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 ->

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.