16 ms·

Samsung UK admits you can’t disable ads on Samsung smart TV

231 points by NKosmatos 5y ago

rvz 5y ago
It has been painfully admitted and the confession is in public. Samsung's smart TVs are watching you watch TV. Time to watch something else with a different brand?
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  What's the alternative? Unless you're buying TVs specifically made for office meeting rooms or hotel lobbies, pretty much every major manufacturer makes exclusively "Smart" TVs on their higher-end models, and those smart TVs include various bits of ads/tracking.
  - jqpabc123 5y ago
    ... hotel lobbies Yes, this is what I look for --- a TV that is dumb as dirt and built to run 24/7 for years. https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/lg-40lt340h0ua https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/lg-40lt340h0u...
    - KingOfCoders 5y ago
      "built to run 24/7 for years." There are many. They are usually not in your price range though.
      - jqpabc123 5y ago
        I have owned one of the below for several years though it is not my primary. I have 3 TVs in all. I paid significantly less than the $199 advertised here. Dumb as a rock. This brand used to be advertised toward hotels and cruise ships. https://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SC-39HS950N-1080P-LED-HDTV/dp/B07YSTLMVN/ref=sr_1_3 https://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SC-39HS950N-1080P-LED-HDTV/dp/B...?
        KingOfCoders 5y ago
        I might be wrong, but I do think there is a difference between a TV for a hotel room (Smart TV minus the Smart, same components, runs 4h a day when people are in their room) and a display hanging in a airport running 24/7. We've used those 24/7 displays for a monitoring room and they were much more expensive. (As CTO I wanted to buy of the shelf components but was overruled by the corporate hierarchy).
        jqpabc123 5y ago
        As a hardware and software geek, I can tell you that any difference is most likely the capacitors used on the circuit boards. Cheap capacitors are widely used to intentionally limit the usable lifetime of consumer grade electronics like TVs. The difference in manufacturing cost is probably less than $1. It's not about the manufacturing cost, it's about engineered obsolescence --- selling you a new one after 5 years of "normal" use.
      - mdoms 5y ago
        They're marketed as "commercial TVs" and they often cheaper than the smart ones. https://www.pbtech.co.nz/search?sf=commercial+tv&search_type=prediction https://www.pbtech.co.nz/search?sf=commercial+tv&search_type...
  - enragedcacti 5y ago
    Don't connect it to the internet? Not saying what they are doing isn't scummy as all hell, but aside from having to navigate to HDMI 1 when you turn on the TV (for the models who don't support setting a default on boot) that should work perfectly as a dumb TV.
beebeepka 5y ago
I feel there must be a non insignificant market for TV sized monitors, or something like dumb TVs with high end panels. Industrial offerings were severely overpriced last time I checked. I know I am hardly in the majority but having an actual computer hooked to your big panel is so much better than dealing with "apps" and ads. How hard is it to make a profit selling a TV sized monitor?
ddingus 5y ago
Those of you struggling with newer devices may want to do some digging to understand what service options may be available. I have not explored this much, but I recently bought an older Samsung plasma panel used. I want it for parts, but it does work somewhat poorly. While experimenting with it, I found a few modes in the service menu: Demo, Kiosk, Hotel, etc... Be sure and keep a settings record and or find the factory reset option before just changing stuff. It is possible to get sets into weird modes that are not easy to get out of. My current main display is a big plasma panel that I love. And it is smart, but not too smart. No Internet = no ADS.
stevespang 5y ago
But you can block the ip that those ads are coming from, even better is vote your wallet by NOT BUYING anything Samsung.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Who even buys hardware like this?
- garciasn 5y ago
  Most people. Why? A myriad of reasons, potentially, but here are two big ones: 1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less. 2. Most people are largely uncaring about seeing advertising on their devices. It's why less than 30% of US residents block ads on the web.
  - rolph 5y ago
    i start caring when ads are blocking vital portions of video , example: " here we, are opening the tomb of the lost king for the first time, what do you see howard?" " i see wonderfull things!" except i instead see a big banner, and a logo and a popup from the side, and they have zero to do with archeology or science and the whole point of the program has been obliterated.
    - garciasn 5y ago
      I would argue those who read HN are not 'most people', and if we subset those who read HN by those who comment on HN, I would believe my statement is even more true.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > 1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less. Is this actually true though? I'd love to see an analysis of pricing in relation to the amount of adware a TV has. My gut instinct is that you would not see a significant price decrease for more adware-laden models.
    - tpxl 5y ago
      Let's exaggerate a bit. 365 days in a year, 5 year lifetime -> 1825 days, our consumer watches TV 16 hours a day -> 29200 hours watched, 6 commercials/hour -> 175200 commercials watched. Youtube pays ~4$ per 1000 views, giving us 700.8$ lifetime ad revenue for a very exaggerated viewer. A more normal viewer that watches say 4 hours/day, 6 days a week will give us a more modest ad revenue of 187.71$. Assuming the "normal viewer" is actually representative, the statement that ad-supported hardware is cheaper on the scale of 2000$ TVs is bullshit.
