Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads | Hacker News Reader

Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

flatpanelshd.com

996 pointsShihan935 comments

Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company.

There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is.

This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet, and I don't use smart features on the TV anyway, so I don't plan on updating the software either. Hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm.

That would be really, really terrible.

I also bought a Sony Android TV for this reason. Then last month Google pushed an update for the "Android TV Home" app and now there are many people complaining about ads on the home screen [1].

This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth…

https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...

Just buy an Apple TV, and then whatever TV you like.

Apparently according to other comments a lot of TVs still do ACR on content received by the apple TV (or any hdmi signal) so we still need dumb tvs...

That's my current setup. TV with the network connection disabled running Apple TV.

Disable the TV's network connection. Or if you really need it connected, decline as many of the ToS & privacy agreements as possible

I just got one today.

It's so much better than the "Smart" Samsung TV it is plugged into that it's not even funny.

The remote control has touch. I can use my phone to type text input. It's fast. It's elegant and slick. It has no ads. It has options that I care about. It doesn't waste my time with options I don't care about.

The Samsung TV on the other hand was a flagship model. Top of the line. Best of the best. Just a few years ago.

Now? It is unusable. It is beyond slow. Two to three second response time. Text input is just torture. Netflix crashes. YouTube mangles HDR in some weird way that makes people look like they were drawn by a kid with crayons.

It's shocking to me that you can pay thousands of dollars to Samsung and have them destroy your investment with "updates", whereas you can pay a few hundred dollars to Apple and have a slick product that improves over time.

What I don't understand is the executives at other companies. Companies that aren't the #1 biggest in the world. How do they not get it!? Just copy Apple! Stop fucking over your customers, and maybe they'll give you more money! I know I give Apple more money every year!

It's not that hard. It really isn't.

There is one thing Apple TV has so backwards that I can't even.

Text input.

All the letters lined alphabetically with only left-right movement allowed. Takes ages to input anything. Also no corrections allowed. I actually exit appleTV and use the built in TV apps for when I need youtube and the like, because their input mechanism is not insane.

I know there is a remote app for iPhones, but you do provide an actual remote, make it work ffs.

Use voice dictation. It works remarkably well for entering text

Well, thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know it was an option.

But what if I need to input a language that's not supported or I just don't want to yell at my TV to search a video?

If you have an iPhone, you should get a prompt to enter text on your phone when you’re in an Apple TV search field.

Then my iPhone pops up a "Keyboard Input" notification with a text input that I can type from the phone without unlocking it.

Of course, if you don't have your phone nearby it might suck but let's be realistic, how often you don't have your phone close by when watching TV?

P.S.: Yes, I know, if you are an Android user there is no way out and Apple sucks for that, not defending them at all.

This is a company supposedly famous for great user interfaces and usability. Why not try to live up to it?

There are actually many times I don't have my phone with me while watching TV. I carry it with me everywhere all day, but I try to keep it on the table most of the time when at home.

Apple TV has bluetooth, so if this is really an issue for you, why not get a dedicated TV keyboard?

Why can't they just fix their user interface? Nobody in the world I have talked to thinks this is the best choice of interfaces.

I don't need a dedicated TV keyboard. As I said, I work around it by using the TV apps, but it's annoying, and the most annoying part is that it's probably annoying on purpose to get people more on their phone.

I don't think it is on purpose to get people on their phone. Most people just don't use the keyboard much, I would guess. I never do, except for signing up for new apps.

So I would agree with their design decision: make an elegant remote, use voice dictation for search and the like, if you need a keyboard, use your iPhone, and if you are not happy with that, get a dedicated keyboard. If you are not happy with THAT, well ...

I am spending way more energy on this thread than is healthy :D

But I can understand where you're coming from, I am just very frustrated that this user-interface-design-genius trillion dollar company can not change the input mechanism of one of their most used product from the:

a b c d e [f] g h i j k etc... Backspace

model with only <-> movement and no way to make an input correction other than backspace, to something like:

  a b  c  d  Backspace
  e f [g] h  forward 
  i j  k  l  backward
  m n  o  p

Which is the way almost all other TV-centered apps I use function and works much better.

Yeah, I get your point now.

I doubt it's annoying on purpose to get more people on the phone. I could be wrong about that, but that's not usually the way Apple's particular kind of hubris tends to manifest. There's almost certainly people at the company -- and it only takes one or two in the right places -- who like the current UI for text selection, and would probably explain why they think so. Now, they may literally be the same people who think the Apple TV remote is good in the first place, so I want to make it clear I'm not saying they're right. :)

And, Apple should be better at UI design than this. They were once, and not that long ago, but I think the UI team they've had for the last, oh, let's say seven or eight years -- going back semi-arbitrarily to iOS 7, but steadily infecting all other platforms -- have prioritized aesthetics over usability.

Try entering something like 'Les Misérables' or "into to Kubernetes"

Does the first one work when a French person pronounces it?

> "into to Kubernetes"

That could be a movie about absurdity and meaninglessness of life...

Although inconvenient, it does let you dictate individual letters. Which is almost as fast as tap-typing on a phone.

Except it doesn't. Maybe it works in English speaking countries watching only English titles. But in the other 90% of the bi-lingual world it doesn't. Set it to non-English (e.g. Dutch) and you cannot dictate English titles, or the other way around. Very annoying and frustrating.

Just FYI the remote app is baked into iOS. Whenever there's text input on the AppleTV the iPhone will show a notification in the drawer that can be used for text input. It's very convenient and works well.

Good thing to point out and the Remote app is worlds better than the hardware remote, but...not everyone that buys an AppleTV owns an iPhone. When I watch TV, I want to leave my phone on the desk. But most of all, Apple can make the fucking remote UI work properly rather than rely on me having a $400 device lying around. Especially if Apple is going to make me use that crap piece of hardware they call a "remote".

Roku has this as well, at least with their Android app

I assume they made the letters one row because of how sensitive the touch pad is on the remote. For example, when picking a show on Netflix I constantly go down a row when I am just trying to go right on a column. I assume keeping the letters on one axis is a not so great work around.

Just FYI, there's an option to adjust the sensitivity of the remote.

(Even so, what you describe still happens on occasion for me, but it helps)

Very strangely enough, the original 2D keyboard still exists in the OS. If you have one of those old silver Apple remotes from the Apple TV 1/2/3, clicking anywhere replaces the crappy long keyboard with the nicer grid one. Very bizarre Easter egg

Ehhh, I don't agree. Like at all.

If they had a 2D text input they wouldn't be able to do momentum in swiping as well as horizontal (side effect of the horrible remote), but more importantly, the primary text input on Apple TV is voice, in the moment just hold the Siri button. It takes in letters over voice too. Worlds faster than any other input on tv. No wonder they prioritized on it.

> Also no corrections allowed.

The last glyph in the row of letters is the delete key.

Yes, and my 2019 model recently started showing this:

>Support for the Ambient mode Headlines Service is scheduled to end on September 30, 2020. We thank you for using the service and we look forward to providing an improved alternative in the near future

I'm not going to buy a new TV every year. "Smart" features that are discontinued after ~1 year are worse than worthless, it's just clutter in the menus at this point.

Also crazy are hardcoded "Netflix", "Rakuten" and "Amazon" buttons on the Samsung remote, you just know that they will stop working at some point.

I have large and central Netflix and Youtube buttons on a Sony remote.

One of my old TVs' remote has the Sony Vue button on it. That didn't age well

Those extra buttons are requirement by those companies, to integrate those services in the TV.

Now you could argue as to whether you want Netflix preinstalled on your TV, but while most smart features of smart TVs are useless, having Netflix is useful for many users.

I'm not sure that's the case, rather I think that companies pay to have their apps featured on the remote, not the other way round.

> It has no ads.

I have a bunch of aTVs, and while they’re the best boxes I’ve used, there’s definitely some ads baked in, and in prominent placements.

- The TV app started out as a directory + recommendation engine for services you had “connected” to the app; it’s turned into a series of pitches for Apple TV+ and Apple’s “Channels” feature. These placements are below-the-fold, but the default behavior has the “TV” button on the remote bring up that app (although you can change this to display the home screen). - In the top banner, the TV & Music apps will (by default) auto-play trailers and music videos (on mute). You can disable that behavior for the TV app, and it’ll revert to displaying your watch queue.

You can turn those off in the System Prefs (at least the above-the-fold ones). It's glorious!

I am not a fan of that remote control at all. I constantly sit on it, skipping through shows; and I don't get the purpose of the touchpad vs a d-pad.

No one uses the trackpad on their playstation controllers, why did apple run with the same idea?

I'm a big fan of the Roku boxes.

If I recall correctly, Roku boxes frequently scan the network for other devices. I keep mine on a VLAN that only allows communication out to the net.

Can you block or revert the updates? Set it back to factory defaults?

I have ads on my Apple TV, don't you? Some movie trailers running in the background that I really don't want to see. And every time I miss-swipe somehow the Apple TV remote in an application, I get to that "home" screen watching another movie trailer :|

No. I don't use the "TV" app though, so that may be the difference.

Unless you mean trailers for whatever the cursor is on, inside of an app like Netflix? If so, some of those can be disabled, but I actually like them—they're "ads" for content that I already have access to but may not have known about otherwise.

As mentioned at the end of the original article, you can disable the apple TV recommendations.

There are two ways to disable this:

- Remove the “TV” app from the top bar. - You can change the behavior from the “Settings” app to show your “TV” app’s watch queue instead of trailers.

You can’t disable the Music app videos, though.

I can agree that the ads are dependent on the apps in your top bar. I hve Plex, Prime, Netflix, Disney, & YouTube in mine and I don't see any ads.

No, I don't have those. Maybe they can be disabled? I don't recall disabling them.

Well, try to buy a high end non-smart TV. Near impossible

Just don't connect it to the internet.

Also great solution for cheap subsidized TVs where they are banking on your connecting to your network so only charge $100.

Plug in an apple TV and you are set.

> Just don't connect it to the internet.

Smart TV manufacturers are relying on the ongoing revenue from their software side nowadays, so they’ll usually mandate setting up an internet connection as part of the device setup process, and then only give you the option to change networks instead of disabling it outright.

If you’re tech savvy, you can take measures against this, but it’s not going to be simple for most folks.

You also have to worry about ethernet-over-HDMI unintentionally exposing the TV to the wider internet.

How "usually" is this, actually? I bought an LG TV about a year ago, and it did not force me to connect to the Internet. I just turned it on, skipped the crap, and it works fine over HDMI.

Can confirm that both Samsung and LG cheap LCD panels (~$400) that I got this year do not force a network setup and work without it.

I set up a TCL Roku TV in 2019 for my parents; it presented no option to skip connecting to WiFi.

During guided setup, it will scan for wireless networks, but one option is always "I do not want to connect" where the TV continues in unconnected mode.

If anyone else is dealing with this you can try temporarily setting up a new SSID (on your phone or existing network) and then getting rid of it after setup is finished.

If a TV doesn't work without internet, I'll just return it and let them know it's not working.

> Plug in an apple TV and you are set.

https://tidbits.com/2020/01/16/why-is-the-apple-tv-constantl...

Those "ads" are not nearly as intrusive as the ones being displayed in the article, second I have found them to be mostly useful in that I've found a couple new shows because of those "ads".

Disabling them is also fairly easy, and if you don't use the TV app, they go away entirely.

Maybe not an economical choice but you can buy digital signage displays. They are typically more expensive but are built for maximum durability and don't include consumer features like streaming.

I bought an LG OLED Wallpaper signage display; it wasn't cheap, or easy to get, but it makes a fantastic TV, with no "apps" or "ads", just one HDMI input for an Apple TV (which I run through a Denon HEOS A/V receiver). 1080p, not 4K, but I'm 55 and couldn't see those pixels from 10 feet anyway ツ It doesn't have CEC, but it does wake on signal. Well worth the cost and trouble.

A lot of them have RJ45 and RS232 ports and you can send commands through them to make some DIY CEC. You'd need to do some hacking and I don't know if they have public APIs, but it's possible.

Where can you buy these?

They're not hard to find. Just search for "signage display". They sell on Amazon, Newegg, B&H, CDW. There's a lot of niche manufacturers, but LG and Samsung are probably the two biggest producers. One other warning, these are frequently built with sturdy casing and can be heavy and they typically sell without any mounting hardware although they can accept any VESA stand.

And (this important) never hook the TV with Android up to a network connection. Only the Apple TV can get to the internet.

Or my preference is a Chromecast, whatever TV you like. Then you don't have to deal with Apple's UX or Google's. At that point your phone is the remote.

I tried that, but didn't like how the Chromecast phoned home all the time to make sure I was authorized to play the phone was also authorized to be played on a TV. I was surprised that some apps specifically disallowed this.

I ended up with an AppleTV. So far, if it plays on my phone, it will play on the TV, too.

That doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. The ads weren't there when I bought the TV.

I found the support article from Sony on this:

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587

If this is a TV that is used by very young children, ads with blood splatter as shown in their example seem pretty tasteless.

Google's page on the introduction of ads has the same thing - an ad for Sesame Street followed up with the ad containing blood splatter.

https://blog.google/products/android-tv/find-new-faves-faste...

> Subscriptions in a snap makes it easier for you to watch a must-see show from an app that you haven't subscribed to.

Honestly, that's the thing I hate most about the Fire Stick, and why I don't use it's discovery feature at all... I don't want to see promotions for 4,000 services I don't subscribe to. Sure, if I search for a specific show, I don't mind results from those services ... but as general adverts for shows? No thank you.

> Q3: Can I remove these suggestions?

> A3: No, the suggestions cannot be removed.

I keep hoping someone will file a class action over this. These dumbfuck ads just appeared one day on my Bravia X900E, about a year after purchase. I didn't opt in to this and I wouldn't have bought the damn thing if this "feature" existed at the time. Sign me up for the class!

So, buy a device that has ads to avoid a device that has ads?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208511

My Sony TV from 2014 has ads in the TV Guide that gets content from the Internet.

I bought a Sony Android TV in June. I refused to connect it to the internet and I skipped past the Android setup screens.

I plugged in my Apple TV instead.

Every now and then the Android TV pops up when I turn the TV on and asks me to complete the set up. I always tell it to fuck off.

So far, no ads. It'll stay that way till the TV eventually dies - without ever connecting to the internet.

Imagine thinking that sony is in any way a more ethical company...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootki...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_roo...

"Ethical decisons" from a company made out of thousands of individuals caught up in the rat race is a bit much to expect.

For users it doesn't really matter why an annoying feature hasn't been implemented, they don't have a say in that anyway. Most likely Sony is just lagging behind a few months or years in that regard. Enjoy while it lasts ;)

Totally agree, my Bravia was worth every (numerous) penny. I do update to get features like Airplay, but have never seen an ad. The $400 Samsung in my bedroom, however, starts streaming an ad-laden TV Guide equivalent automatically when I turn it on. Beyond awful.

Worth noting that Sony also produces Android TVs AFAIK which I guess have the same prob. My older Bravia doesn't, but then isn't all that smart ;) and the lcd technology is outdated.

Mine is an Android OLED model from 2019 — I guess it’s more correct to say I haven’t _noticed_ an ad. I use my Apple TV exclusively for “smart” functions, and the TV wakes up and goes to the correct input whenever a connected device wakes. I never see the Android TV home. It’s still a far cry from the Samsung.

> I use my Apple TV exclusively for “smart” functions

That's the difference then. I have a Bravia and use the Android TV functionality. It started showing ads on the home screen earlier this year and I can't figure out a way to disable them and still be able to use the apps I actually want to use. If the ads had been there on day one, I would have been tempted to return the TV.

I have a Sony Android TV from the 2015 generation. It always had a row to advertise random app I don't use (Netflix, Playstation Video, Disney something etc...) It also always advertise content from those platform, you have to disable "recommendations" from apps one after one as you can only disable recommendations for an app that pushed its crap at least once.

The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide.

My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.

What TV’s fall into the “dumb” category these days? I can’t go back from OLED and I don’t think anything at that price point will lack the “smart” features, unless it’s a commercial offering.

TCL Roku is pretty "dumbish".

You can install it without an account, plug in an antenna and go to town. You can even connect it to wifi then use Youtube or Netflix. Haven't seen any funky ads.

My only peeve is that the controller doesn't have a full number pad which makes it a little derpy for the older generation.

My only annoyance with TCL is that once you connect it to the internet, and then disconnect it, the activity light (a quite bright, white light on mine) will flash constantly. Forever.

Solvable by tape, but doing that blocks the IR sensor.

I also went the tape route for that reason; haven't really noticed an issue with the IR sensor. Ended up configuring a firewall rule via OpenWRT that keeps it working on the LAN but not the WAN, so I can still use my phone as a remote with RoMote or the official app, and it's offline (still will blink though, hence the tape).

Nice thing about OpenWRT is being able to block homescreen ads when the TV is online with the adblock package since DNS filtering will do the trick fortunately.

You can take off the back plastic with a screw driver and disconnect the light if you want. Modern TVs are actually pretty modular. You can unhook the roku board, the t-con board, the speakers and multiple other things pretty easily. They are just wires with plastic clip connectors, a lot like a PC.

This is not a rationalization for garbage design, but at least it isn't as much of a black box as people might think.

I found this list of TVs that have ads or not[0], and the first item in the list with ads was a TCL Roku, accompanied with a screenshot of a Home Screen background ad[1]

[0] https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv

[1] https://i.rtings.com/images/reviews/tv/tcl/s405/s405-ads-lar...

This is weird, my 2018 version of it uses a different home screen so it doesn't have that layout.

I retract my statement.

Edit: I purchased a 2019 TCL 50S425 and also don't see any ads...

Sceptre TVs are dumb and have 4K.

I actively avoided a Samsung TV for this reason a few years ago. They weren't even cheap for their capability level compared to their competitors given they included ads and the other TVs didn't. You could get equivalent TVs for the same price without the ads, I am not remotely seeing the value to a purchaser.

I scream with laughter because most Samsung TVs are sold at MSRP which is 50% more than the competition and you see moron tv buyers going bananas for a trivial discount which makes them 35% more than the competition!

> If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it

Just don't connect it to the Internet.

The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.

Then I'll start selling a little $50 box to emulate internet and route all update / advertisement requests to /dev/null :)

Or maybe we (the tech community) just agree on one model and produce an open source firmware. If you look at MagicLantern for Canon, you'll see how amazingly far people will go to control their hardware.

That won't last long either if at all. They will just require an SSL connectivity to their servers with a custom CA root. The end.

so...

1. Order TV.

2. test if it works without agreeing to anything and without internet.

3. return if that's not the case.

I have yet to accept EULA on samsung on anything and it works...

Right now the ACR is troubling. Telling a remote server what you're watching... Only solution I found - not connected + hdmi to Linux box I control.

As an older comment mention, they can easily add an delay that makes it work without an connection only for the duration in which an return is possible.

It is very hard to win against hostile design.

I agree with you it's hard to win against hostile design but there are options for now.

If it stops working after return period I call under warranty that it stopped working (2 years), they are forced to fix the issue.

Explain the issue, explain you cannot connect to the internet.

If it doesn't work, forward the whole info to the customer protection bureau if you're in the EU.

Edit: I will test this out by setting a date far in the future when I buy new equipment (will also hopefully cause SSL failures due to expired certificates internally in the firmware)

This would be a known defect under EU warranty law, which means once it kicks in, you can get a full refund if you want to.

They can try and fix it 3 times then you get your money back.

That would easily cause lawsuits as it is clear that the other party is doing that solely to cheat against law.

You're assuming a level of technical skill on the side of TV manufacturers that it almost sounds like a joke to me.

In any case, all you need is one model with a decent screen and broken certificate pinning and I'm good for the 3-5 years that the TV will last.

And until then, I'd assume that Nvidia sees the market demand for big TV-like PC screens and outcompetes the TV manufacturers.

It is called a monitor. Works just fine for whatever and people use it for work.

The factory I work at had large one scattered around to show line information. Some of the information is safety critical and so if it is inyeruped with an ad there will be legal issues.

In a not so-distant future dystopia you can only get monitors without ad-overlays, when you pay for the monthly subscription ...

You'll get the first month for free, when you sign up for the 2-year plan for 19.99$/month right now!!

Oh no, you'll pay the subscription AND you'll get ads. That's what Amazon Prime feels like atm, preroll ads for other shows at the start of everything you play (even next episodes).

I've wondered about this. The TV I have (a Sony Bravia) is now almost a decade old (works fine). We got it specifically because it has a slot for a DVB-T module (terrestrial broadcast). DVB-T is now gone (replaced by DVB-T2, but I doubt this will remain in the air long), so we have no broadcast TV now, only our HTPC connected to it with Netflix, local media files, and a browser.

Frankly, we don't miss the TV channels. Streaming works okayish for the public channels, but we rarely bother.

The TV is just a dumb screen connected to a receiver, which has the HTPC as input as well as record player.

So the only thing a 'TV' offers me is its screen. Is that any different from a high end computer monitor these days? Is there a difference based on the viewing distance perhaps?

Historically monitors has better pictures at the expense that you couldn't look at them off angle, while TVs you could look at from anywhere in the room. I think that is gone today but it might be something that comes up again... Though in the safety critical application I brought up off-angle viewing is a requirement.

Another difference between a typical TV screen and a typical monitor is many TVs will dynamically adjust brightness depending on what's displayed, and maybe other factors. Sometimes this is on by default and you can turn it off in a menu, but I've met TVs where you can't turn it off.

Using a TV which adjusts the brightness depending on what's displayed can be very unpleasant when trying to do computer work on it. E.g. opening or closing a window may cause other windows to abruptly change brightness. Scrolling through a document may cause the brightness to vary.

The problem with some monitors is that it gets tricky to get audio from hdmi that gets delivered to the screen

Sort of makes sense because a lot of people don't care about or plain don't want speakers on their monitor.

> The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.

We're closer to that than you think. My Philips Ambilight television (purchased this year) throws a popup every few weeks already complaining that I've not completed setup and connected it to the internet.

As sold as I am on Ambilight (it is actually brilliant), I wont be buying another Philips television.

You may be able to connect it to your router but then use your router's parental control features to block the net for that reserved IP.

Then it'll just complain that it's not connected to the internet, wouldn't it?

Depends. Some devices just want an IP.

I should see what happens with my Philips TV if I block it from accessing the Internet. It's currently plugged in because it's also connected to my Hue lights but I don't really ever use any Internet features on it.

Also, if you really enjoy Ambilight, there's a (kinda expensive) solution to get it on any TV now: https://www.techradar.com/news/philips-hue-now-lets-you-turn...

This looks brilliant, thank you!

I’ve said it in the past: commercial displays are the new “dumb” displays. Unfortunately, they’re not full TVs — no speakers, no tuner — so they’re not as “idiot” friendly as a regular TV while being more expensive.

Got any recommendations for a good 4K panel in the 40" - 60" range that won't break the bank? I have my own speakers and I can buy an external tuner if I need one

just thinking what would happen if I block connection to Ads services in my router...

That's pretty much what a pi-hole is. According to my friends who use a pi-hole to filter their connection, it makes almost everything ad-free

Also https://nextdns.io/ on the cloud. I run my ios devices with no ads thanks to this honest service. Can i modify the DNS resolver on a samsung tv (i do not intend to have one ever)

you can but if it cant resolve it will fallback to googles resolver automatically. At least this is what happened on my model.

Yes, this happens. But then you make a firewall rule to route outbound port 53 traffic that doesn’t come from the Pihole to go back to the Pihole. It gets rather elaborate.

> you can but if it cant resolve it will fallback to googles resolver automatically. At least this is what happened on my model.

I built my own router with a raspberry pi. I installed pi-hole and use that as a dns resolver. I then use an iptables rule to NAT / forward all dns traffic on port 53 to the pi-hole resolver, similar to how ISPs often intercept dns requests. This prevents IOT devices from bypassing the dns server configured via my DHCP. Letting pi-hole block the requests helps prevent errors from dns request timeouts.

This method works really well.

DNS over HTTP has screwed this up.

I'm just waiting for smart devices to start doing that instead, forcing me to set up full SSL filtering until they start doing encrypted SNI :/

True, although then I’d lose trust in the devices and wouldn’t want to use them by that point anyway.

I set my router dns to use the custom values nextdns provides for my account, which enabled it for the entire residence. It was fun to see the flotsam in the nextdns logs. I love this service.

