Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Fortunately, I know how to use ADB and just installed another launcher, but most other people just have to bend over and take it. No doubt ADB tricks won't be sufficient in future updates and I'll be playing more silly games with a device I own.
Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want. It's certainly worse in that I would have even less control and be unable to remove them.
It's certainly a good thing that I don't live anywhere near a Google office, otherwise I'd be launching this POS through one of their windows if I did.
The main AppleTV UI doesn’t have any recommendations for streaming apps you don’t own - the only thing that’s even close are when you highlight one of the apps in the top bar.
As far as I understand though, is that it will show recommendations provided by installed apps. I do have Prime, and I still don't really want recommendations without explicitly asking for it.
This is a giant banner at the top of the home page that shows ads from random streaming services that you may or may not subscribe to or have installed.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1393380938642563072
See also:
Ads for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple's fitness thing at the top of the Settings app.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955
Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap on the Apple Arcade button to show you a subscription ad.
Spam from Apple that I can't seem to stop receiving, even though I'm unsubscribed from every Apple list. I've gone as far as to contact AppleCare about it. I spent an hour on the phone with someone at AppleCare who couldn't explain why I keep getting Apple Arcade spam in my e-mail.
just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and switch to iOS you tell me this..
save us pinephone
https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/04/apple-now-allows-push-notific...
Good way to get your notification privileges revoked though. I wish Apple would add granular notification categories within apps so that you could approve particular types of notifications while denying others. A quick google says Android 8 did this in 2017.
Apple's policy on this is to require in-app configuration to opt out of marketing messages, rather than a way to configure it through the OS.
I do see what Apple is going for, in that these predefined categories let you automate notification handling with Focus modes, but I have a feeling a lot of apps will have an inflated opinion of how important "new episodes of ____ are available" is to me.
Are you saying they do it after you opt-out of the marketing notifications in-app?
The digital prison builders are less offensive than their supporters. Remember to point and laugh when they complaint about their self-funded captivity. Its an important public service to point and laugh as they are paving the way for our imprisonment. We clearly didn't laugh hard enough in the past.
edit:
[0] - for the pun ill add a promotional link: https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/311843/bestmedia-platinum-my...
Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?
And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).
E.g. “Show sports scores” is off, “Games in Up Next” is off, and “Exciting Games” is off.
I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would start picking up Nvidea customers.
The bad review bombing hit both nVidea apps and Google's AndroidTV launcher pretty hard:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.teg...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
This also reminds me of the famous BlizzCon where they announced Diablo Immortal -- where the Chinese exec infamously exclaimed (after the audience started booing): "Do you guys not have phones?" -- when the dislikes of the videos reached into dozens of millions and Google has reset the dislikes, several times in a row.
So yeah, these things do happen and will likely happen again.
It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign, but no one ever participates in a good review campaign. There's no rage in that, that's why.
Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's the fairness in that?
I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a Chinese game that just launched. After successfully bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now calling for everyone to stop (because it's not that bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address the problems.
Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone let go all over the app on Play store, they're not cleaning that up.
All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to the Chinese version.
We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?
One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App Store are not public speech, they are always subject to censorship rules and always have been, because they are using a private for-profit service under a license agreement. It would be a different thing for the corporations you’re talking about to be able to censor criticism in the newspaper or on other people’s websites, but that’s not what’s happening here.
There’s also a legitimately difficult question here too. It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third party reasons outside the seller’s control (Nvidia shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers. It will always depend on the specifics of each case.
I have a Sony Bravia TV and it uses Android TV as well. It's had the homescreen ads for a while now and I really dislike it.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587
The funny thing about that page is that the image used to be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has blood splatter in the background (you can still see it if you look closely) and the next ad is for Elmo. If you look, you can see the word Elmo where the next ad was fading in.
Who thought it was a good idea to advertise a bloody crime show on the same screen that you are going to target the Elmo audience and then use that for promotion?
Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.
Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using it on herself to get people interested) even though I was making fun of it.
TL;DR it’s disappointing both that so much investment goes into ad tech yet it’s still leading to so many irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted which would potentially make them less annoying if they actually helped people find things they’re interested in.
Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.
They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.
Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?
Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
I don't think I understand fully the point you're trying to make. How does free and open source software prevent a software developer from inserting the code necessary for behavior such as we're discussing? Granted, they may be chastised, but the ability remains. We've seen this happen already with software developers inserting ads into the shell during install (or some other operation). A lot more work and effort on our part is necessary to prevent this type of behavior becoming normalized.