jqpabc123 5y ago
"Smart TV" means "smart" for the manufacturer. For the user, it's pretty "dumb" to let the manufacturer invade your privacy on your TV. Thank you Samsung but no thanks. Any "smarts" I need from my TV, I will add myself. This way, I know exactly what I am getting.
- garciasn 5y ago
  Unless you're using a disconnected TV (i.e., no CATV/SATV/Internet), your viewing habits are being tracked and sold.
  - enragedcacti 5y ago
    Roku TVs have this turned on by default but it is pretty easy to disable in settings. Exercise to the reader to see what is still sent when it's disabled.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Can I assume that a modern TV I buy works without internet? (I'd just want it to display stuff I feed it via HDMI or whatever).
    - ReidZB 5y ago
      I have a couple modern LG 'smart' TVs that I don't connect to the internet, and they work just fine. As you say, they just display whatever is on the HDMI input. I've updated their firmware a couple times. I connect them with wired cat6 on their own isolated VLAN to update, and then disconnect them afterwards. Maybe I am a little unnecessarily paranoid about it, but I don't really trust TV manufacturers, not with some of the (maybe apocryphal) stories I've read.
      - snvzz 5y ago
        No, you're not being paranoid. This is the only way. And beware, they might still be connecting to some public wifi hotspot behind your back.
gdulli 5y ago
Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided, Netflix would also profile me and advertise content to me through its app, and I don't plan to ever open that one either. This screenshot looks like a streaming content interface, and data mining you has been a fundamental part of all these services for years, right? Not saying it's great, just that this isn't new or unusual. Of course they're tracking what you watch for advertising purposes. Or is this a fundamental part of the UI for a Samsung TV that you need to interact with for daily use even if you don't want content through Samsung? Because that would be unacceptable. I wouldn't buy a TV if it required an internet connection to function. My favorite type of advertising is traditional TV commercials that can be fast forwarded or muted and fully skipped. There's never going to be a net decrease in advertising. Digital and streaming are just making it harder to skip, keep strictly separate from content, and receive anonymously.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided So the problem with this approach is that, yes sure if you have the technical acumen you can prevent the TV from phoning home, but you are still giving money to the company that engages in this kind of behavior. And that money contributes to them developing more intrusive tools like this that target consumers of their products who do not have the requisite technical acumen to prevent the TV from phoning home. In other words, by buying an adware TV and disabling the adware, you're still supporting the adware company instead of just buying a TV without adware in the first place.
  - gdulli 5y ago
    I have a Vizio TV that's never been on the internet. I've never opened its apps and don't know what it is I'm avoiding. Given my other product requirements for a TV, eliminating all that have smart apps would probably leave me with no choices. Ironically I have a Samsung phone because I wouldn't give money to Google for hardware. We're just surrounded and choosing the lesser of various evils every day.
senectus1 5y ago
Dunno if the UK version is different to the Aussie version... but a pi-hole stops adverts on my samsung TV
TakuYam 5y ago
A pi hole absolutely blocks all ads on Samsung smart TVs
- L_226 5y ago
  This is absolutely false. Source: I have a samsung smart TV and run a pihole
  - bennyp101 5y ago
    Does that not depend on the ads? Ads on the TV = yes Ads on the individual streaming services = They change it around every month or so
    - L_226 5y ago
      I only currently get ads when streaming youtube on the TV, even though youtube on my other WAN devices do not get ads. Looking at the pihole logs the TV hits cdn[dot]samsung[dot]com only, so I assume it is proxying YT requests via a Samsung service. Blocking the cdn endpoint disables all internet features, including Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. Previously, about 18 months ago, the pihole blocked all ads from YT on the TV. So something changed... I don't have the pihole logs from back then otherwise I'd check.
drcongo 5y ago
I wrote this [1] seven years ago and the future I feared is now here. I lucked out finding a 4K LG dumb TV about three years ago, but I've recently been trying to buy a larger screen for a new house and cannot find a single good, large, dumb TV for sale in the UK. [1] https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/ https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/
humps 5y ago
On the Samsung TVs I own, when you first set it up there's a yes/no agreement screen and if you choose "no" none of the smart features are accessible and you don't get any phoning home or ads by simply not entering Wi-Fi details. I haven't bought a new TV for a few years, though. So this may be different now, but the best way I found to create a dumb TV experience.
- gpvos 5y ago
  Which features are still accessible? Only HDMI input, or more?
  - wombat-man 5y ago
    yeah you should be able to still watch OTA tv channels. Hdmi cable boxes should of course work. same with picture adjustment
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    I do this with my several-years-old Samsung as well. Inputs, menus, TV tuner, and the OTA program guide all work. No smart apps and no ads.
- wombat-man 5y ago
  yeah I have a cheaper vizio and I found that just not connecting it to wifi is a much better experience. the 'smart tv' features are not very good compared to a dedicated chromecast anyways.
