your smart TV starts using DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) to by-pass it. (Paul Vixie will be proved right eventually IMHO.)
    - bitwize 6y ago
      That is a bad alternative, as in no alternative at all really. I don't want a device that requires me to do network engineering to prevent it from doing things I didn't ask for or want.
- koolba 6y ago
  Just works vs. just works and also uploads screenshots of what you’re watching for ad targeting analysis isn’t much of a contest.
- jeremy_wiebe 6y ago
  Bought a Samsung TV that purports to support Airplay. It works... except for some apps can’t stream to it. Turns out that some apps can only Airplay to official Apple devices and not the Samsung TVs despite marketing. I was planning to neuter the network from my TV and go with an Apple TV anyways, but that sealed the deal.
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    I’m fairly sure that’s DRM getting in the way. I use an open source tool to emulate an airplay target but it won’t work on copyright content.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  My parents have a Samsung TV and it’s incredibly slow to the point it’s difficult to change the volume. I think they pushed out OS updates that made it slower.

deadmutex 6y ago

Ehn, no vp9 though (last I checked)... so if you watch a lot of YT in 4K, it uses more bandwidth than say Google TV.

pwthornton 6y ago
I don't think most people care about vp9 or codec wars. It's not something on almost anyone's minds. h.264 and h.265 are the dominant codecs, regardless. And Netflix found that h.265 consumed less bandwidth than vp9, not more: https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=113346 https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...
- summm 6y ago
  People should care if they want to watch YouTube in more than 720p resolution...
yaml-ops-guy 6y ago
tvOS has supported vp9 since last year, the youtube app however has been slow getting that message... https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/18/4k-youtube-videos-still-not-compatible-picture-in-picture-removed/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/18/4k-youtube-videos-still-not-c...
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  Somehow, google has made it so that the best way to watch YouTube on an Apple TV is to open YouTube.com in a browser on another apple device and airplay to the Apple TV.
- exsf0859 6y ago
  Looks like it's been supported since October 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500399/apple-tv-youtube-4k-iphone-ipad-hdr-30-fps https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500399/apple-tv-youtube...

anuragsoni 6y ago

I like the apple tv interface, but I really disliked the remote that ships with it. The touchpad like interface feels really awkward, i would lift it up the wrong way pretty much every time. I remember reading about an apple certified 3rd party remote that was more like a traditional tv remote but that was only sold in the european market for some reason. If they ever decide to switch back to a proper remote i'll take a look at apple tv again. I'll keep running a roku til that happens.

ProfessorLayton 6y ago
Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too. If you already own an extra gamepad, then it's worth a try and doesn't cost extra. There's a few gems in Apple Arcade, which was a surprise.
- anuragsoni 6y ago
  > Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too. Thanks, this is nice to know! I'll keep this in mind for whenever I'm ready to replace my Roku.
prepend 6y ago
I didn’t like it at first, but now it’s my favorite tvbox remote ever. Mainly because it doesn’t take batteries, is flat, works great with my phone, and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark. I do pick it up the wrong way a lot, but it’s better than all other devices I’ve tried- fire, roku, tv, wd. Just not having to find doubleA batteries in the past few months has made me accept it.
- anuragsoni 6y ago
  The built in batteries are indeed nice and I did like that aspect of the remote. > and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark. Interesting! This goes to show how the same design feels so different to different users :) I think I could've gotten used to the touchpad if I spent a lot more time with with the apple-tv/remote, but at the time it felt like a big regression. Compared to the roku remote, i'd lose a mute button, a headphone jack for private listening, and ended up with a touch heavy interface that was more frustrating than useful considering me and wife would pick it up the wrong way a lot. At the end of the day I decided to stick with a Roku and have something that doesn't frustrate my wife, instead of trying to get used to the remote just to have the apple tv interface :)

fossuser 6y ago

Yes - I wish Apple would just make a TV. Call it a living room screen or a living room monitor or something. Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?). This entire market is in desperate need of someone to make something decent. The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.

randallsquared 6y ago
> A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds I love that a sibling comment to yours calls out the remote as dealbreaker terrible, but I agree with the sentiment that I would love a remote that was really well-designed.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago
  You can go too far in the other direction too, however. Apple TV remote infamously has no mute functionality. And if you do an internet search on how to mute the Apple TV using the remote (because of course there’s a way, right? No one would design a TV remote that has volume control without mute) you get either one of two answers: - it’s impossible/difficult to do with current tech (not true) - the classic Apple forum response of “why would you want to do that?” This turned into a bit of a rant but I’ll conclude the thought by saying that there’s certainly some sort of happy medium between a gajillion buttons on the remote and lack of absolutely critical functionality. In fact if you invest a bit of extra money into the Sideclick add-on to Apple TV remote you achieve exactly that.
  - dexterdog 6y ago
    I never use the mute button. I just turn the volume down because I know where that button is without looking.
  - olliej 6y ago
    Personally I find the problem with the apple remote to be the symmetric design (I would have though the puck mouse would have taught that lesson)

mkoubaa 6y ago

To be fair tvs are a very low margin product and without the ads it would be profitless for anyone but apple (or another manufacturer that sold as a premium to avoid ads). I don't know how big the market for that is, personally I'm happy with a dumb tv connected to a video game console that has all my streaming services.

