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Comment by indysigners | Hacker News Reader

I’d rather have no telly at all than buying some crap Samsung tv for €2.000 only to see their programmatic advertising. Whoever at Samsung decided this must be drunk! But hey, I guess there still are enough people around who don’t care.

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I bought a TCL Roku TV and thankfully the only ads are on the home screen where you select the input or app.[a] I can’t imagine watching video from an input and the TV deciding I want an ad on top of my movie.

[a] I don’t delude myself into thinking this won’t change, but so far, I can just tune out (no pun intended) the ad on the side. Not to mention that the ads are of shows and movies, not products (which would be worse).

There are specs for in-stream video advertising [0], as in, the provider injects a 'commercial break' into whatever you're streaming. These cannot be ad-blocked.

[0] https://www.spotx.tv/resources/blog/spotxer/server-side-ad-i...

They can still be mitigated. At the very least you can blank the video/audio while the ads are on. Personally I'd just get the pirated version, which has the ads cut out for me. If you already paid for the service I don't see anything morally wrong with that.

> It provides users with an optimal, broadcast-like viewing experience that often provides high-quality video and ad creatives.

Optimal? Lmao. This is the point where I’d be willing to pay for pirated content.

I have 2 TLC Roku TVs. One I use as a large monitor for my desktop. I’m very happy with them. I mostly watch Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime video and have never noticed the ads on the navigation screen (since they are just tv shows).

I’m planning to get YouTube premium to remove ads there and vote with my money for an ad-free Internet.

I never imagined that they would be spying on the actual video output, but I would consider that not only a major violation of privacy but corporate espionage (because I use it for work).

I don’t believe that is the case, but I’ll be researching if that is being done.

>the only ads are on the home screen //

So you only have to see ads, on a service you bought outright, every single time you turn it on? No thanks.

Stockholm Syndrome is in fact a thing.

My guess is that there are enough people around who don't know.

Also it's hard to tell people about it and for them to grasp all the ways this can be used.

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