- bsd44 5y ago
  I recently bought a Samsung 4K TV and it came with a "free tv" service (that's also crammed with ads). It's intrusive, it auto-plays and can't be disabled and I just don't want it. I've never owned a TV as an adult before and was interested in buying a video console to play some games, so it's kind of my fault for not understanding how these modern TVs work. But even so, if I'm paying £600 for a TV how is it acceptable to have all this nonsense pre-installed on it that can't be disabled or deleted? Nowhere on the sales page does it mention any of that and all the reviews seems to be from happy people on day 1 of purchase. The only way around it is to connect up a third party receiver to it such as Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV...but still feel cheated as a consumer if I have to do that.
sebazzz 5y ago
Same on my LG OLED with latest WebOS. It starts with the six buttons on my remote for Disney, Netflix, Prime, etc that also immediately install the associated app [even when earlier uninstalled] when accidentally touched and cannot be remapped. Next, on the home screen you're always greeted with a list of movies from all those streaming services without the ability to turn this list off.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
The ^HA (laughing at the image above) is just... wow, even the person running the Twitter account thinks it's bad.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  Apologies if you're joking but that's how they sign off their tweets—HA is the initials of the person replying.
- greenshackle2 5y ago
  I believe those are the initials of the rep who answered.. their reply tweets have a few different ones like ^NR, ^CM, ^SK. https://twitter.com/SamsungUK/status/1453740985763106823 https://twitter.com/SamsungUK/status/1453740985763106823
jonatron 5y ago
There's a hidden "Hotel Mode" on many TVs. I don't know if that would disable ads?
- effingwewt 5y ago
  Hotel mode disables options you don't want some random person messing with(inputs, language, etc). 'Smart' TVs are a perfect example of everything wrong with the business/consumer relationship. We are paying for the privilege of being spied upon more intrusively than ever, and the companies see us using workarounds and rather than stop their behavior they double down because what recourse does the customer have? We need fines over all of this shit. As long as it makes them money rather than costing them, this will continue.
cryptodan 5y ago
Use pihole?
deergomoo 5y ago
My recommendations for how to deal with this shit, in decreasing order of effectiveness: 1. Don't buy a Samsung or LG TV. Unfortunately, if you're in the market for a real high-end TV, you often don't have another option 2. Never connect it to the internet and use a dedicated streaming box/stick instead. If you don't have one, or don't want to give up a HDMI port... 3. Block the following domains on your router or via a free OpenDNS account: - ads.samsung.com - config.samsungads.com - doubleclick.net - gpm.samsungqbe.com - log-config.samsungacr.com - samsungacr.com - samsungads.com - samsungosp.com - samsungotn.net - samsungrm.net - tvx.adgrx.com No more ads. This shit makes my blood boil. I have a laundry list of issues with this TV, which is a shame because when it's not actively trying to make me hate the company it's actually a very nice display. LG pull this shit too, but I think they're slightly less awful than Samsung. I didn't particularly want an OLED panel which is why I went for a Samsung LCD, and I regret that decision regularly.
- deadmutex 5y ago
  For #1, maybe these can be good substitutes: https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.html?sort=tbt.parent_pdtype&order=DESC https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
  - zeusk 5y ago
    Absolutely not, their panels suck. The only budget manufacturers that give two shit about quality seem to be Hisense, TCL and Vizio.
    - deadmutex 5y ago
      haha, thanks for correction
  - TonyBagODonuts 5y ago
    I bought the 65" dumb panel TV from them because I refuse all this be, it's fine, and I feel like it's mine, I'm not renting it by constantly paying with ad watching.
beerandt 5y ago
When I shopped TVs a few years ago, Sony was the only consumer brand that didn't have ToS that included language about this type of advertising. I'm not sure if that's changed. They still spy on you plenty, though. That's what we bought, but we still don't connect it to a network and only use hdmi inputs. Plus disabled quite a few apps via adb, and don't update the software. It's sad that this is what it's come to. I also suspect that at least Android devices are starting to use other (Android) network devices as proxies to get data to Google when they've been firewalled with only LAN access. Lots of unexplained data getting transferred on my home network between firewalled Android devices. But maybe the state of things just has me being overly paranoid.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  While it will hopefully remain one way, it’s a matter of time the TV will receive updates and ads over DVB or other broadcast mediums. Could even geo-target ads. TV could figure out its location by GPS, multilateration of DVB signal strengths, what wifi is around, or purchase/delivery information (you didn’t stupidly get your 85” TV delivered to your own house, did you???). Would be cool to have on-demand TV or other data distribution given how much spectrum is available on DVB-T. Just like satellite Set top boxes.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Yeah- I suspect the push for Ethernet over hdmi has a lot to do with getting all these "unplugged" smart devices reconnected to a network.
  - orev 5y ago