Ads on my Samsung TV is the entire reason I decided to finally pi-hole my entire home network. It's wonderful. No ads on my TV and much less on my tablet, phone and PC. Too bad pi-hole doesn't stop Youtube ads.

The only complaint is from my wife who sometimes Googles stuff and clicks on the top result, which is often an ad and will end up blocked. She now has to scroll down a bit to the real results.

The pi-hole will be bypassed by hard-to-kill DNS-over-HTTPS, however.

Yea force it to go through a proxy with your own ca and filter from there.

Key pinning and Expect-CT will prevent that.

It will not prevent firewalling... but the TV might not work.

my samsung tv always tops the charts on most blocked connections on my pi-hole, its not even close. it is disgusting.

Same thing on my Philips TV (Europe). It tries to make a lot of calls to *.imrworldwide.com https://better.fyi/trackers/imrworldwide.com/

A panasonic tactical technical response team is enroute to your house, ETA 15 minutes.

Now I have to fill my TV with Tannerite, too?!

It does exactly what you would hope, at least for Samsung TVs. Ads disappear, other functions are not affected.

Upon discovering the ads I was gonna return mine for a comparable LG, until I learned LG also have ads—at least this way I can pretend I'm not being taken for a ride.

At the time I didn't have any external devices capable of 4K Netflix or YouTube; now I do I should factory reset the TV and set it up without network access,

The article says LG removed the ad.

Damn, maybe I should have done the return then.

The NVIDIA Shield TV, which runs Android TV, can no longer be initialized without signing in with a Google account, the setup screen will refuse to get past that step, even if you don't have an internet connection.

The forced login is likely illegal, because there is no mention of a requirement for a Google account in their marketing materials or on their sales pages.

The device stays perfectly functional if the the network connection is cut off within seconds after signing in, and the account can be removed after the setup is complete. The only drawback is that you can't update apps from Google Play, unless you add a Google account again.

In Europe it definitely is illegal under the GDPR

iOS 14 now requires an account to enable the phone.

It literally just bricked my test iPhone SE.

Are you sure it's not the icloud lock?

No, it's a requirement after updating to have an icloud account in order to get past the out of the box screen.

That doesn't sound right. You do need an iCloud account to enable some functionality, for example to enable seamlessly switching AirPods between different Apple devices.

I started the phone, put the pin in and triggered the upgrade.

After the upgrade completed there is an only an option to put in a email/password for icloud and there is no "skip" or "do later" button I could find.

I'm pretty derpy but I can tell you it is true.

Sounds like you picked up the SE used and it had an activation lock. One of the more annoying things Apple has done was to take down the page for checking that before purchase.

That or you put in an iCloud account at some point but it did not get removed successfully.

Nope, found it eventually.

iOS 14 merges the 'not now' from iOS 13 into a 'forgot my account or don't set up now'.

I didn't try 14, but on 13 on the "sign in to apple id" screen, you say "don't have one", then say set up later.

has this been removed? It might be getting into GDPR violation territory.

Okay, good call, they merged this into "forgot password or don't have one". It still tries to talk you out of it with a pop up with a highlighted button of "sign up now".

Dark patterns... I can see why the older generation is scared of the hardware.

I think that will just create a market opportunity.

There was a company that made just a good tv, no smarts, but I can't find it right offhand. It think it was a european company

JVC does this for their video projector (which are also pretty damn good). I've seen people complain about that though so not sure how long that'll last.

Almost all projectors in "high end TV" price range and up have 0 "smart" features.

I've been running a BenQ w1070 since 2013 and couldn't be happier

Market opportunities are for companies to make more money, not less. If everyone is doing it, it’s because the market, us, told them they could get away with it, and therefore will, because two revenue streams will always be better than one.

This power of the market to vote with dollars is highly overstated. "We" have no say in a hypothetical nine figure, back room wine and dine deal between ad execs and TV execs, when the ad money can afford to be in every back room.

Sceptre TVs. They sell dumb 4K TVs.

I have one. Best buy I ever made.

How is the picture quality compared to the top Samsung/Sony 4K panels used in smart tvs?

Commercial TVs (and video/signage displays, if you don't actually care about the TV tuner) are out there from most of the major brands including Samsung, but they tend to cost a fair bit more than the equivalent consumer TV.

My TV needed a firmware upgrade to get HDMI working. You need to accept EULA's before connecting and updating.

Can't you just yank the internet connection afterwards?

I did a firmware upgrade and just disconnected from the internet right after. I also don't use the built in apps, because let's be honest, compared to an AppleTV, all SmartTV apps are basically garbage. I understand that the AppleTV is somewhat expensive, but it's my baseline for the quality I'd expect from a SmartTV.

Netflix on the AppleTV, starts instantly, and you're browsing the content endlessly after 20 sec. Start Netflix on the TV it self, that will take a few minutes.

Yeah, I did. and at least it is an Ad-free TV.

return it?

Chanced are, they would have "fixed" it for me. By accepting ALL EULA's. iirc, I could accept half before updating.

Edit: also, it was a gift.

On mine I was able to do an offline firmware update by loading the new firmware onto USB flash drive. Was hoping the new firmware would fix a bug in the built-in video player, but it didn't.

This is not the solution. Adding a PiHole to your network is not the solution. Disabling features in other places of your network is not the solution.

What if Samsung decides that it will try to connect to open networks for updates or what not? What then? Ask your neighbour to install PiHole on his network? No. This is an example of a game of cat and mouse that shouldn't exist - you pay money for a TV and that's not enough? You giving them your money is not enough and so they decide to shove ads down your throat because profits.

Simple solution would be just not to buy Samsung.

Until they all start doing it.

Real solution is regulation. But that can only happen if the outcry is large enough. Having two revenue streams is always going to be better than one.

All starts with us accepting the idea that the device you paid for still isn't your property, and if tomorrow samsung decides to show porn on all samsung TV's, there is nothing you can do.

... or, you know, when you can't install a software you want on a smartphone that you own and paid $1000 for.

I’m concerned that in the future devices I do not want to be connected to the internet (let my TV) will come with 5g or some other technology and be able to connect itself. I think with IoT and a desire for ease of setup this might be possible if the price of mobile internet drops enough.

Automobiles already do this without your input.

I think the always-on IoT thing actually makes sense for life-and-death fields such as automotive/medical. There are cases where if an update does not reach the device in time human lives could be at stake.

It's definitely not for the consumer's benefit in most cases. No one is going to die because your Smart Keurig or 5G-TV goes unpatched for a month. Hopefully we can avoid the slippery slope and realize that these devices' internet capabilities are not for us - they are primarily for data collection/advertising purposes.

> actually makes sense for life-and-death fields such as automotive/medical.

I cannot imagine a worse idea.

IoT devices are the richest source of hosts available for botnet operators to compromise because they are numerous and famously insecure. Today it's lightbulbs and security cameras. Tomorrow you wish it to be pacemakers and Toyotas?

We already know it is functionally impossible to write bug-free code which is also useful. We also know that attackers relentlessly probe systems until (that is a _when_, not an _if_) a weakness is found to exploit to gain control of that device. It is possible to write provably-correct code, but so far only for somewhat trivial applications.

Until this fundamental problem of software security can be solved, an air gap is the _only_ reliable thing that can protect life-critical software from external remote attack.

>I think the always-on IoT thing actually makes sense for life-and-death fields such as automotive/medical.

But critical components should be designed as simple as possible, and be thoroughly tested before device release. Releasing garbage and then patching it OTA doesn't really work for safety critical things. Not so long ago cars didn't have capability to upgrade (firmware on mask ROMs) and I don't think something horribly bad happened.

Some Samsung TVs already try and connect to open WiFi networks if you don't connect them yourself.

see https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

My next idea - Faraday cages for smart TVs

Or Faraday cages for entire rooms in my house!

Faraday cages around the property line. In LA some people already live in houses hidden behind 25 foot tall hedges. They need only a tin foil roof.

You could always try disconnecting the antenna that goes to the wireless module instead.

Disconnect may not be enough, best is to wire a resistor in place of the antenna, of the same resistance of the antenna, which will shed the attempt to use the antenna as heat.

(I disconnected the antenna on my OnStar, yet found it still connecting to cell towers successfully from time to time. The resister solved that.)

In practice, the samsung TV won't connect to your neighbors wifi if its already connected to yours. So you can firewall away and the TV will be none the wiser. For now, at least.

> Just don't connect it to the Internet.

One also has to be cognizant of HDMI Ethernet in case of "unintended" connectivity:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HDMI_Ethernet_and_Audio_R...

Maybe in about 10 years, or even sooner, when 5G is everywhere, and the IoT-chips are so cheap that it doesn't matter anymore, they are built into every appliance like in new cars now. Always connected by whatever means. What then? Faraday cage?

I bought a used projector some time ago. Couldn't be happier. I usually watch something after it's dark and I also have very good blinds. It probably warms up in similar, or better, time that many TVs boot up nowadays. I just have a Chromecast connected to a soundbar connected to the projector. VLC handles Chromecast, although somewhat buggy, so I can watch things from my computer in another room.

Also Netflix experience with Chromecast is mostly superior to smart TVs, because it will not play anything while you just try to find something worth watching.

Connecting Chromecast to the soundbar also gives ability to listen to music from Youtube, without running display. It wastes bandwith however.

EDIT: I wrote "beamer" instead of "projector" at first

What's a beamer? I thought you were talking about a BMW at first.

Another word for a projector.

The word "Beamer" is a German word that isn't really used (in that context) in any other language. Same as with "Handy" for smartphones.

Oh, must have been my time spent in Germany. As Wikipedia disambiguation page says:

> Beamer

> Video projector, a pseudo-Anglicism in a number of languages including German, Dutch, Latvian and Swiss French

I run mine on it’s own network so at least it can’t spy on my NAS and network infrastructure. If it tried this ad nonsense I’d filter it through a pihole or something similar. I will not go down without a fight with these snooping gadgets.

> Just don't connect it to the Internet.

Haha, just wait until 4g/5g will become so cheap that TVs will have them built in for doing software updates and sending telemetry when offline :)

> just wait until 4g/5g will become so cheap ...

One of the perks of living in Canada is I am sure this would never happen here in my lifetime.

Nothing a piece of foil can't... foil :-)

not an option for some recent samsung TVs - if you don't connect the TV to a WiFi AP, the TV "grows up" and will try and connect to any open WiFi APs itself.

see https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

I just bought a gigantic computer monitor and connected it to my apple-tv, problem solved.

sure, the monitor was atleast 25% more expensive than a similar screen with a smart-tv function in it, but I think it's worth it.

I actually ran into one of these recently. I stayed at an AirBnB which had a super-cheapy small-ish TCL+Roku TV in the living room, with a super-cheapy thin antenna thing. The internet was "acting up" (95% of packets dropped, unusable) so we tried to watch some broadcast TV. You had to either sign in with a Roku account, or as "Guest", but "Guest" had to accept a couple long EULA, and it needed internet for that to work, but the internet was fubar ... I had to use my phone as a hot-spot for the TV to get it to display broadcasts! That left the TV's wifi config such that it definitely won't work for the next person, lol ...

>Just don't connect it to the Internet.

Wait until they start including a cellular modem that can't be turned off.

I don't trust most smart TVs, that's why I bought a dumb TV from TCL. If I want any fancy smart functions, I'll just connect an android box via HDMI.

I worry that these manufacturers will collude with xfinity to do an "iot workaround" to exfiltrate "customer preferences"

But why do you think your android device will have fewer ads and spyware? Unless you rolled your own OS, it probably is infested with crud.

Presumably the Android box is cheap enough to simply swap out with competing tech, should it become annoying, so you don't need to dump the whole TV.

I would love to do this, but dumb TVs pretty much top out at the upper-mid range. If you want a high end panel you're getting all the bullshit too, unfortunately.

Look at "digital signage" TVs built for business are available that don't have the consumer software. They are of course more expensive and optimized more for continuous usage (16hr/day 7days/week for samsung), but as of now I don't believe they get ads pushed to them.

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

Do you actually own one? If so, can you please clarify my doubts [1] about viability of digital signage as TV?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24626743

I don't own one, I looked into it the last time I purchased a TV and just couldn't justify the price over the sale price of a regular "smart" TV. The more feature rich digital signage (from Samsung at least) with HDR10+, HDMI CEC, etc. is much more expensive than a consumer TV, i think 3-4x. It didn't fit my valuation so I just have a normal Samsung TV with no networking configured.

I do digital signage as part of my job. We use Samsung TVs. They do work better, but they do run hotter. Much hotter. We use Yodeck Raspberry Pi players (4K) using HDMI, Ethernet. ADA now says TVs in public places have to be very close to the wall. This means that the players have to sit atop the TV, either in the small gap between the TV and wall or hook & loop to the TV. The older TVs (we replaced them this year) were OK. The new ones, because they run hotter, melted the glue off the back of the hook & loop and let the player slide down.

We were actually working on writing a scheduling system for the LG webOS ones for a time, I joked about taking one home with me.

If I'm not mistaken the LG ones were significantly more expensive than their consumer counterparts, but those Samsung ones don't seem all that much more expensive.

There are Samsung ones that are 4-5x more expensive with more features (HDR 10+, HDMI CEC, etc.) so its definitely important to make sure they have all the features you want. As with anything it may or may not fit your use-case

You can turn off the smart features on a Vizio TV by declining the ACR terms during set up. It essentially makes it a dumb TV.

Best part is, the TVs are essentially subsidized by ACR and selling your data so you’re getting a deal by not paying the “data tax.”

Roku sticks don't have much in the way of ads ...

In some stupid meeting somewhere:

A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up.

B: People don't like ads on their TV.

A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much .

B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?

A: No.

B: Does anyone here like ads?

A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors.

C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?

We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea.

There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe.

Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).

This is a general counterargument to anything different from the status quo. You should never trust general counterarguments.

There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are horrible is slowly becoming more obvious to the people who engineer more clever ways to collect data and serve advertisements to enable those business models (or who work in a cost center orbiting such an organization).

Samsung learned from the industry represented here and it’s disconcerting to observe the lack of self-awareness in the vitriol being leveled at them from here. Equally disconcerting is that the same people rending their clothes over this probably overlook their Gmail messages being scanned and ads in their inbox, but a television, mein gott, a bridge too far.

This is your world, HN. We all live in it now. Sucks, no?

Fairly sure HN has been complaining about this for years. We're not a hivemind; it's not even the case that most posters work for FAANG, ycombinator or even "startups" per se.

"Samsung learned from the industry represented here"

Not everyone on HN works in adtech, and very likely none of the people in this thread do either.

Samsung positions themselves as a high end brand. These ads are appearing on higher end tv models.

If their $300 bargain basement basement tv was ads supported to keep the price low, eeh, maybe.

But that isn't the case here.

Consumer Gmail is free. If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset.

> If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset.

And Microsoft will do nothing about it because people will use it anyways.

Hm. Maybe. Maybe capitalism in its current form is bad nonetheless? Or an exploiting sham? How do you explain companies like BlackRock, Inc. and similar being on the boards of almost any important corporation? Isn't that a conflict of interest?

Or to put it another way, they are implementing communism by other means, with the same bad outcomes for the masses.

What difference is "Strategische Konzernentwicklung/corporate development/group development" to a Soviet 5-year plan, aggravated by quarterly reviews and HFT?

Gennadiy Gosplanovich would approve with a hysteric laugh.

I know. Been in several of them. Fortunately got out :)

edit: Of course you could call me a stoned hippie leftover from the 70ies, but that really was before my time. I'd counter that with management is on coke, crack or other medications which influence empathy in a bad way. Simple as that.

(Now playing "Ka-Ching!" with a pitchfork on the karmic harp)

Was this the essay you were referring to [1]? I think you’re bang on with this comparison. My dad and I have long complained how (for example) grocery stores seem to constantly cancel our favourite products. We know it’s not the manufacturer because the product is still on their website. My dad and I even have a term for the people in the head office who make the decision to phase out our favourite products: spreadsheet guys.

It really captures the inanity of a person who just sits around crunching numbers all day and killing off people’s beloved products and showing small percentage quarterly gains... while destroying goodwill and long term customer loyalty in the process.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

Number driven vs. people driven is how I usually delineate these things. I find myself strongly in the people driven camp and dealing with purely numbers driven people is highly frustrating.

Hmm. I feel like there's a spiritual connection between your spreadsheet guys and the apocryphal product expert at Campbell's Soups or wherever that tried to focus-test "the perfect soup" that would optimize sales. In the story, they realized that there's no one "perfect soup" and they had to create different varieties.

Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. Everyone has their own spread of products and if you cancel low-performing product lines, sometimes it has unexpected effects. (Anecdatum: We used to exclusively do grocery shopping at Woolworths until they stopped selling the cans of chilli beans that we use for nachos. Now we do maybe 1/4 of our grocery shopping at Coles instead, costing Woolworths thousands of dollars a year in lost sales, just because we needed some chilli beans and might as well get the rest of our groceries while we're there.)

> Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket.

I think the core observation behind the job of the spreadsheet guys is that, at scale, the choices within a family of products will approximate a normal distribution - so there will be a "best product" within each family; with a limited shelf space and a lot of different products to sell, this gives them a clear way to optimize for maximum revenue.

That's probably their thinking, but unless their aggregates include all of the other products that each customer who buys an item also buys (which it should, they have the data thanks to fly-buys schemes) they can't properly assess the overall impact of a given product.

As a trivial example, just looking at the profitability of individual items would lead them to discontinue selling milk (I mean, there's no profit in it so why bother?) because it's generally used as a loss leader.

That's a fair point. But I'd imagine it's a multi-step process. Step 1: group products into families, like "milk" or "ketchup". Step 2: optimize shelf space with whatever rules you have applied to product families. Within a product family, pick the N best-selling products.

The loss leader in this scenario is the "milk" family, not a particular brand of milk.

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are: Having 8 kinds of lemon yogurt, each someone's favorite, while disposing of the products past the expiration date leads to either some of the highest prices in town, or closing down. Profitability in very small supermarket chains is small.

Now, the models that the somewhat sophisticated supermarkets use don't fit on a spreadsheet, and really try to guess which items really are people's favorites, look at profit margins, and risks of people just going to a different supermarket altogether because the competitor down the street still has your favorite, or charges 30% less for it. They check what happens when a product isn't in stock, or when a competitor has a significant discount. It's a difficult optimization problem, given all the differences among people's shopping lists.

Having a favorite product get discontinued sucks: It happens to me at least a couple of times a year, and sometimes straight from the manufacturer, so I can't even buy it online. But don't imagine that every supermarket out there is run by teams swimming in money. It's an extremely competitive business with many players, and there's not that much of a difference between the way the small chains run their operations today and having to close down because the lower prices of a larger competitor dropped sales just enough that they are losing money.

There is always a reason.

My corner grocery (run by a family that lives a couple blocks away) did the same thing - they dropped the soy milk brand I like. I asked about it, and they brought it back.

I think they do cost more on average than HugeCo (if you use the HugeCo surveillance/loyalty card), which also theoretically has a larger selection, etc.

But for some weird reason the store that sells me what I want gets my business.

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are

Oh, no doubt. I'm not saying the spreadsheet guys aren't needed. They clearly are because competition is so stiff. So the reason store A needs spreadsheet guys is because store B has them. All of the spreadsheet guys, collectively, lock the grocery stores into a race to the bottom.

I'm complaining about the existence of spreadsheet guys in the first place. Pulling back a little bit, maybe we need to question whether technology is always beneficial to society? Maybe some technology is inherently worse for society but we can't get rid of it because it's now locked into the market.

I worked in a store in the early 90s with the registers set up that way. It is so much more efficient to pick directly from a cart so you can plan the best sequence of items for bagging. The IBM scanners of the era were much faster and more reliable than today's garbage. You could blast through, pulling items out with the right hand, tossing into the left, and blind scanning while reaching for the next item.

Seems to be a common thread in the past 20 years. The ergonomics of the product is garbage now. Partly because more compute is put into them, and with it comes bloated software that seems to be written by people who don't understand that their avoidance of "premature optimization" is just stealing people's lives by making the work go slower.

Where I live we are behind that point now, as in everything is OK and working fast again. Though sometimes it happens that when a cashier opens a new line, and the POS-thing boots for the first time that day, showing some update process running under Windows and makes my day, because I can't stop giggling.

Anyways, it's good for the cashier too, because time for smalltalk, maybe sipping some drink, or such.

To be up to date, it's your fate...to wait!

I met my wife through smalltalk at the cash register, so I can attest that some slack in these jobs serves an important function in society!

Lack of interest for speed is the problem, not premature optimization.

Some technologies would be better off not existing, but I think the root problem is just unrestricted market competition. Without something to keep the bottom from falling out (<cough> <cough> regulations), a competitive market is a fearsome optimization force. It will suck out all joy and happiness from any activity, as everyone gets increasingly more creative and willing to sacrifice to squeeze out just a little more marginal profit, for however brief a moment before the competitors catch up.

You've linked to SSC; Scott Alexander has a whole other essay on precisely this family of problems: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

Those optimizations make it possible for prices to keep dropping, for food to be very cheap and plentiful. Global hunger has dropped to an all time low, since 1950 or so, because of that.

Yes, squeeze that marginal profit, please. I was born in communism, and guess what, we did not have 20 flavors of yogurt to choose from, or supermarkets for that matter. In Eastern Europe we counted ourselves very lucky to have plain yogurt, which was rationed.

Joy and happiness aren't the point, those are just nice to have. Putting food on the table is the point.

And having a flavor of yogurt discontinued, out of dozens, due to profit margins, is a first world problem and it affects only the rich.

There is more than one factor to consider. Food is already way past being cheap and plentiful. Further optimizations go into enabling variety. Meanwhile, some prices are way too low, which is a serious problem in the climate crisis. What's the point of dining on a dirt cheap meat and 15 different flavors of the same yogurt today, only for our grandchildren to starve on a devastated planet?

I was born at the tail end of communism in my region so I haven't experienced the worst parts, but the 20+ years of market optimization in the food space that I actually remember went primarily into variety. There was no point in those 20 years where quality food was scarce or even too expensive for most.

I have people in my family who worked in grocery stores some years ago, when the market managed to optimize these jobs to the point there were a step away from modern slavery. Fortunately, a few large scandals over events like a pregnant employee losing child due to workload made the regulators clean the space up. Today, a chain store employee in Poland earns a reasonable salary and has hard, but not backbreaking work conditions.

There is a point past which things get too optimized, and there is no loss in preventing or reversing that.

What if one brand of yogurt in some variety makes you sneeze and cough, while another brand of the same variety doesn't and that is discontinued?

Maybe independent grocery stores are the wrong model for a globally connected world? It's not that they are the producers of anything they offer, even if branded as such.

I often think that they are the source of endless waste and inefficiency, because they are working against each other and none of them stocks everything.

Personally I'd prefer fewer larger ones which stock really everything in every variety, instead of many smaller ones which don't.

This are really so called first world problems, it's still a cornucopia, though one could argue about the nutritional/health implications also. But again, 1st world problem.

There's a chain of supermarkets around here that are the size of a Super Walmart, but all groceries. They carry for example 15 flavors or more of PopTarts, just to give one example. And they have low prices, and have seemed to figure it out (they were even apparently mostly immune from the TP shortages earlier this summer). I wonder how they manage, yet other chains don't (not that they have a lot of stores in their chain, they are spread out to no more than 1 or 2 stores in any county).

They even have other customer-service oriented niceties, such as the fact that you don't have to put your groceries on a belt at checkout -- instead their carts are designed so that the cashier pulls directly from the cart, they go into bags that then get put into another cart for you to take out of the store. Little things like that make me wonder why these concepts haven't caught on. (Same with Aldi's letting their cashiers sit on a stool -- employee friendly, and doesn't interfere with the customer).

What chain is that?? Sounds amazing..

It's called Woodman's Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman%27s_Markets. Mostly in souteastern Wisconsin, and some in northeastern Illinois. My favorite part of it is the fact that you don't have to take the food out of your cart, put it on the belt, then take the bagged groceries and put it back in your cart again. The front of the cart flips down, and it gets pulled up in front of the cashier who can either bag it after ringing up the items, or typically there is a dedicated bagger.

It is really fun to take someone there who has never been in one before, and watch as they get overwhelmed. Just the fact that there are 3 aisles of frozen pizzas... and the cheese coolers run at least half way down the width of the store.

Oh, and the employees are friendly -- I wonder if the fact that it is employee owned helps there (or how the employee ownership works).