TV streaming, Games streaming from local network at least, music...
A closed environment doesn't allow for competition, so they will monetize it to the greatest degree. That would include ads.
Android TV is really bad spyware for that matter... surprised it can even exist with Google TV having flopped that hard.
(Correctly, tbh).
(Correctly, tbh) - It is still a service problem.
I think at least Amazon fixed it in the meantime, I can play 4k without problems.
When we say Apple is as bad - what are we talking about?
Inside the individual apps obviously developers do push things.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/19/how-to-remove-home-screen-tra...
I'm a Apple TV+ subscriber, so I think I already seem to have access to most of the content. But I also have Prime / Netflix up there, and I can preview that stuff too (neither may wife or I mind this).
I did notice once I could turn things off, but we use the Apple TV App (confusing naming) for Up Next pretty frequently (new remote has a quick button for that) and up next nicely seems to pull most of our content in (not sure how) so when we are trying to decide what to watch (we watch about 1 hr every other week) it's handy to remind ourselves of what we were watching from before. Apple obviously does something so that netflix / prime / etc all flow into Up Next. My only annoyance is it feels like there are two "Home" screens, the app icon grid and the apple TV App.
This is a frankly ridiculous comparison.
I'm using Netguard on Android devices I don't want to root and it's been good. Plus it does per-app firewalling as well.
[1]: https://www.zenz-solutions.de
[2]: https://netguard.me
[3]: https://blokada.org
A weird side story: I had a situation where an app on my Roku TV would crash if it failed to serve an add from a blocked domain (there were several but they mostly pointed to google ad domains). I actually _had_ to allow ads from the domains they called.
Disclaimer: I co-develop a Intra fork.
Apple TV is less intrusive with ads in the interface and during the viewing experience.
While you can conceptualize recommendations for things you have not bought as Ads, there is likely no money changing hands here for these to displayed.
And most people actually like these features: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/19/22580720/android-tv-watch...
Given this is Google's business, I'd find it hard to believe that they would market other products without a financial incentive (whether through a cut of the sale through the play store or direct payment for displaying the recommendation).
(I agree broadly users do not care, but some of these are definitely paid, placed advertisements by Google.)
Courts and legislative bodies can totally overrule and invalidate any clause in a private contract, if you feel this is a social problem then keep speaking up about it and ignore the people playing devil's advocate.
People are in the habit of giving counterpoint's for conversation's sake and have no strong opinions on their counterpoint.
The path is the following: ethical problem becomes a social problem becomes a legal problem. Specifically, obscure ethical problems become recurring and common social problems which become legal problems that can more easily get patched.
I've got some other apks disabled as well, but I think these two are the critical ones.
I haven't had the ads pop up again in over 2 weeks.
This is what I did with my Alexa hardware the instant it suffixed a routine response to a unit conversion or the weather or something with an ad for some unrelated Amazon service.
Throw it in the trash can't be the response to everything. Why don't I throw my phone and my car in the trash? Maybe I should throw my fridge and microwave in the trash too?
If my fridge started showing ads one day, suggesting that I shouldn't be pissed because I can just throw it out and get a cooler of ice is not helpful.
I'd normally just have a Linux box with Kodi, but once you try to get 4K HDR working, things start getting prickly. GPU and driver combos were a bit of a pain and even Windows had issues.
Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply because "that's the modern world".
Consumer choice is an important and powerful tool. Don't buy or use crap that abuses you, and don't shop at vendors that think that abusing their users is ok.
We got into this situation because people tend to throw up their hands and suffer.
> I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration.
Google is an advertising company. Everything they do is in service to this goal, despite whatever side perks it may deliver to you occasionally. Liking the Google stuff while not liking ads is a mistake, because they are inseparable.
If you don't like ads, don't give your money and data to an advertising company. Don't run Android TV.
So you're saying as soon as you're abused just toss a few hundred/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars of hardware out the window and spend a like amount somewhere else -- hoping that /this/ time is different? Even though when you bought the equipment this wasn't the state of it?
It must be nice to live in that world. Wasteful and expensive, but nice.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a264489...
Security updates are essential. Not only is a device full of unpatched vulnerabilities dangerous to use, but as we saw with the recent Western Digital scandal, is a serious risk to the continued functionality of the device.
Because the Shield is a streaming device, interoperability with streaming services is required for continued functionality. The set of useful streaming services changes over time and existing streaming services change their APIs.
Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device? Is funding continued updates with ads such a bad thing?
Additionally, I expect a corporation like NVIDIA or Google to have amortized the costs of supporting several ecosystems by the mere virtue of having engineers on them on a constant payroll -- those costs are not increasing, they remain the same for long periods of time -- plus to finance the support by other venues if need be. Brand loyalty and stuff?
This penny pinching by billionaire conglomerates leaves a sour taste in my mouth and it makes it all the more likely for me to invest in several specialized PCs, a home video / streaming player included. They'll never stop being shady, it seems, so we have to take things in our own hands, apparently.
These are profit oriented institutions. Once they've saturated the market, their only way to increase profits is to increase their per user profits.
The economy is designed to have your TV start showing ads.
I get how the business model of those services works btw -- but it's flawed from the beginning because it relies on keeping the users hostage.
The corps really underestimate the passive resistance they will meet. They think people will go to court and challenge their unbeatable lawyers there. No, nobody is going to do that. People will just work around those corporations (neighborhood private networks with NAS-es, old-school sharing of movies on DVDs or USB drives etc.; there are many ways).
Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from your vendors.
No, they don't need it. They get them, because they can. This allows the vendors to:
- Sell buggy, half-baked alpha versions to customers as finished products;
- Turn a product into a service, to seek subscription rent from users, under the guise of "security";
- Justify the need for persistent Internet access, providing plausible deniability for data collection (if anyone asks, it's to support "security" and "improving the product").
Don't fall for this. The hardware and software we buy doesn't need to be like this. The vendors push it, because it's locally optimal for them, and it's self-supporting through competitive pressure ("because my competitors do it, I have to do it too").
[1] https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-doxo...
Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars, pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and stupidest people in the business.
Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.
Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost of the content to remove all ads.
This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of the same hardware.
Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem, in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any of the alternatives.
I am subbed to some streaming services and the moment they introduce ads I will leave. TV-like ads won't be able to compete here.
People are paying out of laziness.
With cable you get to pick a channel and let them broadcast to you. You don't select the next episode you select a channel. The benefit of selecting a channel over an episode or series is you don't have to think what should I watch next. Weekdays at this time they will play a show you expect.. it's freeing to just put a channel on and you get a certain background rhythm.
When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
Plus you get tons of on demand content channels offer cable subscribers. News, Sports, Live Content, Local channels all exist in cable but not streaming.
> When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
No.
I have ADHD and ads absolutely destroy me. For some people ads might be a nice time to meditate, for me they absolutely destroy the enjoyability of any program because in those few minutes I'm going to start playing a game or reading an article or cleaning something.
Even beside my ADHD - ads don't give you "peaceful time". If you want a snippet of peaceful time then pause the stream every once in a while and go outside and be at true peace - don't come up with excuses to justify advertisements being shoved down your throat. The act of spamming adverts like that disrespects you as a person and your time, it borders on offensive.
Add them together and it cost more than cable and cable offers more shows.
I have cable. I subscribe to a number of streaming services. I get more out of a weekly show where you wait vs having all shows available.
If you compare the circle vs big brother. Both are similiar shows equally good or bad depending on your preference. Binging all of circle at once is enjoyable but having a new big brother show to look forward to tonight offers something else.
I often tape shows and fast forward commericials if I feel ADHDish or leave them if I'm feeling lazy.
Netflix also now has a "play something" mode that's basically shuffle but takes into account what you've already been watching/watched.
The link you posted says that's cable and internet, not television.
That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the TV aspect.
I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to the same.
Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised, the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are much more expensive.
It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.
In the most recent update, the until-now ad-free homepage was defaced with an ad banner that takes up half the screen and can't be removed. This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher. To add to this, some of the ads have been deemed inappropriate or offensive to certain users adding to the frustration of ads being introduced to this long-standing ad-free experience.
I, like many Shield owners, am considering installing a third party launcher. This can be done pretty easily by watching an instruction video on Youtube and most users will go this route without consideration of security - potentially opening large numbers of the devices up to vulnerabilities.
So this comes from Play Services. It appears the launcher has an exclusive hook for Play Services to show content in, and is being used for this purpose.
I am still reverted to the original Android TV Launcher because it takes less clicks to reach some functionality and is simpler, but the recommendation banner ruins it somewhat.
> This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher.