    This is the holy grail for mobile carriers — have enough bandwidth in 5G where devices will come with mobile data already activated without user intervention at all.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      They could have done that today with 3G if they wanted, they just choose not to. Tons of unused spectrum overnight that should cost nearly $0, but they choose not to because we market prices would be bad for telecoms so it’s not on offer.
pessimizer 5y ago
This can't be true. I've been assured that if you pay for something, it won't track you or advertise to you.
bhaile 5y ago
I use this [1] and never seen an ad on my LG TV. Its only for Smart TVs. It blocks all the major TV ad networks too but can't tell how successful it is on other TVs since I only have LG. [1] https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist
djbusby 5y ago
Lots of these panels have no "smarts" https://m.alibaba.com/showroom/4k-display.html https://m.alibaba.com/showroom/4k-display.html
gizdan 5y ago
It's not just Samsung. My parents just bought an LG TV without consulting with me, and it's the same thing. They spent close to £1000, and now they have all sorts ads on the home screen that are impossible to remove, plus tracking that cannot be disabled.
JokerDan 5y ago
Are there any open source hardware TVs or OSS TV OS to load on Samsung/LG/other smart TVs that have some (if any) traction?
dehrmann 5y ago
Are there any open source TV firmware projects? Think OpenWRT for your TV.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  It wouldn't have any of the DRM keys for mainstream services.
bitwize 5y ago
My girlfriend likes to watch ALL the streamers. I have a "no smart TVs" rule for our home because of shit like this. We made it work by buying an Apple TV and a Sceptre dumb TV off Walmart's web site. Sceptre allegedly has picture quality problems, but the picture looks great; if certain shades of blue turn up 5 nits too dim I haven't noticed.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
My next TV will be a Samsung or LG. Is there a Pi-hole version running on a something that I can PoE plug into the ethernet port of a TV?
mdoms 5y ago
I never even look at the menu/home screen on my TV. I plug in a Chromecast, set it to the right HDMI input and cast everything I want to watch. Wouldn't have a clue if my TV is displaying ads in the menus.
intricatedetail 5y ago
Why is that legal?
Scorpiion 5y ago
Does anyone know if newer Philips smart TVs have this type of ads? I have one that's around 4 years old and it doesn't have it, not sure with newer ones.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
It’s a shame Apple won’t enter this market.
junon 5y ago
I called Samsung once for my smart TV that was showing ads that slowed everything down when they rotated out. Told them I just spent north of a grand on their TV (circa 2016) and that I didn't pay for ads. Lo and behold, the service technician suggested I simply disable the internet on the TV and that they'd happily help me with that. Of course I didn't (I hung up on them), but out of curiosity I disabled the WLAN on it anyway and restarted it just to see what happened. The ads were cached. There is absolutely no way to escape the ads on Samsung's TVs. I'll never buy another Samsung product again - it's my belief those sorts of practices are indicative much more sinister, less obvious anti-consumer practices.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Just charge it back and return it.
dethos 5y ago
This makes me sick. LG seems to do the same. At this day and age, it's getting harder and harder to buy a TV, that is just a that, a TV. Now you have to agree to ToS and as soon as you connect it to the internet to access any service you subscribe, your data is sent to the manufacturer so it can be sold or monetized through ads. Not everyone is able to block this (with a PiHole or with other tools). Does anyone know of a brand that sells quality displays but doesn't have this kind of "crap"?
- kjaftaedi 5y ago
  I'm extremely satisfied with my Philips smart TV.
cronix 5y ago
I think the only way to sanely and safely use a modern "smart" tv is to use it as a "dumb" monitor. How ironic. Never use the software, except once to select HDMI 1 as the input, or whatever. That's the last time you'll see their cumbersome interface, or ads, or anything else that you didn't explicitly send to it.
egberts1 5y ago
LG smart TV, situated behind a DMZ firewall with only update server open works for me.
Nextgrid 5y ago
I've recently been in the market for a display and had good luck with Sony's professional displays. I ended up going for this one: https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/pro-displays/fw-65bz40h https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/pro-displays/fw-65bz40h which was very competitive on price with consumer-grade models of similar spec despite being a professional display. It's just got a stock Android TV, a Sony privacy policy popup which you can decline (no idea what I'm missing out on - declining skips some steps during set up) and some professional apps such as Crestron screen sharing, Airplay, etc. It's not a TV and doesn't have any consumer-grade apps preinstalled, but there is a Google Play store icon so I'm pretty sure you can install Netflix on it if you wanted to.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
Would be ideal if there were some alternative ROMs for TVs. Something more customized for the owner's desires.
avmich 5y ago
If the hardware is subsidized - can the device then be used for parts? Weren't some game consoles used for computational tasks, as they were quite competitive there? Or I'd assume a company can emerge which would gladly take a fee for removing hardware - and software - limitation of such products; I'm sure the concept of ownership would serve everybody well here?
windex 5y ago
If these companies could stop you from blinking, they would.
footlose_3815 5y ago
never ever ever connect a smart TV to the internet directly. Use a chromecast or something. the updates ARE ads