Edit: do a video search for Woodman's, someone has posted a video of traveling the store on a scooter, you can get a good idea of the size of it.

I was never impressed by their produce, though.

Keyword according to your link is employee-owned. Just sayin'.

Am I missing something, I thought big grocery stores where the normal in the states. the Krogers all around us is so big they actually started carrying clothes shoes and outpacing Walmart.

Sounds like the two of you may be "harbinger customers", the interesting economic phenomenon of people who tend to like products that flop.

That's exactly me! The reason I know that everyone else has bad taste is because all of my favourite products end up failing in the marketplace and getting pulled off the shelves.

- Sent from my Xperia Compact

oh god, I just broke my last xperia compact that stayed with me for years(x compact) and it's impossible to find something small again, not even getting into android updates and a cleanish android experience.

well. I'm a nokia 5.3 owner now. It's big, but ticks all the other boxes & is cheap...

Damn, am I a harbinger customer? I loved my Motorola Droid, Droid 4, and Droid Turbo, none of which saw nearly the success of the iPhones and Samsung Galaxies.

I just thought it was crappy that Motorola was actually providing phones with the features people were asking for (In the Droid days, people wanted physical keyboards, and the Droid Turbo offered insane battery life and a damn near bullet-proof screen), but they seemed to be commercial failures.

FWIW, I use a Pixel 3 now, which seems to be doing okay, but still not near the success of iPhone and Galaxy.

I've heard of that term before. But when looking at

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Format_war

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_obsolete_technology

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fad

and so on, I fail to see a reason for some of those failures. Seems arbitrary/random to me.

So long as a human remains in the loop somewhere no decision is "purely logical and data-driven", although you make a good point about the risks of chasing efficiency over all else

in what world is removing poison to an acceptable level unreasonable? If the process is complicated and convoluted, but people don't die, then that seems reasonable to me.

I don't really follow this line of thinking.

I think he meant that the process wasn't explained as 'removing poison' but as 'this is how we do things' or 'it's to appease the spirits'. If the poison was something that's slowly acting (years) 'rational' way that would remove 'superstitions' would poison everyone.

Of course, knowing the real reason is preferable, but not always possible, especially in a premodern setting. Before the discovery of prions nobody really knew why cannibalism is dangerous, yet it was a taboo in most of the civilized world.

It would be more correct to say that today, decisions are being based on increasing short term gain. I think that's the issue more so than transitioning decision making to be based on logic and data and also supports your conclusion about the economy better.

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this.

The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs.

Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was followed and they (rightfully) predict that they will get "engagement" on those ads (which the marketing department will rely on to justify or increase their salaries).

The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product, thus not contributing to the company's end goal of selling more product.

I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit. Marketing departments will brag about "conversions" all day long but how many of those are either accidental clicks or people who were already determined to purchase your product anyway (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money).

Ultimately, people have a finite amount of time and disposable money, and throwing more ads at this "problem" won't solve it. Your conversions will go up because of accidental clicks (and your marketing department will capitalize on that to justify their salaries/raises), but that doesn't magically give the consumer more money to actually go and buy your product so your profits will not increase.

> The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product

"Amazing! The smaller we make the 'X' button, the more people love them!"

Or make the X button almost the same color as the background.

TuneIn does this.

I think this is also the psychology behind those pop-up like/share button bars at the bottom of web pages, that on mobile just so happen to sit exactly where your navigation bar hides, and if you tap one pixel too high you hit the share button instead of pulling up the navigation bar.

The best method I've found to increase positive engagement is actually to just have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad. I've noticed this more frequently on the web nowadays, and based on the click through rates, the target demographic is absolutely _obsessed_ over this feature.

> have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad.

I always, always thought this is what X buttons do, so I was simply closing the tab :))

Don't get me started on dialog boxes that put the "cancel" button on the wrong side. Much like toilet paper, there is one way to display it, all other methods are heresy worthy of nothing less than immediate exterminatus.

(partially kidding, but only partially.)

But there isn't only one way to order it. Some OS' (I forgot which) had convention dictate that the positive confirmation button was in the rightmost corner, with other lesser buttons to the left. In this order, "Cancel" appears first, but further from the corner.

As long as you're consistent.

Apps which lay their buttons out contrary to the conventions of their platform are evil. Apps which randomize the positions of their buttons are unspeakably worse.

If you have cats, the 'proper way' to hang the TP is the opposite way of what you absolutists think is the One True Way.

I'm starting to suspect that the loudest voices are cats who have either learned to type or to pay for lobbyists, trying to push your feline agenda on the rest of us.

Have had two generations of cats in our house, and always the toilet paper the proper way. Never had an issue.

On the other hand, we have to keep the toilet seat down or they'll try to drink toilet water.

Cats are the devil, and I have reasons to believe they've recently entered into an alliance with the human infant community.

I begun suspecting that one day when my wife was preparing dinner. Soon after she took the meat from the fridge to work on it, our baby started crying and making noise for absolutely no reason. My wife immediately dropped everything and went to investigate, and the cat used this opportunity to attempt to steal our dinner meat.

Ever since, I've been noticing many more cases where the baby and the cat are either simultaneously attempting to do things they're not allowed to, or the baby starts distracting us while the cat goes out to carry out some mischief. It's all coordinated too well to be happenstance.

My friend had a pug like this once. Dog was as old as father time. Needed help making it outside to relieve himself before he finally left us. But I SWEAR that dog moved like greased lightning if you left a plate on the table to go check on the kid, as he'd make it from one side of the living room to another in the time it took you to take three steps and check in on the other room, hop up on a chair and your dinner very rapidly became his dinner.

I thought our cats were generally stupid because they could never do the jigsaws I assigned to them, solve a Rubiks cube or see 2cm in front of their faces (they are long-sighted).

But I have come to believe they are far smarter than me, particularly with scheming methods of sneaking around to quietly appear when they can get food. One used to push donut boxes off the side so that they would burst open, and would then run off with a donut. I have no idea why he wanted to eat donuts. He also tried to eat bread through the wrapper. Or they fein illness. Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

They're really clever, just not at jigsaws or sudoku.

>Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

The problem is cats are really good at hiding pain - being physically able to jump doesn't mean it isn't uncomfortable or painful for him.

We have a pair of very senior cats (18/19ish years old) and make sure the house has little staircases dotted around to make getting on to their regular lounging spots easier, as we noticed they prefer to use a step if something happened to be available - while they are still fairly mobile, I suspect they are developing some level of arthritis. Given they've been good companions for nearly two decades it's the least we can do to make sure they're comfortable.

This is a good point. Sadly our fluffy friend had to be put down due to FIP and I hope we made him as comfortable as possible during his life - we didn't take away his step anyway. I still miss him and it has been years.

Try 3x water dishes, non chlorinated water, change them every day. Stopped mine drinking from the toilet.

Same goes for toddlers. It's harder to unspool the entire roll if it's "the wrong way". I hate it.

Reminds me of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. They switched up the cancel and repeat buttons for different dialogues just to mess with you.

Cancel button is obsolete, the customers want to be reminded later.

No! I detest the dialog boxes that ask a question and then the only options are "Yes" or "Skip for now"/"Set up later". I want to confirm "No".

impossible, statistics show that 0% of customers chose "No" when not given a choice. Ergo you do not exist.

Those stats explain everything! It certainly sums up my experience on the modern web - awful and slow!

I've seen a lot of clickbait pages where the next button shows up and 10 seconds later at the end of the page load there's reflow and then an ad is placed where the next button used to be! So you end up clicking through an add on every page unless you wait for a long and random amount of time!

That's the evilest thing I can imagine!

There are a ton of dark patterns in web design about this.

- same color background

- in the wrong corner (users expect the "X" in the upper right hand corner). I've seen the "X" in the wrong corner and some other icon in the right hand corner. People reflexive will click in the upper right hand corner and open the ad by mistake

- I've seen where you have to click on text instead of the "X", clicking on the "X" just opens the ad

- Also very small, 1-2 pixel "X" so literally one pixel off and you've opened the ad

- I don't remember what company did this, but they would pop the ad and after three seconds, it would reload, all but a few pixels higher so when you're in the process of closing the window, it would reload and then you'd open the ad by mistake because the "X" is in the wrong place now.

I've seen a lot more devious stuff but the sad thing is, I have decent vision. How do these dark patterns affect people who have impaired vision or other issues with their vision? How infuriating it is it for them to deal with this BS? I can't imagine.

An overlay that covers the whole area opening an add onClick. After some time the overlay is added again (incredibly annoying for video players you might want to pause)