prepend 6y ago
To be fair, TVs are a decades old market that have paid off great for many companies and they didn’t have ads until recently.
- m463 6y ago
  i can't help but think it is like bundleware and the PC, which would subsidize the cost of the system, maybe by $50. same thing is happening with TVs. This crap subsidizes the price of the TV, so then the $279 tv looks more attractive than the more expensive tvs without ads/tracking/data gathering (which then disappear)
- devoutsalsa 6y ago
  TVs used to much more expensive, and they only became cheap when TV manufacturers realized there’s a ton of money to be made by selling your personal information. A manufacturer that doesn’t do this would not be competitively priced I’m afraid. “Why TVs Have Become So Inexpensive“ => https://youtu.be/NWwawTnT7LM https://youtu.be/NWwawTnT7LM
  - prepend 6y ago
    I don’t agree with this video. I bought a 55” plasma for $800 over 10 years ago. And I bought a Sony Triniton for $1000 around 2000. The price of TVs seems to be fixed around this price point and we seem to get more features, bigger screens, etc and the price stays about the same. The highest end TVs I see also have ads. So I don’t think this factors into the price at all. It’s just bonus profits on top of existing profits. If ad data subsidized prices significantly, I wouldn’t expect it in $4,000 TVs. Am I supposed to believe that the TV would be $4,050 without ads? It seems strange that high end TVs would care about these small amounts. I think this is just a cover story by marketers to garner sympathy.

jeswin 6y ago

I have been using an Apple TV and a Chromecast for a long time. I've never seen an ad on the Chromecast - it simply plays a stream as instructed by an app on the phone. Is it different with the Fire Stick?

lostlogin 6y ago
The Chromecast does some gross shit. You see it in Pihole if you force it to route its dns through the Pihole. It has some black magic whereby it ignores local dns setting as far as I can tell. I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole. Good times.
- nuker 6y ago
  > I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole Im betting my savings this is far from enough, its Google sw, they smart AF. Send that thing back to where you bought it better :)
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Better melt it down just to be sure :)
- dijit 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s black magic. They just do DNS over HTTPS.
- pridkett 6y ago
  At the rate things are going you're likely going to want to just blackhole all of the public DNS-over-https providers[0] to ensure that it's not switching to DoH to get around your rules. [0]: https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/dd13c8f4a3371a57f8dd82f531530b4e https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/dd13c8f4a3371a57f8dd82...

Egrodo 6y ago

The non-Apple equivalent is the Nvidia Shield TV. Excellent piece of hardware that gives you access to basically every streaming app, plus integrates with Android's casting setup. Also fun fact, the Shield TV is the longest supported Android device in existence (https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-shield-tv-25th-update-1150521/ https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-shield-tv-25th-updat...)

jannes 6y ago
> Android I wouldn’t trust the world’s biggest tracking company not to track me. You’re kind of moving laterally there. (From trusting Smart TV to trusting Google.)
- throwawei369 6y ago
  All brands of smart TVs track you. Regardless of operating system. With this reasoning, one should not even look at any modern equipped TV.

rishav_sharan 6y ago

Are ads on firestick a US only thing or have I been blind to not notice any ads in my firestick?

barrkel 6y ago
The only ads I see are the banners, but I don't pay any attention to those. There aren't any video ads, which is all I really care about. (My dumb TV is a projector, one of the best decisions we've made in the past 5 years.)
- abendy 6y ago
  Which projector did you go with?

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

What kind of ads do you have on the fire stick? I am curious because in France at least there is only the top banner on the home screen, which I do not even see as I directly jump into an app.

jhoechtl 6y ago

You know you are tracked, right? It's just all the tracking information goes to one big monopolist instead of multiple providers. This may make it feel as if there is less tracking going on but it really isn't.

robin_reala 6y ago
You can adjust the privacy settings so that you’re not tracked: https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/adjust-privacy-settings-atvb66239fa1/tvos https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/adjust-privacy-settings-a... Beyond Apple, you should expect individual Apple TV apps to track by default.
gurkendoktor 6y ago
I agree that you are still being tracked on an Apple TV, but that's because the YouTube app is still made by Google, and the Netflix app is made by Netflix, etc. Apple probably has some sort of tracking system, but they're hardly a tracking monopolist, not even on their own devices.

chovybizzass 6y ago

apple still tracking you. i like the fire tv because you can side load apps that aren't in the store. great for us hackers.

ValentineC 6y ago

> We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place. If we're talking about the original, non-4k Fire TV Stick, then yes. The 4k version is speedy, but still laden with ads. I recently purchased a Roku Streaming Stick Plus ($39 USD on Amazon — that's ~20% the price of an Apple TV) because I found out that they natively supported AirPlay 2. If you're looking for an ad-free experience, VPN out to an unsupported country and create a Roku account there. You'll be able to add less "channels", but Roku also stops trying to hard-sell you on subscriptions.