231 points by NKosmatos 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

It has been painfully admitted and the confession is in public. Samsung's smart TVs are watching you watch TV. Time to watch something else with a different brand?

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
What's the alternative? Unless you're buying TVs specifically made for office meeting rooms or hotel lobbies, pretty much every major manufacturer makes exclusively "Smart" TVs on their higher-end models, and those smart TVs include various bits of ads/tracking.
- jqpabc123 5y ago
  ... hotel lobbies Yes, this is what I look for --- a TV that is dumb as dirt and built to run 24/7 for years. https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/lg-40lt340h0ua https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/lg-40lt340h0u...
  - KingOfCoders 5y ago
    "built to run 24/7 for years." There are many. They are usually not in your price range though.
    - jqpabc123 5y ago
      I have owned one of the below for several years though it is not my primary. I have 3 TVs in all. I paid significantly less than the $199 advertised here. Dumb as a rock. This brand used to be advertised toward hotels and cruise ships. https://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SC-39HS950N-1080P-LED-HDTV/dp/B07YSTLMVN/ref=sr_1_3 https://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SC-39HS950N-1080P-LED-HDTV/dp/B...?
      - KingOfCoders 5y ago
        I might be wrong, but I do think there is a difference between a TV for a hotel room (Smart TV minus the Smart, same components, runs 4h a day when people are in their room) and a display hanging in a airport running 24/7. We've used those 24/7 displays for a monitoring room and they were much more expensive. (As CTO I wanted to buy of the shelf components but was overruled by the corporate hierarchy).
        jqpabc123 5y ago
        As a hardware and software geek, I can tell you that any difference is most likely the capacitors used on the circuit boards. Cheap capacitors are widely used to intentionally limit the usable lifetime of consumer grade electronics like TVs. The difference in manufacturing cost is probably less than $1. It's not about the manufacturing cost, it's about engineered obsolescence --- selling you a new one after 5 years of "normal" use.
    - mdoms 5y ago
      They're marketed as "commercial TVs" and they often cheaper than the smart ones. https://www.pbtech.co.nz/search?sf=commercial+tv&search_type=prediction https://www.pbtech.co.nz/search?sf=commercial+tv&search_type...
- enragedcacti 5y ago
  Don't connect it to the internet? Not saying what they are doing isn't scummy as all hell, but aside from having to navigate to HDMI 1 when you turn on the TV (for the models who don't support setting a default on boot) that should work perfectly as a dumb TV.

beebeepka 5y ago

I feel there must be a non insignificant market for TV sized monitors, or something like dumb TVs with high end panels. Industrial offerings were severely overpriced last time I checked. I know I am hardly in the majority but having an actual computer hooked to your big panel is so much better than dealing with "apps" and ads. How hard is it to make a profit selling a TV sized monitor?

ddingus 5y ago

Those of you struggling with newer devices may want to do some digging to understand what service options may be available. I have not explored this much, but I recently bought an older Samsung plasma panel used. I want it for parts, but it does work somewhat poorly. While experimenting with it, I found a few modes in the service menu: Demo, Kiosk, Hotel, etc... Be sure and keep a settings record and or find the factory reset option before just changing stuff. It is possible to get sets into weird modes that are not easy to get out of. My current main display is a big plasma panel that I love. And it is smart, but not too smart. No Internet = no ADS.

stevespang 5y ago

But you can block the ip that those ads are coming from, even better is vote your wallet by NOT BUYING anything Samsung.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Who even buys hardware like this?

garciasn 5y ago
Most people. Why? A myriad of reasons, potentially, but here are two big ones: 1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less. 2. Most people are largely uncaring about seeing advertising on their devices. It's why less than 30% of US residents block ads on the web.
- rolph 5y ago
  i start caring when ads are blocking vital portions of video , example: " here we, are opening the tomb of the lost king for the first time, what do you see howard?" " i see wonderfull things!" except i instead see a big banner, and a logo and a popup from the side, and they have zero to do with archeology or science and the whole point of the program has been obliterated.
  - garciasn 5y ago
    I would argue those who read HN are not 'most people', and if we subset those who read HN by those who comment on HN, I would believe my statement is even more true.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > 1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less. Is this actually true though? I'd love to see an analysis of pricing in relation to the amount of adware a TV has. My gut instinct is that you would not see a significant price decrease for more adware-laden models.
  - tpxl 5y ago
    Let's exaggerate a bit. 365 days in a year, 5 year lifetime -> 1825 days, our consumer watches TV 16 hours a day -> 29200 hours watched, 6 commercials/hour -> 175200 commercials watched. Youtube pays ~4$ per 1000 views, giving us 700.8$ lifetime ad revenue for a very exaggerated viewer. A more normal viewer that watches say 4 hours/day, 6 days a week will give us a more modest ad revenue of 187.71$. Assuming the "normal viewer" is actually representative, the statement that ad-supported hardware is cheaper on the scale of 2000$ TVs is bullshit.

