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Roku looks into serving you ads on whatever you plug into its TVs
- gweinberg 3y agoIts hard to imagine how anyone thought this was a good idea. It will piss customers off, but will bring in almost no add revenue. Why would anyone pay to show an add when the user is most likely getting a sammich?
- webkike 3y agoThis article finally got me to purchase an Apple TV, because it reminded of the terrible banner ads they added to the fire tv
- photonbeam 3y agoGross
- rmholt 3y agoCan't wait for their tech to "detect a still picture" in a slow, somber scene in a movie and shove ads down the throat of whoever will be the unlucky soul that day
- throwbadubadu 3y agoGoing to patent that now.. aww damn already taken :(
- bradly 3y agoIn the 90's my econ teacher said that in the future the difference between the rich and the poor will be the amount of ads the see. I thought he attributed it to Ray Bradbury, but I may be mistaken.
- londons_explore 3y agoHe's wrong. The rich see just as many ads, because their eyeballs/attention is worth way more, so companies are far more incentivised to show them ads, Thats why most companies are shying away from 'pay to see no ads' business models. The very people who pay are your biggest earners from the most valuable ads with the highest conversion values.
- elcomet 3y agoBut there are much less of those people. I'm not convinced by what you're saying
- zeroCalories 3y agoIn free to play games a big chunk of the money comes from a small minority of people. I assume ads follow a similar distribution.
- elcomet 3y agoBut not necessarily high or low income.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- candiddevmike 3y agoI think you're confusing rich and upper middle class
- jzb 3y agoI don't think this is the case. One of my younger brothers is in a way lower income bracket and only streams things via free services like Tubi. I tried watching a few things on that service - couldn't stand how many ads there were/are. Likewise, I pay for YouTube premium or whatever instead of dealing with ads, and used to subscribe to Spotify to avoid the ads, etc. Now that streaming has overtaken cable, the need to be ad-free to lure users over is gone. Streaming is the preferred way to consume content, so now they're free to inflict ads on people because they don't think users are going to go backwards. And as each streaming service adopts ads, it lowers the barrier for others. Plus the streamers are in need of more revenue and ads are just too attractive and easy to turn to. But lower income folks are always going to see more ads. More billboards in their neighborhoods, more ads via radio, streaming, TV, whatever.
- tyingq 3y agoMaybe not accounting for pirated setups :)
- pndy 3y agoIt's more about basic vs premium aka "pay more for better quality/service" divide. Even a simple stuff as food got divided: you can have your cheap prepacked cold cut filled with soy protein, artificial aromas or you can pay more for a real ham.
- jdboyd 3y agoIt is pretty hard for the rich to opt out of smart TVs.
- paularmstrong 3y agoIt's really not. Commercial display TVs without smart features are expensive, but easily affordable to the affluent.
- pokerface_86 3y ago[dead]
- int_19h 3y agoWhat is the best "streaming appliance" option on the market today wrt ads and general privacy?
- skyyler 3y agoI pulled an Apple TV out of the trash and I really enjoy it. I would have never paid for one, having used games consoles for streaming before it. But now that I've got it, I would find it difficult to go back. The VLC app plays my entire media collection off my NAS without any config. None of the apps I've installed have had ads. I'm sure a cheaper setup would work, like a mini-htpc running linux, but then my wife wouldn't be able to use it.
- GoofballJones 3y agoThat's what I use on my TVs, and the TVs themselves never have access to the internet. The only ads I see on AppleTV are from whatever service I'm using...if I paid for an ad-supported tier. I don't.
- afavour 3y agoI might be wrong but I think Apple TV is more or less the only device left that approaches that criteria.
- int_19h 3y agoI realize that there's no solution that is fully private and ad-free. At the minimum, you're still getting the ads from the streaming providers themselves, and you're being tracked by them. I'm just trying to figure out which one of the hardware options are the least privacy-invasive on top of all that.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoApple TV. No ads.
- dumbo-octopus 3y agoThe FAST (free ad-supported TV) offerings built into most TV's work great in terms of privacy. It's a broadcast based system, so there's no tracking or monitoring of anything, you just see the same ads everyone else sees that are vaguely related to whatever you were watching. Personally, I prefer having the regular breaks every so often to allow you to get up, interact with your fellow humans, feel alive, etc. I detest the "whoops there goes 6 hours of my life with back to back to back netflix" that some people seem to covet. That said, often times the ad slots don't even get filled, so instead of ads you go to a 2 minute break where they play some background music and show a video of fish swimming around or something.