If your ad blocker can't deal with these, set z-index on the main content with a userstyle, so it stays on top. Then you might also want to use a css style to just make everything else invisible:

``` *:not(.videoContainer){ background-color: black!important; color: black!important; } img { display:none!important; } ```

The god damned cookie consent popups do this. The "Decline" buttons are small and grey, the "Accept all and save" are big and green. They'd show empty checkboxes/iOS-style sliders at the off position that show that you won't be getting non-essential cookies, of course when you click "Accept all" these settings get overridden.

Not only an ad problem, but the sliders reminded me of a really bad UI feature I see everywhere: ambiguous highlighting when there are only two options.

I find some of the sliders for on/off are impossible to read. You can't work out what is on or off.

Windows 3.11 / 95 UI seems such a good idea by comparison to today's UIs - checkboxes with obvious tick marks or X marks in them, radio buttons, buttons that look like actual buttons, scrollbars you can see without having to flail the mouse around just for them to appear, scrollbars that go the right way when you use the mouse wheel (ok that was Windows 98), maximise buttons that actually maximised a window without having to hold alt like on macOS these days...

My dad is colorblind, and the red off/green on looks the same to him; the slight shadow showing the side the toggle is on often isn't dark enough to be obvious, especially when someone gets cute and makes the slider pill-style (the button part takes up exactly half the space, with a vertical line down the middle). I expect this to be less common with mobile OS downtime features that encourage users to get off their screens by going grayscale.

I don't know why everybody went to a flat design. Seriously Apple should have stuck with their it looks like things design.

What kills me is that the only app that I actually engage with ads is an app that has a voluntary button to see ads to support the developer. You click the 'watch ad' button, you watch a 15 second ad, or see a banner ad, and then return to the app when you close the screen.

The app asks once per month if I would consider seeing an ad to support the developer. I usually watch one ad a day, as a rule, because it's the best way to do this. I've clicked on those ads, and have actually made purchases from those ads (it was for a product I was already researching and probably going to buy, but I clicked through the ad when I finally purchased it).

More apps need that level of respect for their users' time.

> Also very small, 1-2 pixel "X" so literally one pixel off and you've opened the ad

Fact check. You cannot make an X with anything less than 3 pixels. ;)

> 1-2 pixel "X"

An x requires at least 3×3 pixels.

Not if it's rendered on subpixels :).

Actually the minimum number of pixels to render a close box is three times the number of close boxes (ie. 3x3 for 1 close box). Any fewer pixels will not allow a functional close box to be reconstructed. This is referered to as the 'Nah-quist limit'.

The fact that they include an X button at all seems like a concession that I'm not sure how long will last

For the moment, running a Pi-hole in the cloud and pointing your mobile devices to it works. As you say, how long? When the adholes start doing ads as part of the content, this may break, but I'm sure the Cold War between the adholes and the blockers will heat up. There is always a way. God bless all the creative programmers who help to keep this crap at bay.

Just this week I had an ad popup with no button. Before I gave up and left the site I tried clicking where the button was supposed to be. Sure enough it worked.

Of course now I'm part of the problem, because some asshole has a graph that shows that (a suspiciously small fraction of) users are able to opt-out so there's no legal liability for having the ads that way.

I got rid of TuneIn once they stripped the recording from the Pro version I paid for. Good riddance.

We like slider control to set precise value because we click many time to set correct value, isn't it?

> I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit.

That’s odd. You’ve never read a valley S-1, I take it?

The truth is noone buys anything from any ads... however brand awareness is a real thing. If you see a fancy ad from a company, they must be a profitable company that has a great product so you might be inclined to buy it or suggest it next time you're looking for this category of products.

I don't buy that for two reasons:

- Brand awareness is one thing, but it feels companies are more interested in saturating consumers with advertising. That saturation is something entirely different.

- Advertising can present information to base purchasing decisions upon, but rarely does in most media. While advertising should never be the sole source of that information, it would be far more effective for brand or product awareness.

I wonder how true the old saying about all publicity being good publicity really is any more. I can't speak for anyone else, but as I've become older, I've also become much less tolerant of unwanted interruptions and distractions. I don't mind a relevant ad that is tastefully integrated into whatever I'm looking at or listening to, but the patterns of behaviour I've developed online or when watching TV or listening to radio are definitely geared to minimising interruptions and disrupting the kinds of security- and privacy-threatening tracking that supports the big ad networks. Pushy ads that manage to break through tend to result in instant closing of browser, changing of channel, etc. so definitely aren't doing the host site/channel any favours, and they tend to leave a bad impression of whoever was advertising if they leave any impression at all.

The kinds of "feature" we are talking about with the Samsung TV here and other so-called smart devices will stop me from buying those products in the first place. But then I also don't use Windows 10 for my main PC because I think I should control my PC and not whoever happened to write the OS I'm running, so apparently I'm an outlier.

Oh, yes, brand awareness is a real thing. For example, a lot of people will avoid Samsung TVs right now.

I just bought an LG. I’m so glad I dodged this bullet. I would be furious.

How do you know LG won’t update the software later to include ads?

LG's already also have ads. They're not super obtrusive though, and I'm sure I shut personalization off.

That's who i bought a Panasonic. They cost more but don't have a shitty track record. In fact, my washing machine was the last Samsung here. It broke and got replaced by a German machine. These days I try to avoid the cheapest offering and try to buy quality instead. Upfront cost is higher but I really value my time too much to bother fighting with nonsense like ads on my tv.

I have a Panasonic TV too. Back like 8 years ago, it had an unremoveable ad/app square in it's app menu. Of course, they let me reorganize the apps, and I put it way back on a screen I'd never see, and I haven't noticed it since.

Also, as a side note, Vudu is like the one app from that era that still works.

Does your Panasonic stop loading any smart apps if their servers go down too? Mine refused to load anything (eg. Netflix) if it can't get in touch with Panasonic.

Check what network activity it is engaging in. You'll be disappointed, I am sure. Seems dialling home is the new thing to do on every single device these days. Data vacuuming the entire human population just because they can.

I’ve not seen any as yet. But then I disagreed with all of the tick boxes on setup. That may be why.

I agree, if we have to have ads for whatever reason, do it in an unobtrusive way that the user is asked about during setup. Now the ads in lg's smart home app are a different matter...

Why would I bother updating software for a TV if the TV is already working? Whats the motivation?

My Samsung TV auto-updates. It's infuriating as I cannot disable it.

Just disconnect it from your network (change the wifi password or remove the Ethernet cable) and it will be unable to auto-update.

You may want to get an external device (Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or other media server) and plug that into your HDMI if you use the network from apps on the TV.

But if some apps are used that isn’t possible. I’d suggest a few all rule forcing all port 53 traffic through a Pihole, then block Samsung traffic.

Then...don't use the apps?

What can the apps on your TV do that a $40 Amazon Fire stick ($50 if you want 4K) can't?

I'd rather hook up an old laptop to my TV and use that to watch media than use the apps on my TV and deal with all the bullshit that TV manufacturers are doing when you connect the TV to the network.

Just wait 'til they get a blanket connection to Amazon Sidewalk for their nefarious deeds, and the only way to disable it will involve a soldering iron.

Think of it as unpatched computer on your network, possibly with a built in microphone and camera.

Why put it on a network?

Are there any open networks in range? How do you know it's not jumping on those?

On my old Samsung TV, if I inadvertently push the "Smart Hub" button in the center of the remote, the bottom 20% of the screen gets overlaid with what looks similar to a MacOS Dock with the default apps from 2012. Worked OK in 2012 when I bought it and used Netflix a few times, but a month later I bough the original Google Chromecast, plugged that into HDMI 1, unplugged the Ethernet cable, and never intentionally pushed the Smart Hub button again.

I didn't push it again because in about 2015 I found that if you push it, it locks up for exactly 30s, which is how long it takes to hit the network timeout and say "Updates are available for your Samsung Smart TV." and then allow you to use the ancient web browser or Netflix or other smart apps. I did try a couple years ago, on a whim, but apparently the update servers have moved and even when plugged into Ethernet it can't actually update.

Everything currently runs through the Roku, the Blu-ray player, or a component-to-HDMI dongle for the Wii, but if I didn't have the Roku I'd have a motivation to update so that Netflix would work without a 30-second delay (and I'd be unsurprised if Netflix wasn't backwards compatible with their 2012 client from a Samsung TV). However, the picture is fine, so it keeps on chugging.

LGs have ads as well. I had to add a bunch of domains to a DNS blacklist in order to get my $2000 TV to stop spamming me.

Hmm. I shall keep an eye on it. I run Ubnt network gear at home, so if it needs to be taught a lesson I shall be happy to do so.

While I love my LG tvs, they have had ads on their smart tvs for nearly a decade.

The difference from Samsung is that the ads on the LGs are in the same place they've always been (on the smart tv menu overlay), they've never been obtrusive, and they're always in some way connected to video content (usually VOD movies that you can purchase through one of the streaming apps, or adds for streaming apps you can install on the TV).

I think I can accept that. I honestly don’t use it much. It was more for my better half, as our four year old Samsung killed itself the other day.

I’m more excited about the HDMI 2.1 and variable refresh for the new Nvidia cards.

I'm extremely happy with my HiSense - it runs Roku, so the "smart" stuff is actually maintained by a company that does a pretty good job of it. The only thing you could call ads are promos for shows. I think their revenue is kickbacks from subscriptions people get through Roku, rather than direct advertising.

My old LG "smart" TV would send a web request to LG every time I pressed ANY button on the remote control.

I took that stupid TV off the network as soon as I could.

I think the manufacturers are all as bad as each other. My current Panasonic TV will refuse to load any of the "smart" apps (even Netflix) if it cannot reach Panasonic's servers, which means the entire TV becomes useless as an Internet device (no Netflix or ANY streaming services) if Panasonic has a server issue (which they sometimes do).

Might revert to VHS at this rate.

My parents were thinking about getting a Samsung TV and I've always been under the impression they make great displays.

Instead I will recommend Sony or LG now

My 3-year-old Samsung TV is ad-free, because I don't give it network access and never accepted the TOC

Honestly, there are plenty of complaints about LG around, and I wouldn't trust Sony on about anything...

I have a Philips smart TV, so far it has no ads and just mildly annoying bugs, nothing really disruptive. But mine is an old model, it looks like the new ones aren't like that anymore.

A few years ago I brought some TVs to use as monitors because they were much better fit than the actual thing. Now it looks like the trends reversed, and I'll have to start buying monitors to use as TVs. Is there a good TV receptor that I can plug in a Raspberry Pi?

Or avoid Smart TVs altogether if you're a cord cutter anyway, and opt for what I believe is called a "public display".

Even those try to connect to a network now. Look at the spec sheets: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1573436-REG/samsung_l...

I mostyly agree, however i recently clicked on a beef jerky ad on instagram and bought a pack, but that is one purchase over the course of 20+ years of seeing online adds, so I think your point still stands.

Real as in has a real effect on consumers. NOT real as has being a significant predictor for quality of products.

We all know this, but we ignore it. Branding for brandings sake == lying to customers.

I've bought multiple products from mobile ads just this year.

Heck the yoga app I use I saw through a mobile ad. Same deal for the fitness app I use (BodBot, awesome app, check it out!)

I've gotten onboard Kickstarters from ads, and I've bought keto cereal from an ad I saw.

99.999% of most ads I ignore, but sometimes ads are really well targeted and actually show me something I want.

(None of these ads were on a tv in any way...)

OT question, but what the heck is a keto cereal? i tought keto means no/low carb. and I mean everything in cereals has carbs. I mean classic cereals use tons of oatmeal, fruits, differnt types of wheat, joghurt, etc.. like everything with carbs?! so basically the bread and butter ingrident of cereals is oatmeal which has like >60% carbs with other types of carbs?!

Probably made with alternatives like Almond flour.

Base on the ingredients, lots of whey protein.

The MyPillow / Snuggie / "As Seen On TV" people would probably disagree.

ordinarily would agree but i am about to buy an standing desk. never saw it before it popped up as an ad somewhere.

> looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money

Could be a true conversion given that all competitors are paying adwords on your brand name search also. If you don't have them you will probably appear after a long list of competitors with really personalized clickbait titles prompting your customers to compare you with them

Agreed. This happened with my startup. Basecamp complains about this practice frequently too: https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/116898696270498...

Pro tip: if the competitor uses your trademark in their ad copy, you can do a takedown notice and usually the ads will be removed.

It's incredibly sad that it's even possible to bid for the top spot above a competitors trademark. The worst blow to the health of the web was likely google's merger with doubleclick.net.

Google has devolved into a shitty search engine even ignoring the advertising. Someone please build a search engine comparable to google in the mid-2000s. No duckduckgo isn't it.

would you tell more about why you think ddg is not good? I'm not using it for some reasons so I'd like to know. Thanks

Not the original commenter, but before Google fully pivoted to their present focus on monetizing search, the results were often strikingly useful, even for obscure searches. DuckDuckGo can’t (yet) replicate this now-lost magic.

In my memory the quality of google searches peaked around 2009 or so I'm not sure I'd refer to it as a "present" effect....

There are a few good reasons to do this:

1. Competitors will bid on your brand name. Your ad for your own brand name will have a higher quality score and be very cheap, driving up the price for the competitors.

2. So much of a SERP is below the fold that there is value to being as close to the top of the page as possible.

This is all true, and likely necessary, but it's all negative value that Google created and you just have to buy your way back up to zero.

I assume Google cannibalizes more brand power than it actually creates.

> (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money)

Except that Google lets anyone else advertise in that slot above your brand. And as we've seen some companies can confuse the customers and steal them away in such an ad.

If we tacitly accept a search engine allowing such phishing expeditions in those ads, then this kind of spending is the necessary and only step companies can take.

This happened today to me. I searched for the “DigiD” app which is the 2FA app for your social services account with the Dutch government. The app was the second app. Even though it matched fully on the query. The first app was some other document scanning app from some vendor. I can imagine someone paying less intention would install the wrong app.

I’m actually considering whether it would be a good thing if the app stores would verify government applications and perhaps not even allow ads on queries which have results that include governmental apps...

That would be a nice and easy way for any government to censor TikTok.

"Hey, have you seen the new COVID-19 contact tracing app? It's named TikTok-19".

You would be dead on. From the marketers themselves:

https://www.adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/the-marketers-g...

The ad/marketing driven economy is based on something simpler: consumers don't have any money, but corporations do. So you don't sell to consumers. You sell stuff at break even or a loss or even give it away to consumers and then sell the consumers to those who actually will pay.

The dominance of this kind of surveillance capitalist or ad-saturated model everywhere is a side effect of extreme wealth inequality and a generally demand constrained economy.

You're right about most of it, but companies by AdWords on their own brand name so that competitors won't get that spot. Basically, the first 2 results listed by Google are paid ads. So if they don't buy AdWords for their own brand the top 2 displayed results could be any similar item. So that case isn't about increased conversion, it's about not letting competitors snipe their sales by offering a lower price for a comparable item even when searching by brand name.

I worked on a very popular free desktop product (BitTorrent/uTorrent) when a major revenue stream was the bundling of crapware in the install path, depending on people clicking the dialogs without reading them. I remember an executive announcing in a meeting that "search engine replacement" (reconfiguring your browser and/or system to a shadier alternative that made us money) was viable because the telemetry data showed that not very many people uninstalled in the 2-3 weeks after this was done to them, so, yay! another revenue stream people don't seem to totally hate! But they had read the tea leaves wrong and the backlash eventually caught up with them. It shows that reading mountains of data (100 million+ active monthly users) and reaching solid conclusions about user sentiment is a black art and numbers can be presented to show whatever point of view you want.

Either that, or the custom search was impossible to remove for non-technical crowd - AKA "the conduit business model"

> reaching solid conclusions about user sentiment is a black art and numbers can be presented to show whatever point of view you want.

Sounds like yet another case of, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

There is a sizable middle ground between "basic intuition" and "black art".

I think anyone with some experience in that type of software would intuitively understand the negative user experience described here.

Seems like a pretty straightforward case of the classic "Unless their salary depends on not understanding" rather than some opaque wall of unknowable unpredictable consequences.

Yeah, the sizable middle ground is I believe what props up most of the adtech industry. The sizable middle ground is occupied by people with minimum understanding of statistics, who bullshit themselves and each other with data - but as long as nobody can obviously tell they're wasting money, they're all happy and the money keeps flowing.

This is so true. It makes me lose faith in humanity, to be honest. My oh my do I detest adverts.

>I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit.

The big companies have people who check if the ads are working. Every have the clerk ask for your zip code? That is because they are checking if the ad sent to some zip codes worked. It is noisy data, but statistics is all about finding signal in noisy data.

> at least in the short term until the market adjusts

This sounds like customers will eventually choose less shady brands in a year or two, when in reality all brands will actual race to the bottom together.

Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway"

It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.

I don't know why this comment hasn't been upvoted more since it's absolutely spot on.

I'll bet the difference that my $50 projector was way cheaper than whatever TV this is and it doesn't have ads (although it also doesn't seem to have working DPMS but that might just be my Xorg config.)

Airlines are controlled and limited by regulation to where its no longer "free" and you can't vote with your dollar cause you are a guarantee. There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. Same with telecoms. TV industry lacks competition in this regard as well but largely due to the centralized manufacturing. I also blame modern ip law as many of these companies have rediculous protections increasing cost of entry.

>There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable.

American tried. American failed. Nobody was willing to pay more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-...

Isn't that because most of the people that fly multiple times a year aren't the ones paying for the tickets? Instead their company has policies on getting the cheaper flights. And people that fly for a vacation once every few years, they may not have enough experience flying to realize the benefit (or, if they do want a better experience, they go all the way to first class).

I don't if that's true for most air travel, but it's definitely true for my business travel. Corporate policy is the ticket has to be within a reasonable range of price (average price +/- some amount, not sure exactly). This means I can usually select between 2-3 airlines, 2 airports, and plenty of times, but I am always limited to basic economy without prior approval (which has been granted for international travel and if I need to be on a specific flight for some reason).

Also true to my experience.

Back two jobs ago, we had international customers with somewhat high demand to ship our people all across the world on, sometimes on a moment's notice. I had to fly out 4 or 5 times in the span of two years, but some of my colleagues could do more than that in under a year. Somehow, the flights were almost always the cheapest airline available, and the cheapest seats available. The co-workers who flew frequently, including my boss, were all using the accumulating miles to bump themselves a class up.

American Airlines has a Premium Economy class: https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/experience/seats/premium...

At least in the states. Most airlines I fly have an option for a premium seat that costs more and has more leg room.

> There are very few airlines that offer more legroom

United Premium, United Premium Plus, Delta Premium Select, American Airlines Premium Economy, Lufthansa Premium Economy, Alaska Airlines Premium Class, Air France Premium Economy, Air China Premium Economy...

AFAIK, most of those aren't available on domestic US flights. If you're flying internationally, it's almost always been possible to spend more to get more space and service, sometimes up to rather eye-watering levels, but flights within the US tend to be limited to economy and first class. (Some economy seats do have more leg room than others and carry a premium charge, but the OP may still be technically correct based on the "very few" condition.)

I'm not sure I see the connection you're trying to draw between your first two sentences. Airlines are regulated, but their price and service are much less regulated now than they were about 40 years ago. Their prices are much lower, as perhaps expected, and their service is much worse, as perhaps less expected than easily predicted if you're a realist rather than an optimist. The vast majority of airlines nickel-and-dime customers on domestic flights, making virtually everything they can from baggage to legroom to boarding time into for-pay options, because they learned that no matter what customers say, they shop on base price. Since deregulation, various airlines have tried to offer better seating, service, etc., as all-inclusive and more expensive tickets, and time after time, customers just click on the cheapest thing they find on Priceline.

tl;dr: when it comes to crappy airline service, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our regulators, but ourselves.

When I fly I definitely pay more to avoid certain airlines. For instance, when flying to the US, I avoid any US-based airline, as they all always have noticeably worse service and seats, and will pay maybe 10-20% more to fly a EU or asian airline.

But, do people actually know that when they purchase? If it were clearly stated anywhere on the box/sales copy that "you will see ads on this device" while the other one says "we won't shove ads on your device" I would wager the $10 more would be a bargain to nearly everyone.

But that information is never available at the point of purchase so most people get the surprise of see ads when they had no idea that was even a thing.

I’d have less of a problem with this if they went about it the way Amazon sells ads on their Kindle e-readers:

- You can buy the device for $X, and it’s marked as being sold “with special offers” (a euphemism for ads that would be more explicit in an ideal world)

- You can buy the device for $X + $Y, and it’s marked as being sold “without special offers”

- You can buy the device for $X “with special offers” today, but you can spend $Y once you have the device to “disable special offers”

This case is pretty terrible because Samsung isn’t giving buyers the ability to pay them the $10 directly to disable ads while not being up-front about whether or not ads will be served.

Turning off the ads should also turn off the surveillance.

The "Special Offers" also have the advantage of being super unobtrusive, especially when the device is actually in use. That's not really the case here.

One more option that was at least available on older Kindles

- You can buy the device for $X “with special offers” today, then hack it and remove the "special offers".

I don't know how prevalent this is, but wonder if it's a consideration in deciding on the "money to disable ads" strategy.

While it may not appear that way in the HN crowd, the number of users who actually jailbreak their devices is effectively zero when you're determining revenue models. Especially nowadays, when most of the features people care about have been implemented.

That depends on how easy it is to do the jailbreak. If you can package a self-contained solution, or provide simple to follow instructions, the word will spread, and a lot of people will be doing it.

When I was buying my Paperwhite, I just ordered the ad-free version from amazon (.com or .co.uk, don't remember which). And then a couple co-workers (agreed, computer people, but very much not the type that's into tinkering or cracking software) looked at me with surprise, because it turns out everyone does the "standard" route - order "special offers" from amazon.de, and save money while getting an ad-free Kindle, because AFAIR initially the special offers didn't even display in Poland, and when they did, apparently everyone knew how to jump some hoops to get rid of them.

In the Kindle case I did pay the extra for the advertising-free version and they happily advertise on it anyway, including push notifications in the middle of the night that make noise. Infuriating.

Do Amazon tablets and phones still show adverts on the lock screen? They seemed to sell a lot of them despite this being a "feature" of them back when they first launched.

This is true, I expect to be shafted unwillingly and the manufacturers will face no accountability or be required to show any transparency for a long time. Consumers need information symmetry guarantees.

> It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.

Do any of the airfare search sites allow you to sort/filter by legroom? I would love that feature.

Isn't sorting by class effectively that?

On google flights, if you click into the individual flight segments in the search results, it shows the legroom alongside other features like WiFi.

If the flight-booking website offered a "sort by legroom", I'd click that. The trouble is there's no good way for me to know as a consumer which planes from which operators (and which affiliates) have which legroom, so it's not a meaningful choice I can make.

If someone would roll out such a feature, I'd use the hell out of just as soon as I feel like packing my butt into a petri-dish again.

United had economy plus which was exactly the same plane with more legroom. It was nice the one time I got it (my boss wouldn't pay, but I got an upgrade... otherwise I rarely take flights longer than an hour so it isn't worth $20 or whatever the difference was)

US mainline carriers unbundled the legroom for folks that didn't want it.

The three big mainline carriers offer coach seats with extra legroom on most domestic flights (branded as Delta Comfort+, United Economy Plus, and American Main Cabin Extra).

I think it’s a different reason. These products are perceived as commodities and the expectations are rather low in the first place. So why wouldn’t you try to spend as little as possible on a commodity when you know it’s likely to be borderline shitty or at best barely adequate? I have this strategy when buying cheapo China made crap on eBay or aliexpress: I expect it to be low quality, not last, or not even fit the purpose because the specs are fiction so I try and find the cheapest of these widgets I can buy.

Airline tickets are the same: I know I’ll be treated like shit, nickel and dimed, and have no legroom so why wouldn’t I be looking for the cheapest ticket?

Would be interesting to see how many of the people in that room would buy a Samsung TV for themselves.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes for understanding business and the modern world in general:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

—Upton Sinclair

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

I think a better (less cynical) way of interpreting that is this:

Jobs which require a belief to perform sincerely, select people who hold that belief sincerely.

This principle should undo a lot of cynicism. Yes, eg., people in marketing often "really believe" their efforts are a net-positive, and no it isn't often, "mere cynicism" on their part.

Rather, what has happened, is that most who view marketing cynically, do not take a job in it.

We often misidentify this process of selecting for sincerity as a psychological-reality in those who are selected. Marketers "make money through cynical means" whilst sincerely believing they don't.

I've met marketers and product people of both kinds. The cynical ones seemed to half hate their jobs, and justify the SOP clickbait as keeping up with the negative sum game they have to play. The less cynical ones seemed to be kind of detached from externalities, and described their marketing copy as "standard marketing puffery" to justify it to legal.

It took seemingly forever, but eventually we (mostly) got HN commenters to stop saying "LOL Betteridge's law of headlines!", along with a Wikipedia link as if we hadn't heard it a hundred times before, to every article. Hopefully we can get to that point with this stupid quote too.

I guess I don't read HN enough that I don't recall ever seeing it here, but a quick Google search confirms your impression: this quote has been super prolific on the site. I hope I at least reached a few readers who hadn't seen it before.

I guess the next quote to axe will be Gell-Mann Amnesia. But hey, they all wouldn't be repeated so often if they weren't painfully accurate.

Absolutely. Can I have a few minutes before I come to your office in order to come up with a list of things I least like when I see an ad? This is a great opportunity to increase engagement from the likes of me by considering what improvement can be made in your ad campaign.

You forgot to add:

"We need to think of our devices as small hyper local billboards with untapped potential"

You have the last part of the conversation wrong:

B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?

A: Yes of course I do. If you don't like ads on your TV why are you working here.

B: Does anyone here like ads?

A+group: yes of course we all like ads (lying in a meeting is not a crime, and occurs all over the world)

C: ok no objections, we love it! Ship it!

A, C gets a paycheck at the end of the day.

B gets fired if they don't change their mind.

There's a practically throw-away line in Ready Player One where the Bad Guy says, "And research has found that we can cover 49% of the screen before our customers begin to experience seizures."

Yep, sounds about right.

Sounds like Blipverts in Max Headroom.

Given that the story is full of 80's nerd culture references, that's probably not an accident, although they may have made it a little too subtle.

I think the reason is slightly different. I worked for a web company that made most of its money on ads. Companies have an army of marketing "specialists" whose job it is to find "incremental revenue". Their performance is rated on how much revenue they can add to the company. The possibility that it may cost users in the long run is not part of their calculus. I learned to hate meetings where someone mentioned "incremental revenue".

Big companies need to have an ombudsman department who have the explicit job of reviewing all these schemes and nixing any that will likely lose customers.