jqpabc123 5y ago

"Smart TV" means "smart" for the manufacturer. For the user, it's pretty "dumb" to let the manufacturer invade your privacy on your TV. Thank you Samsung but no thanks. Any "smarts" I need from my TV, I will add myself. This way, I know exactly what I am getting.

garciasn 5y ago
Unless you're using a disconnected TV (i.e., no CATV/SATV/Internet), your viewing habits are being tracked and sold.
- enragedcacti 5y ago
  Roku TVs have this turned on by default but it is pretty easy to disable in settings. Exercise to the reader to see what is still sent when it's disabled.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Can I assume that a modern TV I buy works without internet? (I'd just want it to display stuff I feed it via HDMI or whatever).
  - ReidZB 5y ago
    I have a couple modern LG 'smart' TVs that I don't connect to the internet, and they work just fine. As you say, they just display whatever is on the HDMI input. I've updated their firmware a couple times. I connect them with wired cat6 on their own isolated VLAN to update, and then disconnect them afterwards. Maybe I am a little unnecessarily paranoid about it, but I don't really trust TV manufacturers, not with some of the (maybe apocryphal) stories I've read.
    - snvzz 5y ago
      No, you're not being paranoid. This is the only way. And beware, they might still be connecting to some public wifi hotspot behind your back.

gdulli 5y ago

Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided, Netflix would also profile me and advertise content to me through its app, and I don't plan to ever open that one either. This screenshot looks like a streaming content interface, and data mining you has been a fundamental part of all these services for years, right? Not saying it's great, just that this isn't new or unusual. Of course they're tracking what you watch for advertising purposes. Or is this a fundamental part of the UI for a Samsung TV that you need to interact with for daily use even if you don't want content through Samsung? Because that would be unacceptable. I wouldn't buy a TV if it required an internet connection to function. My favorite type of advertising is traditional TV commercials that can be fast forwarded or muted and fully skipped. There's never going to be a net decrease in advertising. Digital and streaming are just making it harder to skip, keep strictly separate from content, and receive anonymously.

Ansil849 5y ago
> Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided So the problem with this approach is that, yes sure if you have the technical acumen you can prevent the TV from phoning home, but you are still giving money to the company that engages in this kind of behavior. And that money contributes to them developing more intrusive tools like this that target consumers of their products who do not have the requisite technical acumen to prevent the TV from phoning home. In other words, by buying an adware TV and disabling the adware, you're still supporting the adware company instead of just buying a TV without adware in the first place.
- gdulli 5y ago
  I have a Vizio TV that's never been on the internet. I've never opened its apps and don't know what it is I'm avoiding. Given my other product requirements for a TV, eliminating all that have smart apps would probably leave me with no choices. Ironically I have a Samsung phone because I wouldn't give money to Google for hardware. We're just surrounded and choosing the lesser of various evils every day.

senectus1 5y ago

Dunno if the UK version is different to the Aussie version... but a pi-hole stops adverts on my samsung TV

TakuYam 5y ago

A pi hole absolutely blocks all ads on Samsung smart TVs

L_226 5y ago
This is absolutely false. Source: I have a samsung smart TV and run a pihole
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Does that not depend on the ads? Ads on the TV = yes Ads on the individual streaming services = They change it around every month or so
  - L_226 5y ago
    I only currently get ads when streaming youtube on the TV, even though youtube on my other WAN devices do not get ads. Looking at the pihole logs the TV hits cdn[dot]samsung[dot]com only, so I assume it is proxying YT requests via a Samsung service. Blocking the cdn endpoint disables all internet features, including Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. Previously, about 18 months ago, the pihole blocked all ads from YT on the TV. So something changed... I don't have the pihole logs from back then otherwise I'd check.

drcongo 5y ago

I wrote this [1] seven years ago and the future I feared is now here. I lucked out finding a 4K LG dumb TV about three years ago, but I've recently been trying to buy a larger screen for a new house and cannot find a single good, large, dumb TV for sale in the UK. [1] https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/ https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/

humps 5y ago

On the Samsung TVs I own, when you first set it up there's a yes/no agreement screen and if you choose "no" none of the smart features are accessible and you don't get any phoning home or ads by simply not entering Wi-Fi details. I haven't bought a new TV for a few years, though. So this may be different now, but the best way I found to create a dumb TV experience.

gpvos 5y ago
Which features are still accessible? Only HDMI input, or more?
- wombat-man 5y ago
  yeah you should be able to still watch OTA tv channels. Hdmi cable boxes should of course work. same with picture adjustment
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I do this with my several-years-old Samsung as well. Inputs, menus, TV tuner, and the OTA program guide all work. No smart apps and no ads.
wombat-man 5y ago
yeah I have a cheaper vizio and I found that just not connecting it to wifi is a much better experience. the 'smart tv' features are not very good compared to a dedicated chromecast anyways.
bsd44 5y ago
I recently bought a Samsung 4K TV and it came with a "free tv" service (that's also crammed with ads). It's intrusive, it auto-plays and can't be disabled and I just don't want it. I've never owned a TV as an adult before and was interested in buying a video console to play some games, so it's kind of my fault for not understanding how these modern TVs work. But even so, if I'm paying £600 for a TV how is it acceptable to have all this nonsense pre-installed on it that can't be disabled or deleted? Nowhere on the sales page does it mention any of that and all the reviews seems to be from happy people on day 1 of purchase. The only way around it is to connect up a third party receiver to it such as Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV...but still feel cheated as a consumer if I have to do that.