- cebert 3y agoI used to like Roku but if practices like this get implemented, I’m done.
- kstrauser 3y agoWhy wait? They've played their hand. We know what they intend now.
- jzb 3y agoCan't speak for OP but - I already own several Roku devices. I'm not going to run out and buy new stuff right this second just because Roku is going down this path. When I do need to buy new devices, though, they won't be from Roku.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoNetlfix should just buy them now.
- timetraveller26 3y agoActually, Netflix created Roku but later splitted to avoid conflicts with it's clients.
- ncallaway 3y agoNeat. Glad I opted out of their binding arbitration. If they apply this as an update to the TV I bought two years ago, I'll be demanding a full refund and taking them to small claims court if they refuse.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIs it worth it? Roku has shown you their intentions. Believe them. Sell it now, and buy a TV from a company that makes money by selling TVs.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoYes, but Roku has metastasized: be sure not to buy a TV with bundled Roku either.
- kstrauser 3y agoAs of this moment, I'm not aware of a TV on the market that connects to the Internet on its own without using the owner's Wi-Fi or Ethernet. To my knowledge, none of my TVs are online in any way whatsoever. I'd vastly rather use an Apple TV (or Android equivalent or PS5 or XBox or whatever) than some TV's junky built-in apps anyway.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoYou underestimate the evil that is Roku. I did too. I thought I just wouldn't connect my Roku-enabled TV to the internet and it would be fine. Turns out that it starts bootlooping after a few months if you don't let it download ads. Can't return it at that point, so you call support... who helps you connect it to the internet. Boot loop goes away, ads download, fine whatever you'll just disconnect it after the call, right? But then after a while it starts bootlooping again, until you let it download ads. Amazingly sinister.
- kstrauser 3y ago
- tyingq 3y agoThat day will be the day my Roku goes in the trash. I wonder how well they researched the potential blow back.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoThe other year I bought a TV with Roku that bootlooped whenever it couldn't download screensaver ads for more than a month. Roku is evil.
- avitous 3y agoBetween this, and their binding arbitration debacle a while back, I will never use their products. Had a Roku back when they were first released (and before they became awful as a company) but haven't used it in years. No interest in giving assent to corruption and corporate overreach.
- GoofballJones 3y agoI will never buy a device with Roku on it again. And even when I did, I used it as a dumb monitor which had no access to the Internet. Now I have an LG OLED TV and even that has no access to the internet.
- technick 3y agoIt's time to goto war with Roku and their penny grasping scumbag management.
- kstrauser 3y agoThat would be impossible, as the fact they're even considering it means their hardware will never enter my house. This line of exploration puts Roku in my category of companies I'll never feasibly do business with, even if they change their mind. "We didn't actually put glass in your cheeseburger. We were just exploring our options!"
- theturtletalks 3y agoSamsung and other TVs already show ads on the Home Screen so this is just the other market players catching up. Dumb TVs are also getting more expensive since Samsung and other TV manufacturers are subsidizing their cost by pitching the ads they can push down the line as they boil the frog.
- kstrauser 3y agoWhat's a home screen? Is that the thing that displays for a couple of seconds until the Apple TV kicks in? (Asking only half sarcastically. None of my own TVs never ever been anything but a dumb display for a settop box.)
- theturtletalks 3y agoSamsung Tizen TVs have this bar on the bottom when you go to input or try to choose a streaming app. Right next to my apps, there is a small box promoting Samsung TV Plus shows.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion on the patent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39936016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39936016
- kstrauser 3y agoNot a dupe. This is a different article.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoIt's the same story. HDMI ads patent. The discussion is over there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- trebligdivad 3y agoBig company patent filings aren't any indication they're actually working on it; engineers get paid for not-insane patents that get filed, and normally get a pat on the back during promotions; so you can't actually tell if it's just an idea an eng had over coffee or something evil they're really working on.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoAt this point I would pay good money for Apple to make a television.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- HereIGoAgain 3y agoOnto the blacklist you go.. I mean if it wasn't on it already to begin with because of the mere idea of hardware based ads. I'm not sure how they plan on surviving as a hardware maker. Who is going to buy this crap?