This is too real. I had discussions like this about a big fat cookie wall we needed to track users.

“Why do we need to track users?” “To give them recommendations!” “But this wall you’re using takes 4 seconds to load. Do you think this improves user experience?” “Yes, because the content is adjusted for the user. Besides, we did a test and 96% clicks accept, so the users don’t mind” “Where is the decline button?” “...” “There is no other option. You have accept, or you have to hse settings with 100 checkboxes. I’m surprised 4% even bothered to check these!” “Yeah but most just accept, so they don’t mind, and users really want the targeted content”

If I have to add it, I’ll at least make sure it won’t take freaking 4 seconds to load.

"No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors." is absolutely how marketing turns evil. Basically taking advantage of people that don't know how to avoid ads, etc.

It took a really long time but eventually Facebook ads started giving me things I actually wanted to buy and have bought.

> This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet

Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra quid.

[1] Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

[2] Removal of "Other OS" feature from Playstation 3's after users had already bought them: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3088169/sony-agrees-to-pay-m...

I just bought a Sony and it’s running google android TV and it has suddenly got ads for “staff picks” now. “Free” movies on YouTube.

https://streamingclarity.com/android-tv-staff-pick-highlight...

“staff picks”

I guess we're supposed to think "movie buffs who really know their stuff." When the reality is "[Sales] staff picks."

Not sure if it changed, but my 1-2 year old Sony with Android TV was fine with not being connected to the internet at all.

No idea if it's full of some sort of baked in ads because, after the initial setup, I've used it exclusively as... a TV. It turns on, shows me things I give it over HDMI, and turns off. I haven't actually seen the menu/apps/whatever after the first day.

It's not optimal, I'd rather it just be a dumb TV obviously, but in a sea of bad options it's been... fine.

The awful aftertaste of them yanking "Other OS" after I payed for it still hasn't left my mouth. I haven't bought anything Sony since.

I think the best way to fix this before it creates legs is to have a huge backslash.

They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.

Samsung TVs in the US have had ACR since 2012.

Consumers can't be made to care about ACR. Giant blatant ads are a different story.

> They should feel social pressure

That rarely works. For each consumer that has the time and understanding to not buy the brand there is a thousand that are not aware. The way to go is lobbying for stronger regulations and to limit where Ads and recollection of data can be done.

Day after day we have more and more connected devices. Samsung is the tip of the iceberg, even if there was consumer backslash for one company the problem will still be there.

Just to play the devils advocate:

Ads are not shown, when the TV is asked to "reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it". And the TV is sold on its ability to show all sorts of things that are not just the signal passed to it. Like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the menus related to those services.

The Ads are shown when the TV is asked to show its menu of applications and features.

Still not great, but not at all what you are implying.

The thing with TV panels is that they're essentially a commodity, right? Once every TV from a large brand becomes "smart", would the next logical step be for a small privacy-minded collective to go to an OEM and commission them to start making dumb TVs?

Usually I disagree about niche hardware in this way (for example, usual mentions about a similar approach for phones and laptops), but the dumb screen might just be dumb and cheap enough to make work at this limited scale?

In theory, that's how the free market should work; in practice, it's very hard for a new player on the market to get brand recognition and a share of the market.

It can be done, I think, but it has to be VERY well funded - you need to send salespeople / lobbyists to the various on- and offline shops selling TVs, you need "SEO experts" to try and beat the competition's "SEO experts" on the internet and e.g. Amazon's search results, and you need a legal team to help with the inevitable heap of lawsuits you'll get (patents, design infringement, etc). And then you'll have to deal with the competition pushing the prices of their devices below yours; Samsung can afford to sell TVs below market value for decades if need be, JUST to push out that shitty newcomer that does ad-free TVs, and they'll make money off of the ads + subscription services they offer in the meantime.

I mean, marketing's my background so I get that. But you see small brands like Pine64 and System76 doing it for specific types of (often generalised OEM, "off the shelf") hardware.

If they can pull it off for more sophisticated integrated solutions like phones, tablets and laptops, I'd have thought that a TV brand would be even easier.

Surely buying a commodity panel off of an existing OEM would negate a lot of the legal issues, and going DTC to the kinds of people who are specifically looking for a dumb TV is quite a decent niche to market to?

I feel like a pre-order or KickStarter type situation might work. Do a small batch initially, get good reviews, do another, larger batch next year, keep cycling until you have enough cash to maintain an inventory.

Yeah, or something like Drop.com for those interested as well.

In practice, there are already people who need dumb screens - airlines, railways, offices, and so on. Those people will pay a premium to get "industrial grade" products, but it's not always an enormous premium, and most people on HN could afford to pay it.

Cheaper to get a smart panel and blacklist it from the network. The HN crowd knows how to do that too.

This is why my tv stays offline and isn’t setup. My Nvidia shield runs to hdmi and is the only playback source.

Does the Nvidia Shield not utilize ACR like the smart TVs? I hear they're great but they run Android so I'm skeptical.

I'm not sure currently. If not, it wouldn't surprise me if its added.

Pi-hole. Works like a charm. Also does the same for every device in your house. Moreover, if you don't mind spending an additional $5 a month, set up your Pi-hole in a Digital Ocean droplet and you can blocks ads everywhere YOU happen to be, even on your mobile device.

Running every dns request to a random DO droplet sounds like it would cause latency. Is there not some public DNS option that blocks ads?

There is very little latency, actually. If it just for you and/or your family, there is zero appreciable difference.

I run one and it works very well, but I fear the rise of DoH and devices just bypassing your network's DNS settings to query the manufacturer's DNS servers. I think Google devices do this.

A sad world we live in when you have to fight the devices you paid for.

This is always the way commercial software works. If we can't legislate it then the only way to help people is by educating them.

I sometimes wonder if someone at the top is trying to drive people away from TV/film/video. Yes there's more content than ever before but as regards drama etc. the writing is generally dreadful and the stories lack originality, on YouTube the adverts are becoming obnoxious and if extremely one-sided political messaging isn't to your taste, well, good luck finding a single programme that isn't stuffed to the gills with it.

YouTube adverts have been obnoxious for a long time, but it's got far far far worse this year. Unfortunately, I think it is necessary to support the media industry thanks to the diminishing returns from sales of music/film due to the proliferation of "art is disposable and very cheap" $9.99-a-month streaming services, plus the fact that every new album ends up on YouTube within a week these days as an "entire album" upload.

The sheer amount of content available these days is probably what you are noticing regarding dramas / films; I can remember very few decent Hollywood films recently as utter garbage seems to make billions of dollars, so the studios believe it's what people want.

It isn't a new issue though - "Penny Dreadfuls" were the old poor-quality entertainment of yesteryear where I suspect people were saying the same things that we are saying now. The only difference now is the availability of immense volumes of instantly accessible tripe.

As for political messaging, I am entirely apolitical but do see a lot of ideologies being promoted/pushed in programmes, with an opposing stance on any "modern" issue descending rapidly into a shouting match instead of a reasonable, logical debate; it then turns into a witch hunt regarding the opposing party's behaviour instead of a balanced discussion of the first issue raised. Exercise your free will and turn the rubbish off like I do!

It appears that this has already become the norm.

What recent Sony TV doesn't come with Android TV?

> showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is

Google is purely Ad company and is worth a trillion. Here is your context and reasoning, combined.

> hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm

Do we have any evidence Samsung TV sales have taken a hit from these measures?

The TV market isn’t that elastic. If there’s a backlash, it’ll take months to years to shake out.

I’m pretty sure the up-front price is at least somewhat subsidized by the ad revenue.

Unfortunately, showing ads probably does increase long-term profit. Take a look at the randomized experiments measuring long-term retention & profit with various ad loads: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication

Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and often done anyway. The loss from equivalent ad burdens on TVs is probably much less. (People replace their smartphones more often than their TVs!) The ad revenue also lets them discount the upfront price of TVs (I think I saw an article on HN that the discount due to advertising is at least $50/set?). And then there's the time-value of money: $1 up front in exchange for $1.10 of lost sales 10 years from now when they (maybe) buy an alternative brand is a pretty sweet deal for the seller.

Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.

> Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.

It seems like the smart thing would be to have ads by default but allow the customer to turn them off. Most consumers would leave them on and be fine with it (like you said) and the haters would be happy too.

If you want a dumb box, can't you just un-network the TV itself? I don't see the point of smart TV's personally. It's way easier to just use a Roku or AppleTV or w/e. We have Sony's and the built-in smart TV platform is a horrible experience compared to Roku.

Well you see Google selling Pixels which is supposed to be an idiot box to reproduce voice signals but it turns out it's loaded with ads and trackers. Samsung probably followed along the lines that Google pioneered

An ad company calling something a "pixel" (as in "tracking pixel") ought to give you an idea of what it does.

All of that is disableable, so the user can make it as "dumb" or as "smart" as they want, unlike the iPhone, which has tons of data collection that you can't turn off and survives in the face of much better competition only through luxury marketing or tricking people into believing it has reasonable privacy.

Let's not forget Sony's rootkit debacle.

went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet

True, not like this. But they've done worse things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit

After all, most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?

Exactly!, our down stairs Samsung's TV UI looks like it was designed by a group of toddlers who over dosed on E supplements and decided to use all the crayons in the box

It would be great if it were just one middle level manager. But, this sort of behavior seems to permeate a their offerings. For me Samsung and all of it's products have gone from mildly annoying (bloatware with a couple cool features) to something I won't even consider when making a new electronics purchase. It was frustrating for a while, because I like the hardware, but I'm past it now.

I have an old (like 2015, not that old) Vizio TV with a built-in Chromecast, which was always handy. Saves me a couple bucks and an HDMI port.

The "home screen" of the TV (where it goes when you turn it on) was always the chromecast, which as I'm sure most people have seen, is rather nice; just endless pictures of art and landscapes, like a screensaver.

One day it updated without my consent, and that screen was replaced with Vizio's, I dont know, some piece of shit interface no human being on the planet wants. Ads for Crackle and other Vizio tvs mostly. Its so bad.

So, I'm never buying another Vizio TV.

The PS4 is full of ads for apps. I find it to be less enjoyable of an experience than the PS3. It's good to hear that their TVs haven't been corrupted yet.

NEVER buy a Samsung TV... they're horrible.

They have the same contempt for software that they do on their phones.

They NEVER update their firmware. It's amazingly slow and latent.

When they DO occasionally update they usually break things that were working or remote features you used.

About 2 years ago they implemented some weird/stupid popover commercial thing which you could eventually disable but they hid the feature.

I'd be watching Game of Thrones or something and in the middle of the show they'd bring up a popup for a new TV show or something along those lines.

> NEVER buy a Samsung TV... they're horrible.

NEVER buy a TV. Even better. They are all horrible. I thought that TVs would be a thing of the past like landline phones, but looks like I was wrong. It's incredible that the gullible are swarming to "smart" TVs.

I mean you can get a TV much like you get a computer monitor except bigger.

That screen has no business connecting to the internet.

Even better is a home projector.

Have an recommendations for a home projector setup? I have a really good space for a projector now but idk what I want.

I have the BenQ ht2050a and I like it. It's only 1080p but 16ms response times and 120hz make it good for gaming.

The color resolution is also great for movies.

Thanks!

No, I enjoy paying 50% more than necessary for the paucity of features the Samsung sparingly distributes at each price point!

Lol

Sony just pushed an update to the homescreen of android TVs that pushes ads for shows and services on the very top of the screen.

They do it, because we let them do it. They obviously can get away with it.

In fairness, how would people even react? Almost all major TV platforms have ads and all of this is on products long after sale. If everyone is guilty, how does anyone get punished?

Well we aren't just consumers, we are also citizens. Forcing ads into your devices sounds like a collective action waiting to happen, especially if it's done via an update. And further down the road some sort of advocacy group/lobbying may be in order.

Sony support within my region (Asia Pacific) is 10x better than any of their competitors too. They ship new TV's when there's a minor defect, and they price match directly so you don't have to worry about the retailer going out of business if your TV breaks. Admittedly I've yet to use Sony support personally - nothing has broken.

I own a 250$ 4k TV that doesn't do this. Samsung does this shit with their cell phones too. Rocking a cheaper brand Android phone now. Also helps I'm not being forced to keep Facebook installed

I have an LG Smart TV. I didn't consent to any of the tracking features and haven't seen a single ad for years. I strongly recommend it as an alternative to Sony.

> This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead

I went with the opposite approach- I paid the small bucks to buy an Avera display, and connect it to my own media box. Also, a decent soundbar, because the built-in speakers are terrible. Now I have better sound than any built-in speakers at any price, a decent display, and the best "smart" features (with no ads), all for a price much lower than a "Smart" TV.

> Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company.

I knew something was fucky when smart TVs started to be sold for less than the dumb ones - all things being even, smart TVs had to cost more to produce, so something had to be subsidizing the prices.

I have a huge Vizio Smartcast display (no tv tuner) and it doesn't have any advertisement displaying dark patterns. Crossing my fingers they don't sell out with ads.

it's not his fault that corporations reward this. what should he do instead? purposely not work towards a promotion?

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection.

By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it is only a matter of time until all of them show more aggressive ads.

But if you fully wipe it and then keep it fully offline, most TVs have a great screen and they can be configured with "gaming mode" to work like a low-latency HDMI / DisplayPort display. And without internet, there are not ads :) and no forced (useless) updates.

BTW, my LG OLED is completely ad-free, defaults to using HDMI port 1 and even has GSYNC. Just connect any barebone with an NVIDIA card and you have 100% control over what you see.

How do you force WebOS to default to HDMI? I replaced my parents TV with a LG LED last year, and it defaults to showing "No signal found" when turned on, then you have to switch to HDMI.

If possible, make the device connected to HDMI turn on the TV via CEC, that should switch it to the correct input automatically.

I believe this is what also happens for me. When I turn on the pc, the TV automatically switches to it.

I dealt with getting blasted with the "No signal" thing on my LG webOS TV for several months before finally figuring it out. I wish I could remember how and tell you, but I can't recall. But don't give up! It is possible.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure if I got it to default to HDMI but I did definitely get it to show something other than no signal. Try using the picture frame feature (where it shows art in a picture frame). After so doing, I think it at least defaults to the picture frame. I also have a Roku connected that seems to be capable of telling the TV "hey switch to me", so sometimes I get the Roku HDMI and sometimes I get picture frame, but at least I never get No Signal anymore.

That's strange. I have an LG (a couple of years old I think?) and it defaults to whichever input it was on previously.

So if I turn it off while on HDMI 3, it turns on to HDMI 3. If I turn off to antenna, it turns on to antenna.

Only irritation I really have with it is that it's run into the odd error and will reboot suddenly. :|

It should default to showing whatever input is currently marked as "TV/Cable". Out of the box, that is the OTA tuner. If you want it to default to an HDMI port, you will need to use the connection manager to tell the TV that there is a cable box connected to an HDMI port and to use that as the TV input.

LG OLEDs with Gsync are absolutely amazing.

My only concern is the longevity of OLED.

can confirm, even without gsync.

lg seems to have the best OS and the best panels.

WebOS was really a good operating system. It works surprisingly well for TVs even now.

there are numerous sites out there with long term tests on this subject and it comes down to, you have to go out of your way to harm the TV. As in, keep specific channels on 24x7 across a long period of time. Also, unplugging when not in use is not allowed.

Sorry? You can't unplug the TV when you aren't using it? Why? That's something new to me. My parents have a little box that automatically 'unplugs' their TV after extended periods of inactivity to prevent unnecessary power draw (the Australian government provided them for free at one point). That would somehow damage the TV?

> Why?

I've heard LG OLEDs run a pixel refresher when "off".

> I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data

I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking.

Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere?

If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.

I checked the German models. And yes, it is a GDPR violation. Plus it makes the integrated 4k movie player stutter because the CPU use from the adware causes thermal throttling on the GPU. That's why I investigated in the first place...

Have you written an article or blog post about your investigation. This deserves to be more widely known. You could even try contacting publications like the New York Times, or at least tech magazines. Get the message out, and maybe job offers in the process.

> and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection.

That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.

Is there any device you might connect your TV to that actually provides Ethernet over HDMI (at all? unprompted?)? People keep citing that ability, but I can't remember ever actually encountering devices that do it.

Even if this actually becomes widespread (indeed I am not aware of any consumer device providing pass-through network access through its HDMI port), I'd expect most devices to have a toggle for this or a privacy-friendly company like Apple might even make the lack of that "feature" a selling point.

The world is a sad place, the fact that we have to pay a premium so we don't get features.

We need companies to rise up against this bullshit. It won't matter until the customer base is educated in privacy.

We need a massive campaign to spread privacy awareness. Only then, there could be a market. Apple can afford to do this because they're big and they already have a customer base. A mid-sized company trying to sell privacy oriented products in a mass market is going to be left in the dust.

The society continues to regress. No one cares.

You can always hook up a computer and use the TV as a monitor.

How do you know they aren't tracking that either? Your TV has a computer inside that has the capability of watching whatever is being displayed on your screen.

TCL Roku models will do this. They have some kind of content matching running on the display signal.

Thankfully they let you disable it. But mine has the internet connection disabled entirely anyway.

If you have a computer hooked up, you don't need the TV to have internet.

There is a difference between it having a network connection (i.e. ethernet) and having internet connectivity - you just need to be able to control the tv's traffic.

If the manufacturers start adding a 4G modem to their devices then that might change things. Hopefully the economics of that never work out.

Just block it in your router. Everything has to go through it eventually.

..but then, just like some smart home devices, it would either constantly annoy you with an icon or popus about "missing internet connection" or outright refuse to work at all with a cryptic "something went wrong"

Perhaps there will a market for HDMI “condoms”.

I never found a device that supports HDMI Ethernet Channel. I'm really curious whether any device exists.

I use a pi-hole to block that traffic.

The difference is that you had to accept their EULA. I didn't because even if I technically prevent their data extraction, I still want it to be illegal for them.

That is true, but it will nag you every time you turn on TV.

At least my Samsung TV had several EULAs that were optional. I accepted the basic one that allowed me to use the onboard Netflix and then opted out of data collection via CCPA and installed a Pi-Hole. I didn’t accept the one for voice control or other “smart” features.

Eventually TVs will VPN out. Dat revenue is way too sweet...

As long as it's on my network, I can still block the VPN endpoint, or simply block based on source IP, or put the TV in a non-routable subnet.

...Assuming it displays anything at all without being able to phone home.

Chances are good the TVs of the future will just display full screen error messages if they haven’t been able to upload your content engagement metrics in the last 15 minutes.

I have an LG. I never connected it to the internet, but it still has a built-in, always-on, no-way-to-disable wireless access point that pollutes the wireless channel it broadcasts on.

I suppose you could open the back and unplug the aerial cable from the motherboard. Unless they’re using one of those tiny surface mount aerials of course :(

nothing a hot soldering iron won't fix.

Surveillance just might be the best case against the idea of ubiquitous computing, at least in any real democracy.

> And without internet, there are not ads

until all TVs will have built-in 5G SIM

> 5G

Don't believe coverage maps from wireless companies - 5% will get reception at best.

Why would they need a 5G sim for that?

They could easily be delivering ads and siphoning user metrics with 3G, 4G, or LTE sims today.

I will build a faraday cage around my house!

Well fuck. I didn’t know that. I was just about to buy a nice new 50” 4K Samsung smart TV. Purchase cancelled. Will keep my dumb Samsung 32” ass end model.

he's not saying don't buy that fancy tv. just use a roku/appleTV/etc.

although those devices might also have their own privacy issues. :/ best of the bunch i guess?

I'm going to stick to my existing method of shipping USB sticks to the TV I think.

From the article:

> Roku is hard at work turning its TV platform into a "next-generation ad platform" [0] while Amazon has been showing ads on FireTV devices for years. Most of these platforms have also been confirmed to use ACR, just like Samsung.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...)

Apple TV seems to be the only reasonable option at this point.

oh and don't plug the network jack in on the tv.

At this point I don't think any Samsung TVs have cellular connections built in. So just stay away from the 'smart' features. I recently bought a 70" Samsung "smart" TV but the only interaction we have with it is to switch to the Apple TV input. The TV has no network configuration, and it never will.

How do you know it's not using open wifi networks?

I don't. There aren't any open wifi networks anywhere near my home, though. I assume if it did that someone would have noticed by now. That's a naive assumption, but given how many people actually look for such behavior, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

It could still store the data on the device. Then in the future, a companies like google could drive around with an open wifi network on their street view cars and charge TV manufacturers for gathering the data. Or drones with open wifi could be deployed.

Have you checked Toshiba?

I think that the trick is to use a monitor/commercial display instead of a tv.

My alternative, as I actually like my Samsung TV (lots of features including AirPlay 2 and Apple TV for not a lot of money): block the shit out of any connection it makes using https://NextDNS.io.

If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.

You can do this with Pi-Hole as well, after turning it on for my Samsung TV the number of blocked requests was pretty amazing.

Agreed but would you mind sharing which Samsung connections you are blocking in order to prevent ads from being displayed on the TV? I'm running NextDNS.io too (router config) and their logs show a plethora of Samsung queries that are all allowed, but I also have a Samsung phone and refrigerator. The only one they block by default is smetrics.samsung.com

In the Privacy tab, you can specifically select a "block of rules" for Samsung devices. Also, EasyList will block a lot of requests.

Unfortunately, NextDNS will not show from what device a blocked request came unless you give it a name in the app, and of course there is no NextDNS app for Samsung TV's. Some suspicious domains I see often in my logs:

samsungads.com tvx.adgrx.com samsungcloudsolution.net

But, in short, I have loaded NextDNS with the most common blocklists (EasyList, Anudeep etc.) and added the "Samsung" list. Result is: no ads anywhere on my 2018 smart tv.

Just as the 's' in 'IoT' stands for 'security', the 'f' in 'IoT' stands for 'fairness to users.'

Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.

Well that does get very difficult with TV since a large number of people stream, the app on my LG is actually better than my Apple TV but it is toss up with the Roku on the other TV.

So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it should just act as if its not connected at all.

One could use a separate box for all the smarts.

Integration brings unneeded obsolescence and reduces choice and control. May be hard to avoid in space constrained phones but should not be needed on tvs.

I have also a LG TV, and I used to keep it disconnected at all times as all my streaming comes from the nVidia Shield anyway.

However recently I wanted to setup my home automation system to automatically turn the TV off when I go to bed or outside, and for that I needed to connect it to the home network.

I solved this by confguring the router firewall to drop any package from the TV to the internet. It works!

Sadly google has started serving ads on the android TV home screen, which will presumably affect the shield.

Mine doesn't show ads (yet?). I hope that means pihole is effective enough in blocking them.

It's just a matter of time until Smart TVs deactivate themselves if they can't connect to their telemetry and ad servers -- or the manufacturers enter into agreements with streaming services to proxy ads through the same IPs used to stream video.

This would not be without precedent. Some Samsung TVs already refuse to exit setup mode if they can't connect to the Internet after initial power-on to geo-lookup their IP to make sure that they're being used in the country they're sold for.

The best solution for streaming is a low-end PC with hardware video decoding and the ability to run Ublock Origin.

Edit: I see from other comments that Samsung TVs already go into degraded functionality mode if they can't connect to their ad servers, and already serve some ads from endpoints used for necessary functionality.

What gets lost in degraded mode?

Anything that requires Internet connection (i.e. Youtube, including casting from mobile device).

I just found out this weekend; with an older, cca 2013-ish samsung tv, connected to a network that has OpenWRT router with Adblock, and forced redirect of all port 53, 853 traffic to the local resolver. It cannot resolve its mothership (the rules were already in the Adblock list, I didn't add anything). The TV shows up a messagebox that it cannot to the Internet and asking the user to check the connection.

The local DLNA sources work.

WE NOTICED YOU'VE BLOCKED OUR AD SERVER - covers entire screen

I haven't seen any of this behaviour on my Samsung TV yet, but I'm going to pay more attention to it now. And definitely avoid Samsung in the future.

I recently built a HTPC/home server based on a Gemini Lake Celeron ITX board in a compact case. The CPU/GPU is passively cooled and can decode 4 simultaneous 4K streams in realtime. It has hardware decoding of x264, x265, VP8/9. All-in, aside from the storage disks (for a Btrfs RAID1 pool) that I took from my desktop PC, it cost me less than a QNAP/Synology NAS with room for a similar number of disks.

I still use my Chromecast for Youtube, because the UI in a browser isn't great for couch use. On the CC, multiple people can add videos to the playback queue, I haven't found a good replacement for that yet.

For anything longer than a typical Youtube video, it's not an issue finding a movie and starting it from a wireless keyboard.

Our current TV is a 42" LG that I got for free from work. It's old enough to not have any "smart" features, it has no networking at all. The picture quality is great and no ghosting unlike a lot of older LCDs. I am not looking forward to the day I eventually have to replace it.

This was my setup recently too but then Amazon disabled their cast button inside their prime website a few months ago which meant we had to switch to the app route. Despite their fuckery, we've found streaming from the phone apps (Amazon, Netflix, + Plex for torrents) is actually a better experience than the laptop on the couch or wireless keyboard option. Also YouTube Vanced + nextdns.io takes care of YouTube ads.

I’m shocked to hear you say that the smart TVs ui is better than an AppleTV. Would love to know more.

I had to blacklist my wifi controlled air purifier on my router as it was sending data every few seconds to Amazon's DCs.

If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data.

I'm guessing that in addition to them pushing their data stats to AWS they don't make that data available to you for free or indefinitely? (kinda like how Nest only lets you see 10 days' worth of thermostat data via their own service with absolutely no option or ability to download a CSV of all data since day 1 even though they have that data in a SpannerDB somewhere in a Google datacenter)

It is not the company's data. It is the users' data.

So you’re positive after 7 days it all gets purged?

> If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data

From their perspective, they probably gave you a discount for your data. See also https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...

it's an interesting point you make, but perhaps companies should make these trade offs transparent.

You can get the version that phones home or you can pay extra for the version that doesn't.

I suppose the problem is that they'd make this transparent and there would likely be a bit of backlash ... thank goodness that regulatory agencies have our best interests at heart /s

Precisely Amazon is one of the few companies that make this explicit with their Kindle, here the Paperwhite without ads costs 10€ extra. I'm curious, does anyone know other examples?

I should've mentioned the Kindle as I have one of the ad supported one, but I'm not aware of any other examples

I'm curious how many people pay extra for no Kindle ads.

I originally bought Kindles without ads, but for my third Kindle I decided to buy it with ads to see how bad they were. You can pay the extra later to get rid of ads, so if it turns out buying the version with ads was a mistake it is easy to fix it.

I don't see the sleep screen except briefly between the time I open the cover and the time the Kindle wakes up. I'm rarely on the home screen. I do almost all book shopping on my computer rather than on my Kindle. Thus I almost never actually see an ad, and when I do it is almost always not interfering with what I'm there to do.