sebazzz 5y ago

Same on my LG OLED with latest WebOS. It starts with the six buttons on my remote for Disney, Netflix, Prime, etc that also immediately install the associated app [even when earlier uninstalled] when accidentally touched and cannot be remapped. Next, on the home screen you're always greeted with a list of movies from all those streaming services without the ability to turn this list off.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

The ^HA (laughing at the image above) is just... wow, even the person running the Twitter account thinks it's bad.

deergomoo 5y ago
Apologies if you're joking but that's how they sign off their tweets—HA is the initials of the person replying.
greenshackle2 5y ago
I believe those are the initials of the rep who answered.. their reply tweets have a few different ones like ^NR, ^CM, ^SK. https://twitter.com/SamsungUK/status/1453740985763106823 https://twitter.com/SamsungUK/status/1453740985763106823

jonatron 5y ago

There's a hidden "Hotel Mode" on many TVs. I don't know if that would disable ads?

effingwewt 5y ago
Hotel mode disables options you don't want some random person messing with(inputs, language, etc). 'Smart' TVs are a perfect example of everything wrong with the business/consumer relationship. We are paying for the privilege of being spied upon more intrusively than ever, and the companies see us using workarounds and rather than stop their behavior they double down because what recourse does the customer have? We need fines over all of this shit. As long as it makes them money rather than costing them, this will continue.

cryptodan 5y ago

Use pihole?

deergomoo 5y ago

My recommendations for how to deal with this shit, in decreasing order of effectiveness: 1. Don't buy a Samsung or LG TV. Unfortunately, if you're in the market for a real high-end TV, you often don't have another option 2. Never connect it to the internet and use a dedicated streaming box/stick instead. If you don't have one, or don't want to give up a HDMI port... 3. Block the following domains on your router or via a free OpenDNS account: - ads.samsung.com - config.samsungads.com - doubleclick.net - gpm.samsungqbe.com - log-config.samsungacr.com - samsungacr.com - samsungads.com - samsungosp.com - samsungotn.net - samsungrm.net - tvx.adgrx.com No more ads. This shit makes my blood boil. I have a laundry list of issues with this TV, which is a shame because when it's not actively trying to make me hate the company it's actually a very nice display. LG pull this shit too, but I think they're slightly less awful than Samsung. I didn't particularly want an OLED panel which is why I went for a Samsung LCD, and I regret that decision regularly.

deadmutex 5y ago
For #1, maybe these can be good substitutes: https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.html?sort=tbt.parent_pdtype&order=DESC https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
- zeusk 5y ago
  Absolutely not, their panels suck. The only budget manufacturers that give two shit about quality seem to be Hisense, TCL and Vizio.
  - deadmutex 5y ago
    haha, thanks for correction
- TonyBagODonuts 5y ago
  I bought the 65" dumb panel TV from them because I refuse all this be, it's fine, and I feel like it's mine, I'm not renting it by constantly paying with ad watching.

beerandt 5y ago

When I shopped TVs a few years ago, Sony was the only consumer brand that didn't have ToS that included language about this type of advertising. I'm not sure if that's changed. They still spy on you plenty, though. That's what we bought, but we still don't connect it to a network and only use hdmi inputs. Plus disabled quite a few apps via adb, and don't update the software. It's sad that this is what it's come to. I also suspect that at least Android devices are starting to use other (Android) network devices as proxies to get data to Google when they've been firewalled with only LAN access. Lots of unexplained data getting transferred on my home network between firewalled Android devices. But maybe the state of things just has me being overly paranoid.

Scoundreller 5y ago
While it will hopefully remain one way, it’s a matter of time the TV will receive updates and ads over DVB or other broadcast mediums. Could even geo-target ads. TV could figure out its location by GPS, multilateration of DVB signal strengths, what wifi is around, or purchase/delivery information (you didn’t stupidly get your 85” TV delivered to your own house, did you???). Would be cool to have on-demand TV or other data distribution given how much spectrum is available on DVB-T. Just like satellite Set top boxes.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Yeah- I suspect the push for Ethernet over hdmi has a lot to do with getting all these "unplugged" smart devices reconnected to a network.
- orev 5y ago
  This is the holy grail for mobile carriers — have enough bandwidth in 5G where devices will come with mobile data already activated without user intervention at all.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    They could have done that today with 3G if they wanted, they just choose not to. Tons of unused spectrum overnight that should cost nearly $0, but they choose not to because we market prices would be bad for telecoms so it’s not on offer.