My understanding is that Google big-dicks companies that want to run android on their device and have Play Store. So in this case, my understanding is that if they remove the Android TV Launcher, they must remove all the Google-branded items, including Play Store, which basically cripples Android for normal users.
The whole content recommendation view is contained withing the Apple TV application, instead of the home screen. The home screen gives me an unsullied grid of applications.
If I want to have the content recommendation view be my default, the settings gives me the option of defaulting to it instead of the home screen.
The latest 4k model is ridiculously fast (despite using an 'old' A12 SoC). Across the board it just works better than any Android TV, Fire TV or Roku I've ever used.
Can you run a Plex server on the Apple TV? HW SD upscaling? Game streaming from a PC with an Nvidia card? Access the filesystem, access USB attached storage?
Nothing grinds my gears worse than stuff you buy and integrate into your life unnecessarily degrading in performance/behaviour.
I might actually be about done with YouTube, which was. Shocking realization.
A lot of people say they'd pay if they were given the option to remove ads, yet surprisingly few people opt to do it for YouTube ( which you can even share with friends and family up to 5 accounts, so it can be a decent deal). Why?
Ads serve as a reminder to watch less youtube.
Indeed you fuel the whole machine and enable their monopoly though. Content creators don't have much choice anyhow.
That's why personally i pay for Premium ( split between multiple people), have Nebula and force myself to use it for creators on it, and support some on Patreon directly. YouTube is a monopoly and are deeply entrenched - i highly doubt any competitor could dislodge them, but i try to help them nonetheless.
This is actually what made me cancel my Youtube Premium. I hate ads and make every effort to eliminate them from my entertainment, but I found myself mindlessly watching hours of youtube without them. Back on the free tier I find I can't watch more than one or two short videos before I get so frustrated and move on to something more productive. Very useful.
Because it's not entirely clear on their premium page.
These three programs are the only thing keeping YouTube tolerable. When Google eventually Widevine L1's everything I'll bail entirely.
- "Sir, sales are falling... we actually haven't had new sales in months".
- "How much does it cost to support the infrastructure for these devices?"
- "X million a month".
- "Feck it. Cram ads into them, we're not supporting those things for free!"
...or is it just me?
Another post said that Google's certifications require that the device manufacturer keep the stock launcher, which would mean that nVidia couldn't and can't do anything about this directly.
nVidia is still selling plenty of these boxes and it would absolutely ruin their business if they started cramming ads into paid products.
Here's hoping. {raises glass}
I'd say it's the exact opposite: the way to justify adtech, i.e. the thing they actually wanted from the start, is by playing up the importance of automated updates to security. Note how devices tend to stop being updated the moment their market share is projected to dwindle.
There is no excuse for this, and the fact nVidia allowed this Google-originating change to be pushed without any concept of Product ownership or focus on the experience tells me that nVidia doesn't care about the Shield brand and it's not even worth trying to keep these around. They'll be slowly phased out in every use case I've recommended them to numerous people by Apple TVs or other devices which respect their users.
Good UX is not a choice, it is mandatory when you design and curate a product, and users will walk away if you screw it up. Showing ads to me on something I paid for with a silent update is atrocious and unethical.
I guess I should try again on a newer RPi, if the driver support is 100% and the hardware somewhat reliable then I might be interested. Last time I checked 4K and USB 3.0 weren't available on RPi so I was turned off from the platform.
But up until now Shield has been the sweet spot.
Sums it up. These ARE ads, they suck, and for the paid price should not be here. I'm still salty I have fucking ads on my 2000€ Bravia. It's the first and last time I buy an Android TV. In fact it was the push for me to migrate from an Android phone to an iPhone.
When I am trying to select a show or an episode I DO NOT want it auto-playing even a clip of a show (much less an ad). Just be quiet!
I don’t have anything against an ad supported cheaper version like Amazon did with the Kindle but trying to sneak in extra revenue on top of something you’ve already paid for is not only annoying but full on shady as heck.
Facebook/Oculus started doing similar experiments with paid apps and games on their VR platform and people aren’t happy there either.
Personally, I’m extremely worried about this becoming normal, the same way micro transactions did in games.
I paid $150 for my Shield and now get the same crappy experience as my $25 FireTV stick.
A completely separate issue: The HBOMax app actually works better on my $25 device.
I had been a loyal customer who was very happy to pay a subscription and bought several generations of TiVo boxes until they started inserting ad banners whenever you paused whatever you were watching and then into the UI's menus as if that wasn't enough.
I wish I could ban advertising and marketing.