The few ads that I do briefly see in those rare times I'm not in a book or in my library are static images without sound. For the sleep screen it is usually an ad for a book and the image is the book cover, which is often actually nice to look at.

After actually seeing the ads, I now feel like I wasted my money buying the ad-free versions for my first two Kindles.

My Kindle is old so there wasn't ad-supported versions back then, but my GF's Kindle does have ads, and they're almost always terrible, terrible books, displayed full-size in the sleep screen. We joke that they try to shame you into paying the no-ads upgrade (or for a cover!).

After a couple months of nothing but ads for bodice-ripper romance novels with semi-clothed, entwined bodies on the cover (based on my consumption of biographies and Fantasy?), I went to Amazon support to pay for the ads to be removed and they did it for free and gave me a rather large credit for kindle books.

I've done this with one other Kindle and several other people have done it based on my experience and they've all gotten ads removed for free and some have gotten store credit in various amounts.

I didn't even mention why I wanted the ads gone, I just asked how to remove them and they gave me free books and a typically $20 upgrade for free.

After a couple months of nothing but ads for bodice-ripper romance novels with semi-clothed, entwined bodies on the cover

There was a time that the Kindle ads were actually appropriate. I've even purchased the odd sci-fi book that showed up on the wake screen. But that's been a couple of years. Now I get the same bodice-rippers you're seeing. What a waste; Amazon has my book purchase history going back 20 years, and that is what you're showing me? Do your advertising customers know this? Because, shallow guy that I am, I read sci-fi, philosophy, and books on distance running. That's pretty much it. I did read part of a Danielle Steele book (imagine GPT-3 wrote a romance novel...) 35 years ago when I was married to a woman who read those, but I doubt Amazon knows that.

You can also disable Kindle ads by never turning on the device's WiFi, just transferring books over USB.

Blacklist? How did it get the password to your router in the first place?

pfSense

> Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.

This is a nice trite trope, but getting an affordable TV without these features might be nearly impossible for most people these days.

How ridiculous is it that it's harder to get a product without extra nonsense added?

That extra nonsense is generating revenue to the manufacturer of the product

At this point we might as well cut out the middleman and pay people to connect a black box to all their devices.

In the case of TVs I think it also has to do with there being no real hardware difference between a fancy Smart TV and a dumb TV. A dumb TV nowadays is going to be implemented as essentially a computer and monitor running a set of TV applications, just like a Smart TV. The only difference will be that fewer programs will be loaded onto the dumb TV.

True, but even if you're paying for a network-capable device, you still have the option of not plugging it in.

Do you? Manufacturers can easily require an Internet connection to make the device work. They can also include their own radios and modems. All in the name of being user friendly!

Are there really TVs that won't work until connected?

Not that I know of, I always skip the smart TV bullshit. Another commenter pointed out that a Philips model pester you with a pop-up to connect it every two weeks or so but that seems like the most manufacturers are attempting at this stage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24626364

Thanks.

TVs can refuse to get the EPG over the air and insist on getting it from the internet. I'm not aware of one where this happens, though.

Exactly, we bought my 75ish year old father in law a new TV because he was using a small SD flat panel and his eyesight is going.

But he hates it because there's a million buttons and menus to navigate, when all he wants is to type in the channel numbers.

It even needed a firmware update out of the box and he didn't have a clue why a TV would need new software and immediately panicked and refused to use the thing until we drove 150 miles to accept the update for him

We just wanted a TV that receives terrestrial TV and has a couple of HDMI ports for his DVR which he knows how to use without over complex menus, is that so much to ask?

You probably shouldn't have hooked it up to the internet if all he wants are channels and to keep things simple.

What tv can't you just type a channel number in, or press an input button to switch inputs?

If you don't plug it into the internet it's not going to be a smart tv

The new Samsungs (and others) have a remote without numbers... Thankfully the old remotes still work (and even better).

Can't get new tvs with normal remotes

Without numbers on?

Could replace the remote with a Old Person Remote perhaps.

Just looked for a random tv, it has a normal remote to me https://ao.com/product/vel50fo01uk-veltech-tv-black-66496-10... scroll right on the photos

Just looked at a price checking site, checking the oled and "no smart tv" boxes. Zero hits.

It is not a question about affordable TV. The only ones that does not have smart features (as far as I can identify) are the cheapest LCD ones at the bottom of the price list.

The best alternatives that I can find is projectors or monitors, as those seems to so far not expect an Internet connection.

There are professional displays (e.g. panels used for conference centres, offices, etc.) which are usually large and have no smart features.

But you can forget about common TV features like HDR support, DTS/DD audio decoding, usable remotes and other useful features.

Look for "Digital signage displays" (but they are not cheap).

Did they include Sceptre TVs? They make dumb 4K TVs.

Let's play a hypothetical game. Your TV attempts to literally control your life. And is ultra HD and really cheap. But you have to keep its front facing camera uncovered or it blares an alarm saying that its front camera is covered. The alarm also activates, but more quietly, if it loses its internet connection.

Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing with its sponsor.

So say the sponsor is Coke and it sees a 2 liter bottle of pepsi in your home. It displays something literally equivalent to (not in exactly so many words) "we are punishing you for bringing pepsi into our home, because our sponsor is coke." It then counts down a 30 second punishment timer. As a shopper you dont have THAT strong of a preference between coke and pepsi. So the next time you need to watch a movie on the dictator (name of TV set) you buy coke that night instead of pepsi.

Does that cross a line? How would you legislate against it? Devices shall not act as slave owners over humans who have bought them?

Well, um....

>Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing with its sponsor.

There was literally a Black Mirror episode about something very similar.

yes, you're right. (Though I think it wasn't about a TV watching your food choices.) So what happens legally if, today, a company literally does it? How do you legislate against this?

It is literally possible for a television to include a punishment timer (as in, it is pretty trivial to code up, if the device isn't rooted.) What happens if a company sells one that literally identifies shopping and uses a punishment timer for people who buy a competitor to their sponsor instead of their sponsor? can you make it illegal?

Reminds me of a less ridiculous version of this: https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png

Interesting link. But what I have written is no less ridiculous!

On what grounds would a punishment timer be illegal?

That is definitely going to also happen on brain-computer interfaces.

Beefbrain is real, and you'll never convince me otherwise.

How about a second-hand TV ?

Then don't buy a TV.

This is extremely sad. But it's where we are headed.

My TCL is fine. I hooked an Apple TV and haven’t connected the tv to the internet since I bought it.

It's impossible to find a new TV these days that doesn't have an internet connection out of the box.

Sceptre 4K dumb TVs

Argos have 14 different ones for sale, largest being 43" https://www.argos.co.uk/browse/technology/televisions-and-ac...

My TV can connect, but is happy to live without. Though I've never used the smart features, just terrestrial digital TV, a PC over HDMI, a Pi running Kodi over HDMI, and an old DVD player via SCART. The TV doesn't enforce an interactive menu to pick those sources from, it is a simple selection on the remote, so it doesn't have anywhere to force ads.

If it becomes impossible to buy a TV that doesn't just display what I chose by the time this one is due for replacement, I'll take a device sold as a computer monitor instead. Or a projector. Maybe I'll pay extra, but I'll be fine with that.

LG still makes them, if you carefully navigate to their Business "Commercial Lite" or digital-signage options. I love my 55" 4k dumb TV. But you might not get some high-end features like HDR.

One tip I've found useful - most TVs have a so-called "Hotel mode" (or a Service mode) where they can have most of their smart features disabled and can be locked to a single HDMI input (e.g. AppleTV / ShieldTV / Chromecast). That makes them into rather dumb panels that usually also disable those ads.

At least I know it's possible on all Sony AndroidTV models and most Samsung models (not sure about their latest Tizen).

samsung (and most brands) sell specific model for hospitality, those have hotel mode, so i doubt you can configure it on domestic ones.

Hotel mode can be activated on most (all?) Samsung TVs. You just have to access the hidden services menu.

well, people cant test easily, just press mute + 1 + 1 + 9 + enter and you are in the service menu. I have only hospitality tvs, so can't test that on the domestic ones, hospitality tvs are charged a premium, so if the hotel menu is present on all tvs, i don't know what are they charging for.

So how do you do this again? My remote: https://ak1.ostkcdn.com/images/products/is/images/direct/b5d...

Well, Google it, it's not like we know which model TV with which software you have.

I was trying to be smart-alecky

LG TVs also have a "display mode" that's used for live restaurant menus and the like (think: the TVs above the registers at McDs). We had to flash a special firmware file via USB to enable it though.

The life time of TVs is simply on a different time scale than most smart thingies you connect to them. It's an appliance like the air conditioner or dishwasher, not a gadget you throw into the bin and replace. The intelligence of your media center should be elsewhere, in a dedicated gadget that you can easily replace and upgrade, connected via a standard, dumb interface like HDMI.

I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and the picture quality is stil superb compared to recent models (except OLED). Its HD and not 4K, but it makes no difference, my eyesight is not getting any better and I might use it for the next 5 to 10 years probably. It's internet capabilities are laughable, pre-smart TV. Picked it up for 100 quid second hand, no doubt some idiot replaced it with a "smart" piece of junk with thinner frame, less durable LEDs, and now, good God, mandatory advertising.

I really wish the whole home theater was way more modular.

I'd like separate boxes for video display, video signal switching, audio signal switching, stereo and surround sound decoding, speaker driving, OTA TV tuning, AM radio, FM radio.

I want these boxes to all support a common control protocol, with another box or boxes handling controlling the system.

My current system with a receiver that is 8 years old and a TV that is around 3 or 4 years old is fine, except for three things: (1) the receiver cannot handle 4K video, (2) the receiver does not work with any voice assistants, and (3) the TV does not work with any voice assistants.

With a modular system, I'd just replace the video switching with a 4K switching box, and replace the control box with one that supports a voice assistant (or add another control box...no reason a module system has to have only one such box).

With the current approach, I'd have to replace the receiver and the TV for that.

I've got a similarly aged pre-smart Samsung, sounds like it'll be with us for a while.

I have a 1080p Vizio from about 2013 or so. It's "smart", but doesn't phone home or anything. I use a Roku to get more modern apps for it (I block Roku's phoning home in my pihole).

I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably can't see the 4K improvements from across the room anyway.

There's almost no 4k content anyway. And none on Netflix / Disney / Prime.

Netflix originals are mostly (or possibly all?) available in 4k. Or are you saying the 4k streams are not of good enough quality?

Who is providing true 4K streaming? And by that, I mean a stream quality that can improve upon a 1080p stream of the same bitrate, we are talking about 50Mbps at least, Blu ray bitrates, something like 75-100Mbps. Netflix caps at around 16Mbps, it is more of a 4K placebo.

Otherwise, there is really no point to go with 4K, you can find lousy encoded content for any resolution. There is a strong trend in underground rips to provide highly compressed 1080 content that looks more blocky than its 720 equivalent of the same total file size.

According to this, Netflix recommends at least 25mbps for 4k

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

I honestly don't really know, video encoding is not my thing.

I have a 2012 Bravia too, albeit a smaller one, something like 42" - the black levels in particular are absolutely amazing.

In EU I think a "consumer complaint/guarantee" would work (the law, not a warranty given by the producer). As in: the product is no longer working as advertised/expected, so I want my money back.

For instance, when an older PlayStation (3?) in an update made it so that one could no longer run Linux (which was advertised as possible), I know of people that got to return it and get their money back after the Norwegian Consumer Council ruled against Sony.

I concur. This is also likely the reason why Oculus stopped selling the Quest in some EU countries. Their planned EULA update will make it impossible to use the device without a Facebook account, which might make them legally liable to provide a refund in case anyone complains about it.

Also most likely violates the GDPR

It would be nice if there was a right to get back the product you paid for (i.e. revert the adware update), rather than being forced to either accept the ads or return the product.

A reminder that increasingly intrusive ads are one part of the problem. The other, and potentially bigger, part is automatic content recognition (ACR), which has been covered on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899491 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21657930

Exactly this. I was surprised by the ads that they apparently shove down your throat but outraged by the fact that samsung knows what you watch. Most people that have a new TV will probably not even know this, only mentioned in some small letters in an eula that nobody reads. How is that even legal?

I've had my Samsung TV for 3-4 years, it works just as well as well today as the first day that I bought it. I've never connected it to the internet and get streaming capabilities using 3rd party devices. Dumb TVs are much better than shit ones.

This. Just buy an NVidia shield and use your TV as a monitor. The UI and the fact that it uses AndroidTV and not some shitty Samsung OS is reason alone to buy it. Also my Samsung TV gets a start signal from my NVidida Shield so I do not even have to bother with using 2 remotes :)

That's exactly what I've been doing with my 2019 Samsung TV and and a Shield Pro. The TV is unplugged from the internet and all my streaming is done from the Shield, which is even better because:

1. The Netflix/Prime Video etc apps are snappier because of the beefier SoC

2. Content looks better, because DLSS does a better job at upscaling than the TV's native upscaler

3. I can use it to stream games from my PC, which is making me reconsider buying one of the new consoles just for couch gaming since I could spend the money on a new GPU to upgrade my rig an just stream from there.

And as you mentioned, the presence of HDMI CEC makes remotes rather interchangeable

I also didn't connect the antenna cable and didn't even notice during the entirety of the (Italian) lockdown since I never watch "normal" TV. At this point I wish it could be possible to get TVs without a tuner, I could stop paying the TV taxes!

Re. point 3.

Have you streamed yet or it’s just an option right now? Something I’m considering but I’ve not looked into. Wondering about lag, and if I have to run upstairs to my pc to start games etc.

Tried just once (the whole setup is rather new). I tried the first part of Hellblade running on my PC, which is in the same room, at 1440p & High settings. I played for about half an hour, with no noticeable glitches or lag. Both the PC and the Shield are connected using cables (each to a different switch, both switches go directly to the router).

I hope I have time to try it more before the weekend, but the results are promising.

Oh, I thought it was obvious since we're talking about a Shield Pro but now I think it's worth mentioning that my PC has a Nvidia card (an RTX2060), so I'm using nvidia's native streaming support. It's also worth noting that an OSS client exists (Moonlight), so the Shield could be replaced by, say, a Raspberry Pi 4

Interesting, thanks for the reply. I’ll research for sure.

With the PS5 controller having a microphone array built in, I won’t be purchasing, which makes me sad as I’ve been gaming since the ZX Spectrum. Also Sony injecting their ads into the PS4 home-screen which will no doubt carry over to the PS5. Gah. But on a positive note, those new AMD offerings...

PS5 is hardly the only console on the market though, both Microsoft and Nintendo offerings are quite compelling.

Can only speak for Steam's streaming here, but your mileage will probably vary. Your system needs to be fairly beefy (you will get a bit of a performance hit from streaming games). I run a geforce 1060 and it'll stream any new games at 1080p / 60fps but I'd go beefier for 2K/4K streaming. I'm still on a dumb 1080p TV so that'll be more important if your TV is >1080p.

Biggest obstacle here was the wifi in this house is unreliable. We tried getting a wifi extender and even a new wireless router but we kept getting latency issues. We opted to get a powerline adapter for a stable connection. MOCA is also worth looking into if connectivity is a problem.

And finally, running to the other room to start games. Again, this is steam, but I'm guessing shield has the same limitation: if your system isn't logged in or the screen is locked, you will probably have problems starting games remotely in those cases. You'll want to setup remote desktop almost for sure (you can VNC or there's a way to logout of RDP too without locking the screen automatically). I also have a Wake on LAN shortcut setup to wake the PC up remotely.

Finally, sometimes games won't pipe audio remotely because they don't switch to the "virtual streaming audio device" these apps use properly. As far as I can tell this is on a game-by-game basis and depends how they coded it, but for that I have a pretty ridiculous work around (I remotely start a command line tool via openssh to force the audio device to "steam streaming speakers" then restart the game after that). The games with these problems seem pretty rare though, I'd say maybe 5% of the games I've tried.

Overall it's awesome and I glad I spent a day or two figuring it out. I don't get noticeable lag and I can stream pretty much any game to my living room on the TV now. Also got a "Couchmaster" for a kb/mouse setup. I can also emulate things like Wii U games and stream them remotely to the TV like having an actual system.

Hope this helps.

Thoroughly helpful, thank you kindly. Bookmarked.

> but I'm guessing shield has the same limitation

You can launch the games directly from the Shield if they appear in GeForce Now on your PC. They usually show up automatically, the only issue being UWP games (like Hellblade I mentioned early), the workaround there is to create a normal shortcut to the game and add that to GeForce, manually.

I use an Nvidia Shield with a GTX 1080 graphics card. The PC is wired to the router through a switch, the Shield is on 5GHz wifi, I use a wired controller. My router is an Archer C7. I feel like there's a slight but noticeable input lag when playing on TV and my framerates are a bit worse. For most games it's ok but for twitchy games, say, Furi or Dark Souls, it's annoying.

The Shield network troubleshooter tells me I have 1ms latency even on wifi but still, maybe it would be better wired. I have no easy way to run an ethernet cable to the TV.

Many thanks.

Update: turns out Gamestream forces the resolution to 1080p, I'm looking into ways to try 1440p or even 2160p.

It's still the best gaming-on-TV experience out of the stuff I have in my TV cabinet (PS4 Pro and Xbox One). It's not an higher resolution, but render quality is way better and it has a much more stable framerate. Too bad it's noisier than even the ps4 :D

I have an extremely similar setup as you, however I will note that the quality of android TV apps seems to be rather lacking. Specifically Spotify will randomly disconnect from my phone and stop and Prime Video cannot play UHD video properly (displaying a warning saying to update the app when I’m on the latest version). These are two apps I tend to use frequently on other devices so it’s super annoying that they don’t work. Of course I can use my Samsung TVs built in apps but that defeats the purpose of owning the shield.

While I’m at it I may as well complain about the google assistant support using my home mini. While nvidia advertises this as a feature, it often works much worse than it did on my cheap old chromecast so that’s quite disappointing. For example, the shield will launch the Netflix overview for a show when asked to play it but won’t actually start the show until you wait for the auto preview to start or you explicitly ask it to press play.

Overall, I guess I’m just not as thrilled with this device as everyone else seems to be. I kind of wish I had just gone with the Apple TV at this point so that I could ditch airplay on my TV which is the only reason I have it connected to the internet at all.

I had my ks8000 for 2 years before it hit the dreaded green lines which seem to be common on Reddit. 1500 dollar top of the line TV that hardly lasted.

Luckily, Samsung was awesome about it and I was able to RMA through Best Buy, who just gave me my money back. I took that cash, put a bit on top, and bought an LG OLED. Best decision ever. OLED is absolutely dominant in TVs these days.

It's even worse when the ad server is down: it will completely lock-up your TV and you can't even watch it anymore. In the best case it makes it excruciatingly slow. That's why I turned off networking on my SmartTV already a year or two ago. No ads, works as a TV should.

I hope someone will figure out how to serve them fake 1-second black screen ads from your Pi-hole.

+1 have Samsung TV(s), never connected to internet, never will.

I just fear they will start doing Internet via TV box via HDMI... it will be time to cancel that too, or use it via VGA converter.

a lot of people don't know that HDMI can carry the equivalent of 100BaseTX Ethernet, which is definitely a threat in this scenario.

That's another design flaw of this terrible mess that is "Ethernet" and these horrible protocols that we cannot change ever

AFAICT this works over the same pin that could carry ARC which is arguably more useful to most people and usually available at least on one port. However, devices could also communicate via DDC or CEC too although rather low bandwidth is available it could be enough for some telemetry. Its probably possible to do this via HDMI info frames too somehow... or via direct wireless connections between these devices or infrared or.... the point is there are quite some ways to achieve communication between connected devices already without it.

> Its probably possible to do this via HDMI info frames too somehow

These only flow in one direction though - from the source to the sink

true, haven't thought this through apparently ^^

There have been rumors about TVs connecting to open wireless networks.

Slightly off topic : the message displayed when visiting that page with javascript turned off is hilarious :

> Your browser is not Javascript enable or you have turn it off. We recommend you to activate for better security reason@SYSLOG: INTERNAL ERROR[2]

Oh well, if it's for better security reason, then… /s

Sometimes I wish there was a suckless for everything.

Gimme a boring TV with open firmware so I can flash it with Linux or better yet, no need for firmware, just a few video ports and a power switch. I'll feed it with my video signal of choice.

Then a phone with stock android or ability to flash Linux or whatever with hardware kill switches because you cant trust anything electronic these days.

Then I'll take a car with a steering wheel, two pedals and a double din opening on the dash and some HVAC topped off with a downloadable service manual right from the manufactures website please.

I'm tired of feeling this technology anxiety where I'm supposed to just give up my rights and dignity and capitulate to the corporate gods. Go away already.

This is what I'm hoping for. All I want is a TV running Kodi. Combined with Plex and a freeview/freesat TV card and I'd be all set.

You should absolutely never give your 'smart' television the wifi password or plug it into a cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Use the things as dumb displays driven by an xbox or PS4 or a home theater PC.

Yes, the xbox and PS4 home screens have 'ads' (promoted games and stuff mostly), but they're not 1/10th as annoying in my opinion. And Microsoft and Sony have a much higher likelihood of keeping the operating systems properly patched and up to date on a 5, 10 year time scale.

Or just use a chromecast

Yeah let google serve you ads and sell your info, not Samsung or LG or Sony

I never saw an ad with Chromecast, and I use it basically since it's inception.

Sure no ads, except they're still tracking you to display ads on their other platforms. YouTube included.

This maybe true, but Google Ads even on YouTube is way less invasive than Samsung ones. And BTW, YouTube Premium disable all ads, while there is no way to have a ad-free experience on Samsung.

> You should absolutely never give your 'smart' television the wifi password or plug it into a cable that will give it a DHCP lease. Use the things as dumb displays driven by an xbox or PS4 or a home theater PC.

1. why?

2. the ps4/xbox pale in comparison to my lg's apps. functionalities, quality of streams, the voice search. they're all much better on the lg apps.

Get an NVidea shield. Better than the tv's apps.

When I bought my LG TV a few years back it did the same. The ads were mostly for apps you can download on the LG app store (so no yoghurts or anything). But they were still annoying enough for me to look into the DNS queries the TV does and block some of them. In case it's useful for some of you, here's what I found out and ended up blocking:

  - vcfd1.giraffic.net, vcfd2.giraffic.net: adaptive Video acceleration (seems to be used for internet TV)
  - GB.lgtvsdp.com, ngfts.lge.com: don't know what this does.
  - GB.ibs.lgappstv.com: needed to download apps and updates
  - snu.lge.com: used to check for software updates?
  - lgtvonline.lge.com: likely for the TV recommendations feature that remembers what you watch and gives you recommendations based on it
  - GB.info.lgsmartad.com: ads
  - yahoo.com: no idea why the TV needs to talk to yahoo. Blocked.
  - facebook.com: why!? Blocked.

> facebook.com: why!? Blocked.

I'm shocked that you don't want facebook to know your viewing habits to show you more relevant ads. Its a feature to improve the ad experience for the users.

Do they wait with showing ads, say a month or so, until after the common return policy for most stores have expired? That would be a really evil thing to do, just struck my mind.

Also, sounds like a case of optimization creep - "I know a way to get even more revenue, we just sign up with this $more_shady_ad_network!". Displaying more and more creepy ads, no-one decreasing ads since they don't want to be the one decreasing ad revenue.

> Do they wait with showing ads, say a month or so, until after the common return policy for most stores have expired?

What? A month? Sale of goods act.

Sorry, don't where you're at. Over here, it's commonly a month return policy of most stores (no law setting this, it's a voluntary thing).

Then there's quite generous warranty for 2 years, up to 3 years, but that's when things break.

In addition, I think this also includes if a sold item is unfit for advertised use, or perhaps even if substantially changed during ownership (eg Samsung mandatorily introducing ads), but I've never had to use that so don't know).

> Then there's quite generous warranty for 2 years, up to 3 years, but that's when things break.

I disagree with describing this as 'generous'. A TV manufacturer should guarantee that the TV will not develop a manufacturing defect for a minimum of 3 years, if not longer. I have CRTs that lasted decades (plural) without issue, while I've had multiple LCDs fail in under a decade.

There's nothing generous going on here, they're systematically making inferior products in order to drive an increase in sales.

They retrospectively updated panels going back to 2016 to "improve" the experience. Truly evil shit.

Do they have the right to do that? Do customers in any country have a right to demand a product's firmware be restored to factory-state (on the grounds that what they received isn't what they were sold)?

Even though if customers do have that right, I'd like to see how many % of the regular users actually demand it.

You have no idea how much I want Apple to be forced to allow me to restore my iPhone to its original firmware!

Sure, but we're on HN. The discussion here definitely doesn't reflect the general audience where 99% of the people aren't tech savvy and don't even know what a firmware is.

I’ve used Australian consumer affairs laws to return products well outside the return date when they’ve been updated to remove/modify features I specifically wanted.

I returned a Bose speaker when it stopped letting you cast to it without their app, and have returned my Ring external camera when they removed customisable motion zones (I need to block a specific tree that moves in the wind). Plus more.

I’ve never had a problem doing so, I’m always polite and just explain that it’s no longer as advertised and print out the product update notes showing that they removed/changed x or y feature.

That's especially funny because Samsung TVs don't get feature updates.

I purchased a Samsung TV about two years ago for $1,200. It was my first 4K TV and I loved it. I made the purchase around the same time I dropped my cable subscription, I just couldn't stand the advertisements anymore.

The panel was thin (with almost no bezels), the picture quality was superb and I was sold on the "Smart TV" features like having built in access to Netflix, etc. For a while it was great, then I noticed the ads showing up on the bottom left of the bottom menu. Now my TV is as slow as molasses and I hate it. Picture quality is still good, but Samsung ruined it with their software. I refuse to purchase another Samsung TV which really frustrates me because I love their panels.

I'm currently looking to disable the internet on it and use a Fire Stick, Roku, or other. Anyone have any suggestions?

You could try using a pi-hole as your DNS server on your local network to block ads across all connected devices.

https://pi-hole.net/

reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074827

The pihole is nice, but isn’t a silver bullet. I have a roku tv, I hate it, but I think I hate it less then I would hate another smart tv like Samsung or LG. No cameras or built in microphone- although the remote does have a microphone, but I imagine it would kill the batteries quickly if it was listening when it’s not supposed to. Anyways, to add some context, the roku has ads too, the external roku devices do too. The fire sticks also have ads. I run a little hosts blocklist project [0] and recently had a interesting ticket about blocking the roku ads [1]. What it boiled down to is blocking a couple more domains and setting up your home firewall to prevent the TV from bypassing your pihole and talking directly with 8.8.8.8. Given DoH, who knows how long this option will be viable. I don’t watch TV, but my next big Entertainment purchase will probably be an Apple TV and I’ll remove the TV from the network completely. There are no open wifi connections in my area, so not too worried about it connecting to another network.

[0] https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/

[1] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/issues/230

Software and hardware are increasingly hardcoding DNS servers. If you do use it, block DNS requests from all clients except your pi-hole on your router.

Also, be aware that systems can still try and resolve IPs using a different mechanism (e.g. if too many people start DNS blocking) or worse hardcode IPs. Pi-hole cannot sort those out. You'll need a more advanced firewall. Something like pfsense or the like.

I actually had an old Pi laying around. Just setup pi-hole and giving it a try now. Thanks for the tip!

Depends on how complicated you want things to be.

I recently bought a Sony TV, it's an amazing display but I have zero patience for their janky android flavoured UI.

I never setup wifi, I have 3x HDMI ports connected:

1x port for a cable set top box

1x port with a raspberry pi running OSMC

1x port with a google Chromecast

I will use the cable for local news or documentaries. For Youtube/Netflix/Spotify streaming, I will use the Chromecast dongle. I use the OSMC media center for torrents, internet radio and some live TV channels from my home country.

It sounds convoluted but I find it easier to just toogle HDMI ports and have a solution that is optimal for I want to do, rather than to try use any of the solutions out there that claim they can do everything but end up falling short.

The core problem is that the companies that make these things are not being controlled by good regulation.

200 years ago it was probably legal for a food company to put a bit of cocaine in the food to make it more addictive. Nowadays I think you would go to jail for that.