pessimizer 5y ago

This can't be true. I've been assured that if you pay for something, it won't track you or advertise to you.

bhaile 5y ago

I use this [1] and never seen an ad on my LG TV. Its only for Smart TVs. It blocks all the major TV ad networks too but can't tell how successful it is on other TVs since I only have LG. [1] https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist

djbusby 5y ago

Lots of these panels have no "smarts" https://m.alibaba.com/showroom/4k-display.html https://m.alibaba.com/showroom/4k-display.html

gizdan 5y ago

It's not just Samsung. My parents just bought an LG TV without consulting with me, and it's the same thing. They spent close to £1000, and now they have all sorts ads on the home screen that are impossible to remove, plus tracking that cannot be disabled.

JokerDan 5y ago

Are there any open source hardware TVs or OSS TV OS to load on Samsung/LG/other smart TVs that have some (if any) traction?

dehrmann 5y ago

Are there any open source TV firmware projects? Think OpenWRT for your TV.

Mindwipe 5y ago
It wouldn't have any of the DRM keys for mainstream services.

bitwize 5y ago

My girlfriend likes to watch ALL the streamers. I have a "no smart TVs" rule for our home because of shit like this. We made it work by buying an Apple TV and a Sceptre dumb TV off Walmart's web site. Sceptre allegedly has picture quality problems, but the picture looks great; if certain shades of blue turn up 5 nits too dim I haven't noticed.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

My next TV will be a Samsung or LG. Is there a Pi-hole version running on a something that I can PoE plug into the ethernet port of a TV?

mdoms 5y ago

I never even look at the menu/home screen on my TV. I plug in a Chromecast, set it to the right HDMI input and cast everything I want to watch. Wouldn't have a clue if my TV is displaying ads in the menus.

intricatedetail 5y ago

Why is that legal?

Scorpiion 5y ago

Does anyone know if newer Philips smart TVs have this type of ads? I have one that's around 4 years old and it doesn't have it, not sure with newer ones.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

It’s a shame Apple won’t enter this market.

junon 5y ago

I called Samsung once for my smart TV that was showing ads that slowed everything down when they rotated out. Told them I just spent north of a grand on their TV (circa 2016) and that I didn't pay for ads. Lo and behold, the service technician suggested I simply disable the internet on the TV and that they'd happily help me with that. Of course I didn't (I hung up on them), but out of curiosity I disabled the WLAN on it anyway and restarted it just to see what happened. The ads were cached. There is absolutely no way to escape the ads on Samsung's TVs. I'll never buy another Samsung product again - it's my belief those sorts of practices are indicative much more sinister, less obvious anti-consumer practices.

908B64B197 5y ago
Just charge it back and return it.

dethos 5y ago

This makes me sick. LG seems to do the same. At this day and age, it's getting harder and harder to buy a TV, that is just a that, a TV. Now you have to agree to ToS and as soon as you connect it to the internet to access any service you subscribe, your data is sent to the manufacturer so it can be sold or monetized through ads. Not everyone is able to block this (with a PiHole or with other tools). Does anyone know of a brand that sells quality displays but doesn't have this kind of "crap"?

kjaftaedi 5y ago
I'm extremely satisfied with my Philips smart TV.

cronix 5y ago

I think the only way to sanely and safely use a modern "smart" tv is to use it as a "dumb" monitor. How ironic. Never use the software, except once to select HDMI 1 as the input, or whatever. That's the last time you'll see their cumbersome interface, or ads, or anything else that you didn't explicitly send to it.

egberts1 5y ago

LG smart TV, situated behind a DMZ firewall with only update server open works for me.

Nextgrid 5y ago

I've recently been in the market for a display and had good luck with Sony's professional displays. I ended up going for this one: https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/pro-displays/fw-65bz40h https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/pro-displays/fw-65bz40h which was very competitive on price with consumer-grade models of similar spec despite being a professional display. It's just got a stock Android TV, a Sony privacy policy popup which you can decline (no idea what I'm missing out on - declining skips some steps during set up) and some professional apps such as Crestron screen sharing, Airplay, etc. It's not a TV and doesn't have any consumer-grade apps preinstalled, but there is a Google Play store icon so I'm pretty sure you can install Netflix on it if you wanted to.

paulryanrogers 5y ago

Would be ideal if there were some alternative ROMs for TVs. Something more customized for the owner's desires.

avmich 5y ago

If the hardware is subsidized - can the device then be used for parts? Weren't some game consoles used for computational tasks, as they were quite competitive there? Or I'd assume a company can emerge which would gladly take a fee for removing hardware - and software - limitation of such products; I'm sure the concept of ownership would serve everybody well here?

windex 5y ago

If these companies could stop you from blinking, they would.

footlose_3815 5y ago

never ever ever connect a smart TV to the internet directly. Use a chromecast or something. the updates ARE ads