They try to be sneaky about it, it doesn't play them on channels like PBS, nothing indicating it is a streaming ad and you can FF through it
I’m sure this is old news to a lot of people, but the use of that specific word neatly and fully betrays the shift in perspective that is natural and necessary in ad tech.
I feel fortunate that I can comfortably choose to never work at an ad-supported business.
So I think that your plan to gradually disconnect is something good. I wish you best of luck with it.
Then you bought another device with closed firmware from another company with their own ad service.
So far on my Apple TV I’ve only seen promos (“ads”) for movies/shows on services that I already subscribe to. That is within my personal comfort zone.
I wish that I could replace it with a little computer running Linux, but it’s difficult to find compatible hardware and I don’t have the time or patience to fuss around with it right now.
That's gone, discontinued in 2016...
If you pay for it, you are still the product.
You are always the product, phone carriers you pay monthly contract to collect your location data and sell it, TVs spy on your TV watching, Netflix/Spotify/... record everything you do, you will be monetized even if you already paid.
I'd be fine if Google just had an opt-out option for these "ads". I can't believe it isn't an option.
They may have been less aware of the timing of Google over riding it, but they should have at least known enough to be working on an alternative (assuming they wanted to).
Myself I'm not a fan, but I just watch anime w/ Jellyfin, live TV with HDHomeRun (Quantum Leap on Comet!) and run a lot of sideloaded apps to control IOT functions.
He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.
The user can go change the launcher.
Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions.
For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.
Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free open source software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.
What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.
>they “gave away” free software funded by ads
Proprietary software isn't free software. Free doesn't just mean free as in no cost to use.
There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-released application is a lot more concrete.)
Maybe someone else can weigh in if that approach does work (maybe with additionally setting up your router to redirect everything DNS back to the Pi-hole)?
I've had apple tv, roku ultra, and shield. Shield is the only one that plays everything direct streaming.
It sucks that they are butchering this great product.
BUT, I rarely ever see the launcher/home screen anyway.
While within whatever app you are using if you click on the 'options/hamburger' button on the remote, you can scroll down to 'Apps' select the next app you want to launch, and select 'Open'.
2-4 mouse clicks becomes 4-6 and you bypass the home screen.
I also own an ATV 4K for streaming HDR in DV (Netflix, Disney, etc) but for Plex the Shield is still king. It can direct stream HDR10 and can do HDMI passthrough of any audio format (eg: TrueHD). The ATV decodes surround sound to PCM and while the quality is good, it causes audio sync issues and I think it loses Atmos information (I only have 5.1 setup).
Extra happy with this choice now.
However, I looked into streaming devices a year or so ago, and passed on getting a Shield TV because there was no assurance that it would remain ad-free, and absent that assurance, it seemed like an inevitability given Google's position.
I don't care if Black Widow is now available even if I have the app downloaded. I'll open the app to find that content or use a web site to compare indexes and identify which service, if I have it, has that content.
Or I'll continue to flex Plex/etc to remove ads and keep the content I want on hand. If I pay for it I shouldn't see ads, ever, that's the deal. Show me an ad after my check has cleared then I'll move on.
But I'll be honest and admit that plenty of the content is the same content that is being advertised to me.
Even if I'm not going to buy it I still benefit from learning it exists.
Additionally, I was pointing out I have a full-featured desktop PC running an open source operating system, so I just sidestep the problem a lot of these dongles and gadgets introduce.
I would have tolerated some minimal amount of ads in a few tile locations but the new Android TV launcher's ads were taking up a huge amount of screen space.
You can still turn the screen off. For now.
Can I use a spare rpi3/4 to watch netflix on a spectre non-smart tv I have?
Shield users expected NVIDIA to disable these ads or add a new launcher.
NVIDIA does not deliver, users are now testing third party launchers.
I share your hate to this “feature.
So did Nvidia just decide to do this? Switch it to Android TV?
How did this play out exactly?
Also, the default launcher happens to be something heavily customized by each OEM (likely extending the AOSP launcher which will never have ads or more typically extending a shared base launcher[0]), and I think routing ads through OEMs would be both a technical and logistical impossibility.
The phone space is such a competitive market, and the cost of switching (launchers/to a different Android phone/to iOS) is so low, and the risk to future sales so high, I really doubt you'll see ads on the launcher.
[0] https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...
Pretty simple to do on the Shield too.
Everybody has the right to buy an ad and spyware laden black box and install it in their home. But is it smart?