Similarly, if we ever make it to the year 2220, the act of making a product that forces users to view certain content or that spies on users will be something you go to jail for, not something that gets you a promotion.

All the technical fixes that people are proposing (disconnect internet, pi hole, etc) are bandaid solutions and eventually the companies will bother to break those fixes. The company is a million times more powerful than any given individual and individuals are uncoordinated, so absent regulation the individuals will maximally lose the game - Black-Mirror-esque

TVs have gone completely the opposite direction of what I dreamed of.

On top of all these ads and snooping, there are so few TVs with a smooth, responsive UI. Seriously, even in top brands the UI chugs along at a snail's pace. And most of the time the UI design itself is terrible.

Who cares about 8K if the UI takes 8 seconds to load.

My "smart" TV takes a good seven or eight seconds to recognise that I'm madly trying to turn the volume down after turning the TV on because the last thing the kids watched was so quiet they had to turn the volume way up.

Volume controls used to be instantaneous. Why the degradation of user experience alongside incredible progress in technology?

I don't understand destroying your brand like this. Samsung from the early 2000s to ~2015 meant quality. Is it worth the short term gains from ad revenue over long term customer loyalty?

I myself was a pretty loyal customer up until very recently when it came time to buy a TV and I specifically wanted one without ads ruining the experience.

I'm reasonably certain this will make this many peoples last Samsung TV.

It's absolutely certain. I'm in the market for new, high-end OLED or equivalent TV. There is no way in hell I'm ever buying a Samsung, under any circumstances, ever.

Their corporate executives clearly have no ethics whatsoever.

But that's not the only problem. My coworkers have been to Samsung's headquarters and worked on their core IT infrastructure. They both rattled off an endless horror show of security lapses and outright violations of common sense that would make your eyes pop out of your head.

There is zero chance that your data is "safe" with Samsung. None. They will get hacked. They're almost certainly hacked already, and don't know it. Or they know it and simply don't care.

You're safe, Samsung doesn't even make OLED televisions! However all OLED TVs on the market do come with smart features and adware, so maybe not so safe after all.

Hilariously, Samsung Display has just invested over $10B in new plants to make next-generation RGB OLED displays, but Samsung Vision -- the subsidiary that makes the actual televisions -- has spent so much money touting their QLED technology as superior to OLED that they don't want to use the panels made by Samsung Display.

So I might end up buying a Samsung OLED panel, but not in the form of a Samsung Television.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy phone and one thing I've noticed is that almost all the stock apps (Samsung Health, Samsung Music, Galaxy Store, etc.) have ads. Their apps are actually kinda nice, but the ads are a huge turn off.

Yeah, this is super annoying, especially considering I bought an expensive flagship model.

My s8 will be my last Samsung phone unless they stop shoving ads into everything.

I have a Samsung Galaxy phone and there are ads on my home screen. Luckily it's only a work phone that I haven't had to look at in several years.

I would never personally buy any product from Samsung at this point.

Yet another example of the customer coming last. Are TV's that force ads on customers heavily discounted? If not, the manufacturers are earning extra revenue while the customer loses their privacy and gets nothing in return other than annoyance.

It's a good illustration of why privacy is so complicated: most people wouldn't think that in buying a TV they're compromising their privacy because they don't know about ACR and such. The manufacturers, of course, know all about it, but it's not in their interest to share the information - specifically, to do so in a way that empowers the consumer to make an educated decision at purchase time. (Or am I wrong and they do in fact explain everything "on the box"? I haven't had to buy a TV in a long time.)

This is so stupid. When I bought my TV it didn't behave like this, but now for some stupid reason I need to get ads on it?

I mean, normal TV it's 90% ads 10% content, do we need to watch even more ads?

Anyone has any idea on how adding a filter like AdBlocker to your router? Never thought about this but it's getting useful af.

Pi-Hole would probably do the trick: https://pi-hole.net/

Yes, that works! I have a Samsung Frame + PiHole. Incredible amount of network requests are blocked now.

i tried blocking DNS or whitelisting and you probably see that large amount of blocked requests because it tries like every second if you refuse the response.

Just an fyi, it's good to setup firewall redirection from suspicious devices as well.

For my Roku I have setup a redirection for all DNS port queries to my pihole as some app developers are getting wise to this and using their own DNS.

It won't be long until they encrypt this traffic and lock us out completely though.

https://pi-hole.net/ ?

The future is https://imgur.com/H9dd3B1

I do this and it's been somewhat useful - you need to disable blackhole rules periodically to get app updates though (and the TV will send a storm of DNS queries your way if you dare to block queries)

Frustratingly, recently the latest Plex app stopped working with the block rules I had in place, so I've had to allow through a lot more of the TV's traffic to samsung domains than I'd like.

My primary annoyance is Samsung's monitoring of what I do on my TV, and secondarily their IPTV service, which it seems to default to on startup (I only use apps and PC/game console sources, the TV isn't plugged into or tuned for any channels).

Realistically I need to switch to a Shield TV and hope that nVidia's privacy policies are better... and never buy a samsung tv ever again.

The Shield TV runs Android TV, so you are just moving your point of trust to Google instead...

Given the privacy angle, I expect they won't do ACR in Europe. Because that would require asking permission and the courts have ruled that "free and explicit consent" means the user must be able to say no. Otherwise it doesn't count as consent and the massive GDPR fines come into play.

For all the bad press it got, I'm happy to have GDPR because it very firmly puts the consumers in control of their data.

Enforcement isn't fully there yet, but with Oracle getting sued and pulling the plug on the European side of their Blukai data sales business things are moving in the right direction.

My new LG CX tv has an option in the settings for this (in Norway) so I can just turn it of.

My old Sony Bravia with android tv didn't even honour my DHCP DNS settings so I made the firewall reroute all the requests to my internal dns for "pi-holeing".

GDPR is a massive win for consumers, enforcement will come it just takes time :)

    Yet another example of the customer coming last.

Unfortunately, it's worse than that. It's more like a case of the consumer coming first.

The vast majority of consumers don't care about this. They're trying to get the biggest screen for the least money. And TV manufacturers are giving it to them.

However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue. So, we get TVs with ads.

This isn't a dystopian thing forced upon us by evil TV manufacturers. This is a dystopian thing we've asked for.

> The vast majority of consumers don't care about this.

You may be right, but how exactly is someone meant to make an informed decision when they don't know what their TV is doing? It's unreasonable to expect the average person on the street to be an expert on the subject and to have fully researched everything before walking into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say anything about the subject, how do they learn?

> However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue.

Which other TVs are you referring to? And is this really the case or are you speculating? Surely a company the size of Samsung can be competitive without having to resort to this sort of activity?

    It's unreasonable to expect the average person 
    on the street to be an expert on the subject and 
    to have fully researched everything before walking 
    into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say 
    anything about the subject, how do they learn?

I 100% agree with you that the current solution stinks and is unfair.

The solution depends on who you ask.

Some would say that it's up to the consumer to be educated. Like you, I don't think this is realistic. It's not realistic to expect every consumer to become an expert in the nuances of every single thing they might buy.

Others would say that if it's really important to customers, we'll vote with our dollars and demand alternatives to the current situation.

Some would say that the government should ban the practice or at least require some sort of very clear disclosure.

What would you like to see?

Not really. We are asking for TVs without internet access, but the market has decided for us.

"We" are a tiny minority.

The vast majority of people just don't care and want the most TV for the least money.

It's a "tyranny of the majority" kind of situation. For TV manufacturers, it's not worth catering to the tiny minority of customers who think like us.

How do you know that? I am going to go out on a limb here and say you have not done background research on TV manufacturers who focus exclusively on inexpensive dumb TVs, so how can you know it's not worth it to them?

It is entirely possible there are other factors as to why we are not buying from them right now, such as supplier-related issues unbeknownst to us.

In short, the economy is more complex than claiming "demand" and saying we are done.

I have almost never heard anybody outside of the tech world express concern about this sort of data collection, and even most tech-savvy people I know explicitly reject the idea of caring about it.

Yes, admittedly this is anecdotal, but I am talking about an extended family/social circle of hundreds of people over the course of quite a few years. The odds of it being a massively unrepresentative sample are rather low.

Let's turn it around. How do you know that people are concerned about data collection?

All available evidence points to my assertion being correct. All sorts of "smart" devices, chock full of phone-home tracking, are flying off the shelves. There are alternatives, but they are quite niche.

I am not talking about the demand for privacy, I am talking about the demand for dumb, inexpensive TVs. You are saying it is impossible to find a market that needs dumb, inexpensive TVs. But suppose all of those people saw an option for a cheaper TV that happened to be dumb. This line could even be sold by a major brand. Call it something like a "SimplySmart" line.

Ah, I see the misunderstanding.

The "smart" functionality is how they achieve low prices. They subsidize the cost of the TV by selling your usage data. They may have deals with app providers as well - similar to how the price of a consumer laptop is subsidized by preloaded crapware.

Come to think of it, I believe those brands for dumb, cheaper TVs exist. Check out Sceptre TVs. I will make sure I grab one for my next replacement.

Suppose we were onto something?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24666968

And this is why I will never get a samsung TV again. When in the market for a new TV, I wanted a OLED and the salesperson kept pointing me towards samsung and its offerings saying they are superior to everyone else. As I had come from a Samsung and started to get ads popping up that I could not disable I realized this was a brand I needed to avoid like the plague. I ended up with a LG and have been enjoying the TV with no pop ups.

As a side note, they do not make a "dumb" TV anymore. I feel like this is a huge market opportunity for a manufacturer to make one as I and many others would be very interested in one. I don't want google play or any tracking crapware on my TV and can gate these things with either apple TV or Roku/media server.

Exactly this happened to me. We bought the TV and for years things were great. Really loved the functionality of the smart TV. Being able to stream YouTube at a moments notice was great.

But then the adverts started. We paid $3000 for this TV. Not a low end “ad-supported tv” The only way to “opt out” is to disable the “smart” TV function which I have done. Any smarts now comes from my Apple TV which does not thrust averts in my face. Needless to say, my last Samsung purchase ever.

You can disable ads but the checkbox is deeply buried in the support menu page. Also the preference is reset every time Samsung update the T&C (more or less once a month). I added 6 Samsung domains to my Pi-Hole blacklist [1], domains that are queried dozens of times a day.

[1] https://gist.github.com/zaerl/e3c24a9c21e5c15138e92a43ccd534...

For lazier or less technically inclined people: https://NextDNS.io.

One click and no more ads:

https://kennis.cc/public_uploads/d22bcaaf.jpeg

Where exactly can you choose this through the desktop ui?

It’s in the Privacy tab below the blacklists.

It's not just ads. "Smart" TVs can also capture what you see and send that information home.

Yes, and based on my research, Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic all connect to NetEase servers in China, if you grant them internet access.

It does not matter if it's China, Hawaii or Timbuktu, it's wrong in any case. I can understand somehow western people sinophobia as they will be displaced as "owners of the world" in the next 50-100 years but if I were a "western" citizen now and were given a forced choice between China or my government having my digital data I would choose China every single time. Same reason for a Chinese citizen to choose Germany and not China for example.

While I agree with you, the traffic to China did stand out in my router log enough for me to notice this. Had they used Amazon Aws, I might have never investigated.

Plus, this is how I learned that Phillips is just a brand of a Chinese company now.

And where the regions do get relevant again is for the legality of it. If it's an EU company doing such data extraction, they would be swiftly punished for it. Same I presume for the US. So I would assume that they are using a Chinese intermediary for the data to avoid / delay the legal consequences from it.

> If it's an EU company doing such data extraction, they would be swiftly punished for it. Same I presume for the US.

I love your optimism. Will a random company be punished? Probably, will a powerful company or more importantly a government agency be meaningfully punished and forced to desist? Never in a million years.

The OP blog post taka about that. It's called ACR

The problem I see with these companies, where HW is the focus and not SW, is that their tech stack is a joke. I have no faith in their security models, or their ability to protect my privacy. These features always feel like they have been just added on with little thought of the surrounding environment. Anyone who has developed a Tizen, LG webOS, Visio app, will understand what I am mean. The platforms have significant variations between model years, and developers are flat out told that features will not be fixed on 2-3 year old TVs. This seems insane considering the level of trust they ask from their customer.

Buyer BEWARE!

I have recently bought my first ever TV. A samsung The Serif 2019. Last years model because cheap. Amazing picture. Nice design. Absolutely shitty software

- This thing has an anti virus scanner installed

- There is a task manager that shows you the current cpu and memory consumption

- Disabling automatic brightness adaption requires you to enter the debug menu which you can only enter via a normal remote and not the included smart remote (which costs 50 to replace and does not have any number keys!). So I had to buy one off amazon. If you don’t do that you _will_ notice annoying brightness changes.

- Oh and also disable everything with auto or smart in the picture settings

I bought an AppleTV even before the Samsung arrived. Worth it.

And friends don’t let friends connect their TVs to WiFi

Pro tip: if your work uses TVs in meeting rooms and the font looks weird, adjust the sharpness.

After I found that out everything in previous meeting rooms made sense. When you unbox a normal TV for computer use you gotta turn down the sharpness and nobody does

For those who use piHole or other network wide ad blocking, I've compiled a list of servers to block: https://factory-reset.com/wiki/Samsung_Telemetry_Servers

Curious to see what HN users believe is the best smart TV to buy in terms of OS functionality, privacy and user experience?

Any tv, but you do not connect it to an internet and get an apple tv to do it instead.

Whatever has the best panel for the best price, then strap an apple TV (or your choice of NUC) onto it and completely ignore whatever on-board smarts exist.

The biggest drawback to this is the lack of support for 4K in the YouTube app on Apple TV.

And that the YouTube app forces its ads and shitty recommendations down your throat. A NUC running Kodi sounds nicer. (Yeah, yeah, pi-hole. It’s a bandaid, IMHO)

Also, Apple‘s streaming services being ever more annoyingly shoved in your face on menu screens.

it doesn't have any ads if you buy Youtube Premium

This requires accepting their ToS & "privacy" policy and providing validated billing data to Google, an advertising company already stalking everything you do on the web.

Some people might not be comfortable with this, or not even trust them to begin with. I personally don't mind paying but there's no way in hell I am providing any personal information to Google.

Pihole cannot block youtube ads. You need uBlock, that can block parts of DOM tree inside a page, knowing hosts is not enough.

Pine and others have an opportunity to pair with Kodi, like Pine did with UBPorts and etc. to market a Kodi device.

I think a simple Youtube-dl + web based front end that can run on a Raspberry Pi would be a great way to help lots of people bypass YouTube.com/apps, make it as simple as PiHole for users to get going. Have it organize files in a way that would allow clients like Plex to easily access that content. Easy 4k + ad-free content on any device.

YouTube app is supposed to support 4k on tvOS 14. I don't know if Google already updated the app or not.

This is the only reasonable solution. I've got an OLED LG "TV", connected to an Apple TV and a receiver for proper audio (using HDMI ARC).

To turn everything on, I press a button on the Apple TV remote and everything is up and running within five seconds or so (from standby/sleep mode). Powering off the Apple TV also turns off the display and the receiver via HDMI CEC.

Edit: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/power-on.mov

I found that my receiver was still using 50W while in "CEC-ready standby", while it's only 2W in normal standby, so I never use it. I'll just press a few more buttons.

That's incredible. 50W is wholy unnacceptable.

Indeed unacceptable. That figure is quite comparable to S1 sleeping state of a desktop. Whereas a computer consumes ~10W in S3 state and can even wake up out of that when triggered by LAN.

Any reason why an Apple TV and not a Roku or a Chromecast?

Roku and Chromecast do the same BS as smart TVs

...do they?

I have a Chromecast and have never seen an ad.

They don't display ads on chromecast, they collect info for future ads there.

A large form factor monitor hooked up to a PC.

Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market are an alternative option to a large monitor, especially at larger sizes. They're less likely to spew advertising than consumer Smart TVs, but are probably less likely to stay clean than a monitor with no Internet connectivity.

I use a Linux PC as a media decode device. It works, but I have no interest in 4K (hardware video decode is sketchy on Linux, which makes 4K difficult) or paid streaming services (if I wanted to watch sewage I'd take up urban exploration into wastewater facilities).

    Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market 
    are an alternative option to a large monitor, 
    especially at larger sizes

Do you have experience running one of these? I'm very curious about the pros and cons.

I've seen it mentioned that they tend to lack features like HDR and may not have remote controls. Any other downsides?

I would be fine with the lack of a remote, and probably even HDR. I would also be willing to pay a bit of a premium over consumer TVs.

However, information on these displays is pretty tough to come by. I browse home theater type forums/subreddits from time to time and don't see people really talking about using them in the home.

They are extremely expensive (however they are built tougher and are designed to stay on 24/24 for years) and indeed lack a lot of consumer-grade features like HDR. They are also hard to actually find & buy, you need to get them shipped and that will add another ~100 bucks to the price.

I guess image quality and response time might be sub-par too compared to a top-of-the-line consumer-grade TV.

They often have serial ports behind them, that serves as the remote control. They may support HDMI CEC for it as well?

No experience running them, but looking at samsung digital signage, HDR looks to be a feature of their high end models and extremely expensive. ~$4,500 for a 55" 4K TV [0]. The more competitively priced displays[1] (~$1300 for 70" 4K) don't seem to offer it.

[0]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/pro-tv...

[1]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

I think street prices might be quite a bit lower than what we're seeing on Samsung's site.

Amazon has a bunch of affordable models from Samsung. Haven't clicked through them all but here's a 65" with HDR for $600.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Business-Software-Speakers-LH...

However, it's probably not the sort of "dumb" TV we want:

    Setup your TV with custom content quickly 
    and easily using the Biz TV app - available 
    for Android and iOS

Seems like this is interfacing with some sort of app on the TV, so I suppose it's not a dumb display.

Any TV, as long as you don't connect it to wifi/ethernet. I've been using Roku throughout my house with a home DNS server set to block all roku analytics/log servers. No interface/app issues thus far (about a year now on 4 TVs)

edit: Also, aside from netflix, a local plex server with rtorrent/irssi to auto-download tv series I followl

I have a GSYNC LG OLED who has never had internet and it's connected to a barebone PC.

Sceptre TVs.

They are not "smart", but less is better, so in terms of OS functionaliry, privacy, and user experience; they top the charts.

This is also why I refuse to use any Samsung product if I can avoid it. I was an early adopter of 4K and their tvs at the time were very expensive. Those tvs ended up getting ads patched in - and even if you "opted out" of the yahoo agreement they still found ways to advertise by using the system notifications to push gamespot. Of course Samsung denied it which was the final straw for me. Plus all of their fridges have a known issue they refuse to fix (there's a class action lawsuit over it).

It's kinda sad that people are just now noticing how bad the ads are. They were bad back 6+ years ago - especially when they tried to sneak ads into videos played back from plex.

I’ll hazard that this class of decision is entirely because enterprise success is determined by movement of the share price which requires continuous growth. It’s not enough to have a wildly successful product and a wildly successful company but constant growth is required to be seen as a success.

That’s the only way I see a golden goose killing ux change making into one of the industry leading products in a cut throat ever changing sector.

I’ll now browse the comments to see if any other plausible explanations have been presented.

I bought one of these TV's without realizing it would serve ads. It was a high end model that cost enough that I had no reasonable expectation that Samsung would try to make an additional 10 bucks off of me by showing me ads, but here we are.

The good news is you can block the ads. Here are some domains I've blocked in my router. They might not all be necessary to block, but they don't seem to break anything else (except perhaps Disney+) and they do stop the ads from appearing.

(Note: The only ad I was seeing was an additional ad box that was inserted as one of the sources on the source selector. It was only an issue if you were going from display to the TV's settings because it had inserted itself in between the two, and you could accidentally click on it. Blocking the following domains got rid of This.)

samsungads.com

ads.samsung.com

www.samsungotn.net

www.samsungrm.net

gpm.samsungqbe.com

samsungacr.com

samsungcloudsolution.com

samsungcloudsolution.net

samsungotn.net

The bad news is that the Disney+ app may not function properly if you block these domains. The obvious workaround is to use Disney+ from a browser, but that produces surprising results with this TV. Certain video sources, such as Disney+ or the trailers on IMDB, cause my Samsung TV to flash the following message:

"We are adjusting the picture quality for you to experience a better uhd screen. You can change the settings in Settings > General > External Device Manager > HDMI UHD color"

The screen then goes black and the only way to restore function is to unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in. Very annoying.

The message describes settings that exist in the TV's configuration exactly as described, so it's definitely an error message produced by the TV set. Unfortunately, the settings referenced do nothing to eliminate this bug.

I've contacted Samsung's tech support a couple of times and they're utterly clueless about this issue. (Note: Not many people may report this error message because if flashes so fast that you need to photograph the screen in order to read it, and you have to have fast reflexes to do even that!)

All in all, despite the quality of the screen, these unresolved issues mean I will probably not buy another Samsung TV and recommend that others avoid this brand as well.

I recently purchased a Samsung Smart TV. I pretty much just plugged in our 4k Fire Stick TV and we use that, bypassing all of the built in stuff which was a bit confusing to navigate and had significant lag between button press and UI reaction.

Who could have predicted that putting an android OS and an internet connection in a device that should only function as a display would have negative consequences?

At this point, is it even possible to buy a high quality tv that isn't a smart tv? And will these smart TVs work properly if you keep them disconnected from the internet?

(Side note: this is why TVs are so much cheaper now, isn't it?)

There are huge communities of awesome hackers who support build and support operating systems and firmware for phones and routers. Does anything like that exist for so-called "smart" TVs?

There have been around 2010, Samygo and OpenLGtv have been mentioned elsewhere. But they are all bitrotten now, and not applicable to current models anyways.

I know folks will totally TRASH apple if they did a walled garden TV - but for some of us we'd probably pay the extra just not to have to deal with / worry about the random scammers doing things like this. And I call this a scam when you spend this amount of money and the box doesn't have in bold letters (popover ads!).

Bought a new Samsung TV. Connect ethernet cable. Update firmware. Disconnect ethernet cable. Connect Apple TV.

The end.

Smart TVs can go to hell. Arguably updating the firmware wasn't even worth doing but whatever.

What happened to just buying a "normal" TV? No internet needed or anything?

Seems dumb. Seeing this link has already made me to decide I actually won't buy a Samsung tv. I'll just get something else.

If we truly go the road of the dodo, I'll just make a side business rewiring "smart" tvs.

Two issues, one is cost – TV's are expensive as is, so consumers don't want to spend extra to purchase a standalone set-top box right after spending a large amount.

Second issue is that the average consumer wants smart TV's – they like that everything is integrated in the TV. Less remotes, less cabling etc.

As someone who doesn't really use the "smarts" on my smart TV, I'd quite like a well engineered (hardware + software), privacy preserving, smart TV. I see the appeal of an all-integrated solution. But none exists; most of the time the software is either garbage, or runs as if it was meant to run on hardware a few generations in the future. And as for privacy... sadly, few on both sides of the market prioritise it :(

Sceptre TVs are "normal" (aka "dumb") and even do 4K.

Unfortunately they probably don't get the extra revenue from ads to be able to get placement in stores like Best Buy.

An additional benefit is that you get to log internet traffic and get shocked as you find out what your devices are really up to.

To block ads that are served over whitelisted / not blocked domains I’d need some kind of deep packet inspection. I’m not sure this kind of filtering even exists / would work as a lot of the ad traffic I see is served over https.

Is there anything to stop devices from establishing a VPN connection?

I imagine that would be the next logical step that device manufactures will go to to combat consumers setting up pi-holes.

No, something that uses an encrypted tunnelling protocol like IPsec would hide its communications. You wouldn’t be able to spoof the server either due to IPsec’s authentication capabilities.

You could stop the device from initiating a tunnel by blocking the appropriate ports and protocols.

Although if I found out a device was going to these lengths and wasn’t open source, I don’t think I’d want it on my network.

Simple slution: don't buy "Smart" TVs, And the day all TVs will be "Smart" just don't connect them to the Internet (and don't leave open hotspots nearby or they'll do by themselves). They're becoming business platforms rather than devices the user can control, just like "Smart" phones and computers with non free operating systems.

Anyone remembers that TV screen in the wonderful Idiocracy docu... er.. movie? That is going to happen, soon or later.

https://i2.wp.com/scifiinterfaces.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Prrrrhhhhrrrrpft (splatter...)

Excellent capture! Personally I'd wish for a "fan-edit" of that, melded with Wall-E :)

There used to be open source firmware for Samsung TVs called SamyGo, it would be great if it were ported to newer ones so the ads could be replaced with Kodi or similar.

https://www.samygo.tv/

this is merely a modification of the original software on the TV which is achieved by gaining root access on it which is currently not easily possible on more recent models.

I don't see any recent TV-specific CVEs for Samsung but it would be surprising if none exist.

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=Samsung

As much as Apple can be annoying for developers, at least they have been pro consumer in certain areas:

-AppleTV will not do this, and likely never will -iPhones do not have ads all over them put in place by the carriers (I still can’t believe this happened)

Our Samsung TV in our living room has been unplugged for about three months. I wanted to give it to charity and have new “plant friendly” shelves installed instead of the TV nook, still need to talk my wife into that.

Before the great unplugging, I set the Internet connection on the TV to be to my iPhone. I almost never have my iPhone hotspot turned on, so I could do TV updates when needed, otherwise starve it for an Internet connection.

BTW, no TV works for us because we stream to my wife’s large iPad Pro and she bought a fancy stand that can position the iPad anywhere in space. We site next to each other and place the iPad just under three feet away. We like this setup.

One way to handle this is to get a privacy-oriented DNS service like NextDNS[1] which can block ads and trackers. Then put that in your TV's networks settings. My Samsung smart TV tries to send out a lot of these requests back to the mothership: https://i.imgur.com/wCMrI3B.png but the service blocks them.

[1]NextDNS https://nextdns.io/?from=rj4b2nfn

Side note. I own a fairly recent Samsung TV. I pay for Google Priemium so I can let my kid watch some shows from time to time. Pepa pig and what not.

The issue is the built in youtube app constantly had to be logged out and back in. Otherwise advertisements start to show. Sometimes as often as wcey 4 minutes. And they are the worst sorts of advertisements geared to kids to ask parents to buy pointless plastic shit.

I am failey sure this bug is not being fixed because it would lower somebodiws revenue, or metric.

Common reaction for this is that Samsung made a stupid decision and they are losing money because of this. Supporting evidence is anecdotal, personal experience.

I seriously doubt this is true. It's probably rational behaviour for Samsung to push this trend as far as it goes and then retreat a little if negative reaction shows in the bottom line. Or maybe limit the offending products to lower price category.

I am looking for a small non-smart TV for a workout area in my home. My last TV purchase was around 2010.

The options seem very limited. I may end up using a computer monitor with a streaming box and or a tv tumer card on an old computer. I already have a good OTA signal from an outdoor antenna that is used by the main TV in the house and can easily run a splitter.

Any low cost recommendations?

Craigslist usually has a bunch of dumb TVs for dirt cheap or free

Samsung makes great hardware but shit software. From TV to tablets to laptops

If it involves code it is going to be terrible for the customer.

At my work, I'm responsible for the procurement of IT equipment, and for our boardrooms, we only buy "digital signage" televisions. Essentially, dumb TVs because we don't want any of our data to leave our building. https://na.panasonic.com/us/audio-video-solutions/profession...

It's pricier, e.g. 55" 4k is $3000 CAD, but worth the privacy. We actually got some large ones at a discount because they were all 1080p, and for meeting rooms, nobody needs Powerpoint or Word in 4K, so it was perfect. Just a thought if anyone is looking for good quality TV sets. I also think the limited warranty starts at 3 years.

