Also: the new smart TV bootloops if it can't connect to the internet for more than a couple weeks at a time (it wants to refresh its screensaver ads).
You can run, but you can't hide.
That said, when companies price the ad-free premium at 1000x the expected ad revenue, it gets aggravating again.
There's also the funny issue where people who can afford to pay extra for the no-ads option are exactly the people that advertisers want to show ads to. If the no-ads option is $5, then you're left selling ads with a target market of people who can't afford or don't want to spend $5, and that ends up driving down your ad revenue. A large gap between the expected ad revenue and the price of the no-ad option helps mitigate this effect.
What kind of support does it need? Isn't it just an HDMI cable?
I wasn't alone in having this problem -- the support forums were overflowing with outraged threads about this. Support would give non-answers, wait for someone to say something objectionable, and then use it as an excuse to lock and delete the thread. Rinse, repeat. They had it down to a science.