I won't be buying a Samsung TV again. I have tried so hard to disable any autoplaying TV channels/adverts when you turn the TV on as they have been inappropriate for my kids. I went as far as pin locking every single channel. But give it a few weeks and it'll start auto playing content when you turn it on.

I couldn’t even tell you what brand my dumb 4k TV is, but i have it hooked up to my old Mac with a wireless keyboard and I’m very happy. I do not understand the appeal of a television who also controls content. Maybe I’m old school but this article confirmed my gut reaction to the concept

Expect more of this as users hold onto their devices for longer and services become increasingly important as a source of recurring revenue. Apple is uniquely positioned to weather this transition. The best way I can see forward for Samsung here is profit sharing with Google and Microsoft.

I've wondered for a bit now: Why isn't jailbreaking TV's a bigger thing? I know there are a few projects, but it isn't nearly as widespread as XBMC was back in the day, for example.

Then again, I don't have a TV for the exact reason listed in this article, I use a big monitor.

Internet of things is a huge antipattern.

I don’t remember where I read this, but a United Labs for information security is overdue.

It won’t directly help with ad injection, but I think the security implications will put a damper on some of this (the cost of maintaining their firmware which Samsung barely does).

This is why I will never buy another Samsung. The stupid TV keeps pushing Facebook and CBS apps in the "most recently used" apps; mind you I've NEVER used either. I delete them from the list and within a day they are back. Samsung = screw the user.

Don't buy a TV, buy a screen and connect it to your own media source. Preferably offline media. You can be a lot more deliberate about the content you consume and there won't be tracking (though there might still be ads in the media).

I read about these problems and they really only effect low information consumers.

Anyone that researches can get a TV without ads for hundreds of dollars.

I don't buy anything from Samsung, it sounds like a user issue. Samsung is notorious for being awful.

Top panels all have these "features" honey.. You can get a shit panel without ads or smarts...

"Top" seems pretty arbitrary it seems. Reminds me of people who call iPhone a Top phone despite lacking features and quality.

Price != performance

> they really only effect low information consumers.

I have a feeling that's about 95+% of consumers.

Can someone with 1st hand experience reassure me I would be able to use a commercial digital signage as a TV??

From what I learned so far the difficulties are: [please also correct me on these]

- stand is not included (need to buy that separately / do a wall mount)

- hard to find a seller

- prices are higher than for equivalent consumer TVs

- brightness is higher -> more power consumption

- there is no antenna (terrestial DVB-T/T2, satellite input) so you have to drive content from USB or PC / Raspberry / xxxCast dongle

The benefit is that you get a "dumb" panel with no spying, ads, software taking snapshots of what you watch. The TV is then also designed to last more hours - commercial panels are on 20h/day.

This is rather interesting. My biggest doubt is how many HDMI inputs they have and if it's possible to easily switch between them. But I'll definitely look into this kind of devices when it's time for me to update my current TV. (And no antenna input means the Italian law doesn't consider it a TV, so I can avoid the TV tax)

3 hdmi and a 1 displayport the one I have in front of me. It uses the same remote than the cheap domestic and hospitality ones.

I looked in to this about a year ago and found that many digital sign models either (a) omitted relatively basic features like HDR, HDMI ARC, or CEC or (b) weren’t 10% or even 50% higher priced, but 200-300% more (compared to fairly high-end consumer models, not to the cheapest consumer model).

Make sure they actually do what you want, even things that every consumer model has had for years. The situation may have improved in the last year. Also, I only looked at 82-85” models, so the situation may be better on smaller models.

The price premium is there but also plenty opportunities to shop around for a last year's model https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/ProductCategory/31784.h...

for example, Samsung QP82R is an 8k "TV" for €3500.

My worry is can I it decode all standard codecs from USB source? Apparently Samsung in 2017 removed DTS and DivX /Xvid support. Decoding on the TV is key as only then you get the best motion interpolation algorithms. Playing from Raspberry via HDMI you don't get these.

everything you said is more or less right, but not everything is a problem.

- There are more difficult to buy, as they are a b2b product, but on amazon they sell some models.

- brightness is higher, depending on the purpose of the monitor, there are monitors for sun facing storefronts, which are way brighter, but those also have fans and are noisier. The ones purposed for indoor are more or less the same brightness of the tvs, and sometimes have sensors for changing the brightness depending the environment, which is actually a plus. - no antenna, some offer iptv, and others actually are android or linux based, so you may even install some apps, but you must configure them manually so much easier to use an external player.

- they are tougher panels, but they are designed for showing ads and static content, so no dark blacks, less contrast and usually less colour gamut coverage.

- not many 4k panels, the are designed to see from a distance, so many are fhd instead of 4k.

- another drawback is that many doesn't have speakers, so you have to hook up your own sound system.

Anyway, I'm in front of a storefront samsung om55n and watched some content and it's ludicrous, at night and the room seems illuminated like during the day.

Samsung also has a business line of tvs, are more like the domestic ones but designed for longer operating times and you can configure them to show slideshows or to have a ticker overlaped. They use the same basic tizen system, but the home screes is different and I doubt you will find ads on them.

You don't need commercial signage. Sceptre TVs come with stands, Walmart sells them, price is average, has standard TV connectors and remote.

None of our monitors are connected to the Internet. We use them as dumb hdmi displays and that's it, for this and a lot of other reasons. On a side note, I'm just generally growing very dissatisfied with Samsung's business practices, and we've been pretty good customers of theirs. We have a Samsung fridge, and Samsung washer/dryer combo (all three of which are excellent products tbh). I'm on my fourth or fifth Samsung phone, but after several years of them trying to shove Bixby down my gullet along with a bunch of other stuff I don't want I think it will be my last.

i declined any agreement i could on a Samsung TV and it does not show those large banner ads to me but sometimes it shows some smaller ad near the source selection area. It looks like if you are paying enough you still get a spot there.

Whats more it constantly installs some partner apps and puts them for quick start into the menu sometimes removing the applications i actually use from there in the process. I prefer using these apps for Netflix and co but every time i plugged it into the ether i feel like i should not and a fear of it getting even worse somehow.

Block samsungads.com and config.samsungads.com on your router, if you can. That will get rid of the small ad near the source list.

Then, for the "Samsung Home" app that you can't move from spot number 1 that shows "Featured content" when you cursor over it, set up parental controls and lock access to that app. It will still be there, but it won't show anything when you navigate past it.

thanks for the tip but i will probably re-investigate using dnsmasq for whitelisting netflix and co using ipsets and nftables. it bothers me a bit having to set this up specifically for the TV but its probably worth it.

Maximizing profit is all about stretching people's tolerances up to the breaking point, making everything miserable for everyone except the few knucklehead's raking in the extra profits.

I have a 7 series TV and it came with some arguably bloatware apps but I could remove them (from the menu, not uninstall them, which leaves me with not even a few mb to install Spotify). The one thing I can't get rid of is a stupid program guide I have to go over when going from sources to settings. That's it so far. I'm in Europe and disagreed with any data collection they asked about.

Does it now even still do the ACR? Are they going to retroactively install me ads? Are there specific domain names one should block? Alternative firmwares?

I've only ever bought one Samsung product. It's a smart TV presumably meant to be used for Steam Link purposes. When it arrived and I turned it on, I found out that not only the Steam Link app was not available for my model, but it also had no Bluetooth support for controllers (only for audio devices???). I double checked the product page and it very clearly shows, to this date, steam Link and controller support. Obviously their customer support team didn't care.

Almost all Smart TVs have this type of ad in the home screen but the obtrusiveness varies. For my Roku Tv, it is a small banner on the left side that you can ignore easily and isn’t a huge deal. I bet it contributes very little revenue.

For all of them, their main money maker is ads on free video content. Most of them have a channel/section filled with free tv shows/movies (usuaully b level content) and they make the majority of their revenue showing ads on this content.

I switched over my router the other day and while I was debugging some minor issues I briefly had internet without Pi-Hole.

I was stunned by the prominence and intrusiveness by the ads on my Roku, even with already knowing it calls home several times a minute.

Once everything was back up and running things were back to normal. My setup is a dumb Spectre with a great screen with a Roku connected for Netflix and Plex/Jellyfin. Combined with a pi-hole it makes for a pretty clean experience.

Like probably most folks here, I block ads at the pihole, and rarely ever see them. I actually pay for YouTube so that they don't show my kids any ads when they're not on my network.

I don't think I'm buying things based on ads, at all, but the adtech guys would surely disagree. I also find it hard to square the near universal loathing of ads with the draw of Times Square. I too enjoyed the lights of the ads.

The ones in Times Square (probably) don’t spy on you (yet).

I've found that I prefer LG products over Samsung. I've had a number of LG phones and monitors that get down to business without too many bells, whistles, and other extras of questionable value. Samsung phones tend to be more 'customized'. I don't have specific/recent experience with either brands' TVs but seems to be in line with expectations.

Can those "smart" TV do ACR on content provided via HDMI? i.e. if I connect my apple TV to my intrusive smart TV, does it do ACR on the signal it receives via HDMI?

At home I don't have a smart TV (I use a JVC video projector and they've resisted adding those kind of useless feature so far) but my parents use a smart TV connected to an apple TV and so I'm curious what happens there.

It sure does.

Yep, they can. AFAIK it's some real processing on the signal.

I do wonder what kind of content it can detect and in which modes.

I don't mind ads so much on my tv (it's a tv after all) as the notion that they will substantively change the quality and behavior of a device after point of sale with no means to revert or refund the purchase.

At least when I subscribe to a SaaS and they roll out changes I dislike, I can choose to stop paying them and move to a competitor.

Non security updates should always be opt-in.

When I wrote about phones "Mass market is demanding products nonsensically thin to the detriment of other properties, because it was told to. It could be told otherwise." I got laughed off. That the market isn't going to serve my fancy preferences.

But this is the same thing, the market is repeatedly told to ask for smart devices, even when dumb TV is all the users need.

Seems like, there are a lot of opinions out there. I often hear, what i can do on my phone i also want to see on tv. May it be playing music, movies, series, etc.. So a seamless integration from the start without another device like apple tv is a plus.

Same happens to screen in cars.

In cars, you usually just connect your phone with a cable. I would be happy to connect my phone to a TV and then just have it mirror the screen.

Some phones have HDMI out.

i disagree. i think that age has passed and tvs without the netflix app will simply not be bought.

for myself, having no 4k hdr, no netflix, apple tv, youtube, bbc, and many others is a deal breaker when it comes to buying a new tv.

You're being downvoted, but I think you're right.

Personally, I would pay more for a TV without this functionality. I'm running one of the last "dumb" consumer TVs, from 2015.

But the overwhelming majority of consumers just want smart TV stuff built right into their TVs.

It's like power windows and air conditioning in cars. They used to be premium features. Now, you really can't buy a car without them, at least in the USA.

(Pedantry note: As late as ~2014, you could still buy a Nissan Versa with manual windows; perhaps it's still possible)

First off, I hate ads, and I think hardware shouldn't have ads in it.

But on the other hand, the argument "I paid all this money and I still get ads" is honestly something I've been hearing about cable companies for decades. In the end, if something can make money (as in, people will pay) that's sadly the way it will go.

You just wait a few year for ATSC 3.0(https://www.atsc.org/nextgen-tv/) to get adopted and then you will see way more ads. The content you will see on the TV will be rendered like a webpage. Enter more data collection and more ads. Enjoy. :)

I "solved" this problem by having an Amazon Fire stick plugged in all the time and selecting it as the default input. Samsung's own menu shows in the tray at the bottom and Fire Stick's menu fills the rest of the screen. It's also super convenient because the selection of apps on Samsung's store is very limited.

I'm glad my TV isn't smart enough to display ads. Should I ever decide to buy a new TV (my current one is an old 32"), it should be as dumb as possible. Smart enough to react to a WOL packet, be remote-controllable via TCP and be happy to live blocked behind a firewall.

I leave the intelligence to other devices which I connect to the TV.

I have a Samsung TV and the best decision I made was buying the Apple TV; right now I don’t care about the applications it has, the fact that Netflix has been removed for my model as it’s already 4 years old, etc. My next TV will be as dumb as possible as Smart-TVs are a pain in the ass and never as intelligent as an Apple TV or similar.

If you are able to find a good "dumb" TV, please let us know.

Unfortunately you will likely find that if you want anything towards the high-end, a dumb TV just won't be an option.

We could invoice Samsung for our attention. It must have value as they are making money from it and it has value to me too

Samsung is forever on my Shit list. They inject ads into their computers, tablets, smartphones, and TVs.

I'm happy with my LG TV, which the only "ads" they have are:

- Highlighting new "TV Channels" which is ... acceptable. I don't know why anyone would want/care about the Hyundai TV channel

- installing Disney+ automatically

If I'm reasonably happy with Chromecast (not interested in litigating who spies on me most here), is there some setup I can achieve with just a large PC monitor and some HDMI jiggery pokery to hook up a sound system? I hate the thought of paying for all this gunk I never use, I really just need the panel.

this is probably a good use case for an AVR (audio video receiver). you can plug the chromecast and your monitor directly to the amp and let the AVR route signals appropriately.

New Sony Xperia 10 ii phone came for us with ads in the notification area, stemming from some pre-installed news app. Not to mention Spotify, Facebook, etc being preinstalled. Easy fux but really disappointing, next phone will be Fairphone or Swift phone so I don't support these big corps anymore.

That's why I opt for "non smart" TV's and then connect them with either a PS3/ PS4 to make them smart my own way. I get all the goodness of netflix and am not bothered by ads. Not to mention pihole is also configured as a local ad blocker in my network to keep those pesky ads out.

I wonder how many people who buy TVs read reviews on them beforehand. I always do, and I wouldn’t consider any device that came with this garbage.

I have a feeling this will last about as long as it takes for consumers to get a sense for what models come with ads. No one wants this on a device they already paid for.

These ads starting appearing on my TV two years after I bought it. There were no ads before that. No reviews mentioned ads. There is no way to disable them in settings.

Yes I could disconnect it from the network but that would defeat one of the reasons I did buy it and which was mentioned in reviews: high-quality built in apps for Netflix and other services.

That is insane. Obviously there’s nothing you can do to avoid something like that. I guess most of us were under the naive impression that, having paid for our televisions, we were entitled to use them in peace.

I might still be naive, but my point was more that I’m having trouble imagining how the reputational damage to Samsung here wouldn’t, ultimately, impact sales. If I was thinking of buying a Samsung TV and my neighbor told me that his suddenly started throwing ads in his face, I’d never consider anything from Samsung.

It might take a little time for the word to spread, but am I wrong in assuming this tactic will turn out to be disastrously unpopular with consumers?

My Samsung phone has been doing stuff like this lately too accidentally hit the bixby button all the sudden you're in and dated with Samsung store apps asking you to rate them like use the calculator that's built in "please rate this on the Samsung store"

I've never bought a "smart" TV, and i never will.

It's not smart to buy "smart" appliances, since any intelligence they have will work towards the interests of the companies that made them, not the purchasor.

Are non-smart TV's still a thing? Smart TV's aren't necessary from a consumer standpoint.

Lots of companies have "digital signage" TVs built for business that don't have the consumer software. They are typically more expensive and optimized more for continuous usage (16hr/day 7days/week for samsung), but as of now I don't believe they get ads pushed to them.

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

Far better to purchase a large screen, then get a TV capture card, and just use a media player platform.

Is there any way to flash a Samsung TV with a custom firmware similar to RockBox?

I hope it's only a matter of time.

when i was looking to buy an oled tv, i never even considered samsung because of this problem. I went with lg c9. ads are there but very very minimal compared to samsung tvs.

you'll be thrilled how much data these "smart" tvs collect when you plug it to your local DNS server.

Here's wondering if these ads can be blocked simply with a DNS based blocker like PiHole.

Roku’s ads (and intensive logging) can be blocked this way. I’d expect it to work that same for Samsung TVs

How much does Roku log?

It’s TLS so I don’t know what it’s attempting to log but the highest blocked device in my house is the roku. I even have a Samsung TV (which I’ve never seen an ad on btw but I set it to boot directly to the HDMI port with the roku)

Is there any degraded functionality on the Roku if you block the logging?

Only thing I’ve noticed is the Home Screen ad location is a big grey box as opposed to an ad. I only use it for Plex and PBS Kids. Both apps work perfectly.

As far as I know, not everything can be blocked.

You were able to block everything in the past but no longer. Samsung catched on and now serves some ads over the same domains they distribute their firmware updates, install apps, get the program guide, and check the online status.

If you block those domains the Samsung TV loses most of its internet features and also seems to go crazy and requests all domains multiple times per second, defeating deep sleep of the TV.

I think it is possible to serve fake ads from Pi-hole.

very hard to do if they're expecting it over TLS1.2 and have hardcoded their own root CA into the TV.

Hard but doable. So far everything hardcoded of that sort has been successfully extracted (or leaked). I don't think they'll be adding expensive TPM chips.

Yes it can work but its a cat and mouse game. Not to mention, prevention is better than cure, this is indeed a cancer.

Yes, until they'll add a data SIM to the TVs. Then what, some shielding on the case? And what if the TV won't boot unless online with its own server?

I think: monitor + DVB decoder + Raspberry PI.

If they add a data sim, I’m going to work out how to use it!

You will be disappointed to find out that SIMs that you get with IoT devices these days often only connect you to a private network without access to the wider Internet. At least if the point of the SIM was to just distribute firmware updates/download ads/talk to the cloud services of the vendor.

This is why I see that the push for 5G as some kind of magic everyone is (supposedly) asking for, to make their lives better, is a fraud.

It will be the end of privacy completely. EVERYTHING always on and serving ads, collecting telemetry and logging everything. There will be no way to shut them down.

My TV has been relieved of all internet connection privileges, and it's staying that way.

> There will be no way to shut them down.

Most people already don't care and happily connect everything to their Wi-Fi. Those that do care and now setup firewalls/piholes/etc. on their Wi-Fi will learn to snip the coax/desolder/drill out the 5G antenna in the future.

And what if the damn thing won't boot without 5G antenna working (I mean "phoning home" test via 5G antenna on every reboot)?

Yes, this works actually. I recently bought a Samsung Frame and was very annoyed by the ads in the interface. I now have a Raspberry Pi running PiHole and it removed almost all ads. Sometimes I still see an ad, then I know it's time to update the block-list of my PiHole. When looking at PiHole's logs, it's unbelievable how many requests the TV sends to Samsung servers. These are blocked now luckily, but this TV (and I suspect other Samsung TVs as well) is a real nightmare with regard to privacy. It's the first time I actually read all the privacy statements on the TV. The remote has a microphone (for an 'assistant' called Bixby[1]) that I absolutely do not want turned on, but it's very unclear how to disable it. I wish I could buy a dumb TV.

[1] https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/tv-audio-video/how-do-i-u...

And TV reviewers will continue to gloss over this and focus on pointless test patterns.

I can't even remember when was the last time I've used the actual TV. Whatever TV's I have all act as a monitors hooked up to computers and I do not let those "smart" things connect to the network at all.

This is why I've bought a TV with no internet access, when I want to watch something I just plug a Chromebook or whatever laptop I have via HDMI and watch whatever I want without no ads (thank you so much uBlock Origin devs).

Wow, and it seems it's built into flows like changing input.

I happen to only use my tv as a single input HDMI display, using my Roku for everything. I suppose they could still force ads in that situation, but I assume they haven't yet.

20 years ago I predicted that advertisers would get a lot passed that made your front door a billboard owned by the city so they could put all the ads they wanted on your front door. I was just a few years too early!

Ideally it should be better to hook up your own smart device to smart TVs because the smarts are always evolving, and TVs are generally behind anyways.

Building apps into a TV is a really nice idea, but there has to be a better way.

As the article points out, Google is doing similar with Android TV. I'm not happy. I bought a Shield TV for a higher-end experience. I don't want ads on my home screen. I know, ToS, etc.. Bah! No excuse!

This is the Best opportunity to gather support to push Apple to make a proper TV set. One that value privacy, and something I have been advocating for years. ( And hopefully a return of Airport Express as well )

With small HDMI capable media boxes (e.g. rpi, chromecast) becoming increasingly available, it's time for TVs to die and dumb monitors to take their place. Like PC monitors, but not designed for the desk.

Find IP address is connecting to for the ad server, and block it at the router? Its a sad fucking world when I have to suggest this - I flat out wouldn't buy a tv with adware but yeah should work.

I setup a pi-hole on a pi4 a few months ago, then made my router announce it as the primary DNS server for my house. So far, my samsung TV and peloton bike are the most blocked clients in the house.

My friend's Samsung TV has Bluetooth permanently enabled, so every time a neighbour turns on a Bluetooth device, the TV asks if she'd like to connect to it. I'll never buy a Samsung device.

I didn't see this mentioned, and some of the posts imply that there are not smart TVs without ads, but my TCL TV running Roku TV bought last year and connected to the Internet does not have any ads.

same, I have a samsung tv and use the smart features all the time (youtube) and have never seen an ad.

:-s

I bought a 4K Samsung The Frame. When i turned it on it requested that I agree to several agreements and it wanted me to connect it to the internet.

I declined everything and hooked it up to my Apple TV. Super happy.

I wish that it’s just a step in the master plan to market plain old dumb TVs. Too bad it won’t really happen, the best outcome would be a few more pi-holes or similar devices installed.

One of the reasons I avoided as hard as I could getting a "SmartTV" and went for a standard LED display. Those are getting harder and harder to come by though.

I've got a Samsung TV in a network with PiHole and the strictest blacklist rules. And I watch YouTube over Kodi. I've never seen a single ad on my smart TV.

Do you guys connect your TVs to internet? I know my TV has WiFi and Eth port, but I never thought about connecting it online, it's as useless as Euro Scart.

Yes. It would be highly inconvenient for me to connect it to my home PC which is in a different room, I don't want to buy or build a HTPC just to connect to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, I use my phone as a remote most of the time, and the tv wasn't too expensive.

Not to mention, the ads on the home screen are less intrusive and far less numerous than on Comcast's cable box.

> Comcast's cable box.

Isn't Comcast also a paid service? You (US) get ads in tv broadcast you pay for?

I haven't seen any TV broadcast for over 10 years now, my TV has only chromecast and it only plays what I stream to it.

Yes, most cable television has ads. It's also more expensive than streaming services. But I'm talking about is in the menus for navigating the service with the remote.

I tried cutting the cable two years ago and went back last year. Live sports isn't there yet.

Couldn't you just buy the TV but not let it connect to your WiFi? Then just use Chromecast/Roku/AppleTV/etc. to get internet to your TV.

Whats next? LineageOS for TVs? PineTV? There is a pattern emerging if its not clear by now - open software on open hardware is the only long term solution.

Well there is SamyGO which let's you root and patch your Samsung TV, for SSH and other access, at least in older models. Not a firmware replacement but a step in the right direction ;)

Was this straightforwardly disclosed to people before they bought these TVs? If not, a regulatory punishment and/or class action suit is in order.

This is exactly the reason why I keep my smart tv dumb. Never connected it to the internet, all playback is being done with a chromecast or mediaplayer.

I am actively preventing anyone from buying from Samsung

Why still buy a "TV"? Why not just a monitor and attach some device to it that receives the TV signal and lets you switch channels etc?

find me a 55 inch monitor for $1000 AUD to use as my TV (with dedicated HTPC) and I'll be all over it..

This is why I continue to use a Chromecast rather than using the native smart tv functionality.

Ill let my TV be a dumb TV that I can simply send a signal to.

I walk into a department store or electronic shop, will I see these adverts demoed on the menus there?

It would only be fair to let people know what to expect!

Nah, those devices most likely run in "demo mode" which will obviously have ads disabled but is not suitable for home use... ;-)

Has anyone tried to block these with PiHole? I have a PiHole running but I don't own a Smart TV, so not sure how it will work out.

Keeping my dumb 1080p 60" plasma LG forever.

Basic cable box (used rarely), roku, and PS4 provide plenty of "smarts" for me.

This is why I'll never use another Samsung product again after putting up the their antics on their galaxy line of phones.

Do they use facial recognition yet? Recognizing who's seen which ad, what they watch, and their age and gender should be useful.

Turn off their onboard ethernet/wifi devices (delete your WPA key info etc...). My Samsung TV's are dumb as hell now <3

Here is how to fix it: disable wifi on your Samsung “Smart” TV and buy an Apple TV, etc. no more ads. No more laggy Samsung UI.

While it shouldn't even be a thing on a TV (ads) since I've paid for the TV, but Pi-hole kills this dead in its tracks.

There really needs to be open source tv firmware

Tivo started running a commercial before watching a recorded show. Ads in the Comcast menu was one reason I switched to Tivo.

Weird. I've got a Samsung QLED 4k TV (Q60) and I've never seen an ad. I suppose I'll keep my eyes open.

I had to add ads.samsung.com to my block list on my router but it's made using the TV way nicer and a little faster

I am assuming that all TV reviews will assign 1 start to Samsung devices from now on. I wouldn't touch that shit.

Without harsh government rules to prevent this kind of insidious behavior, this sort of thing is... inevitable.

Wait for the ads in your dreams just like depicted in Futurama. Go ads go. But seriously as a solution try pihole.

Unsolicited advertising should be banned.

Don't worry, they'll make sure you agreed to it on page 193 of the 365 page ToS that you didn't read but agreed to anyway when you turned the TV on the first time.

If I start seeing ads on my Samsung TV, I will donate the tv and never buy another Samsung product.

My Samsung is getting long in the tooth.

What's a good competitor that doesn't do this? Sony?

This is why I try to find dumb TVs though it is getting harder and harder to do that

What the fuck. You can't even get away from ads after _paying_ for a product.

This is an article from March. Has Samsung responded? Are ads still being shown?

I'm one of the owners. I'm never buying a samsung anything again.

I love my Samsung TV, I just don't let it connect to the Internet

Definitely don't buy smart TVs. Is it still possible to buy a dumb TV these days? Who cares, Don't buy a smart TV. TV isn't all that great anyhow, it's mostly a bunch moralizing hidden behind a plot and some sarcasm. Leave it behind.

I wish there was an Apple TV, which is, you know, a TV.

Ok, bye bye Samsung!

Block your TV's mac address in your router

We can kill advertising.

It may not work for the smart tv case, but I imagine a device or filter program that I can plug in that detects ads with a neutral network. It wouldn't turn off the ads, but instead transform them into unpleasant imagery that creates incredibly negative brand images. It would be designed to permanently subconsciously tarnish a brand.

McDonald's human trafficking

Nike genocide

Spouse-beating Walmart

Coca-cola rotten corpse

I want to deploy this widely to destroy advertising. If ads got detected and replaced with images designed to embed and evoke negative reactions, advertisers would stop.

We need something this drastic to fight back.

they already put ads on their 1400€ phones, so this is not surprising.

hopefully it ends badly for them on the long term

makes me want to give up TV

Thought about this, too.

I only use my TV to watch YouTube or Amazon Prime through the PS4. But as I'm burning enough time on that (the first one) already on my phone, maybe I should buy/build in aquarium in that place, once the TV dies. Probably more relaxing in the end. And ads-free for sure!

Why are actual privacy issues like this not covered by any media outlets? I'm tired of hearing about Trump all day.

class action pls

Samsung has crappy products? I'm shocked /s

Samsung is cut from the same cloth as Apple. Huge advertising budgets to get the sale. Abuse of customers after purchase.

HN: Loves AR

Every SciFi movie: The only use they can think of for AR is Ads

"I bought an internet-enabled ad delivery platform and put it in my living room. Why is it showing me advertising?!"

Of course, it's showing you advertising, that's what the internet is for according to the advertising scum of the world.

Maybe don't buy a 'smart' TV next time?

Obviously you can buy "commercial signage" displays which are panels without the crapware.

Anyone have recommendations for units they've bought this way? I've avoided upgrading my super old LCD because at least my current one is somewhat stupid and so long as I don't connect it to the network it mostly does what I bought it for: display the pixels.

Do they have sound?

Who uses their TV for sound? I don't even know if mine has a built-in speaker.

I do. It's quite common in Japan to not have a surround sound etc. Our neighbours are quite close lol

They have sound.

Unnecessarily expensive. Just use any TV without allowing internet. Not connecting some (maybe not newest) TV vs not connecting commercial panel should be about same amount of work.

I use few year old Sony like that, couldn't care less about any of these complaints. It requires trips to PC to manage content, which I think is the biggest hurdle of this approach for lazy couch potatoes.

I am thinking about upgrading TVs at my hotel and 49 inch low to medium quality is between $440-600. These are designed for hotel/hospitals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com