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Comment by sdflhasjd | Hacker News Reader

My shield updated to this the other day. I'm pretty furious about it, it's not a cheap device, and it's certainly not Google's. To be adding these "features" without asking, irrespective of whatever agreement between me, Nvidia or Google exists, is ridiculous.

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.

View on HN

> Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want.

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.

Just to clarify. The Apple TV (tvOS) interface gives extra functionality to apps on the top row of the launcher. (you have full control over ordering the apps). This functionality allows the apps to show whatever preview content they want per the SDK. Some show continue watching, and then suggestions, others show nothing. But you are in charge of what apps are on the top row.

Also, you can change the setting fore the TV.app so the large banner on the home screen only shows television shows and movies you have added to "Up Next". Go to "Settings" > "Apps" > "TV" and change the "Top Shelf" setting to "Up Next" instead of "What To Watch".

This tip is very much appreciated, thank you

Thanks. I didn’t know why I was somehow immune to the Apple TV+ advertising and why I just saw Spotify recommendations.

It does however have a lot of space dedicated to advertising shows in paid apps that you may not own inside of the AppleTV app itself which you use to track your own owned and subscribed content.

The first thing I did when I got my ATV4K was change the TV button to go to the home screen instead of the TV app and have not used the app for anything. A far cry from ads being on the home screen itself.

That is certainly better than the Shield, which is giving me recommendations for stuff I don't subscribe to.

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.

FWIW, I own both a Shield Pro and an Apple TV. I use my Apple TV most of the time. I find it a much nicer interface. The only time I use the Shield is with Plex for watching Blu-rays that I've ripped because it supports pass-through of Dolby TrueHD and the Apple TV does not.

The appleTV app might do that, but I use the AppleTV and just avoid the appleTV app and it doesn't interfere with anything. If I had an ad appear one day I'd throw the whole thing away.

If I recall you can disable this on a per-app basis.

This is different from the recommendation "channels" that each app can provide. You can choose whether or not each one shows up on the home screen, re-order them, and so on.

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.

As an iOS user, there's a couple weird ones: Apple prohibits apps from putting ads in notifications, but sends a notification ad for every new Apple TV+ show. "Rules for thee, but not for me"

For those of you not on iOS, here's what one of those notification spams from Apple looks like:

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.

https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1394843930932523015

!$#!#@

just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and switch to iOS you tell me this..

save us pinephone

Apple no longer prohibits ads in notifications as of March last year

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.

Essentially, Apple blocked it until they needed it to promote their services in more channels.

Apple is adding something like what you want in iOS 15. https://openback.com/blog/wwdc-2021-ios-15-push-notification...

Sort of like what I want, but relies of developers to decide what is passive/active/time-sensitive/critical, and instead of being able to fix it the only recourse is to say "no notifications."

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.

Many apps send marketing notifications anyway. And there seems to be no way to report it.

Not sure what you mean by "send marketing notifications anyway," since they are allowed to do that now.

Are you saying they do it after you opt-out of the marketing notifications in-app?

Yes.

Those are so annoying. Thankfully you can turn the notifications off.

To be honest, Apple never enforces that rule on third parties anyway.

The good ol' "do as I say & not as I do" routine.

Youtube app update and now has a huge banner ad at the top when you start it up. Very annoying!

This is Apple's fault how?

Pushing people to use "apps" instead of the web where poor behavior just makes your own product crappier.

Websites are unregulated. iOS apps have to abide by Apple's terms. This is exactly why developers are mad about any number of things: paying Apple's commission, but also complying with their privacy dictates.

Apparently Apple's terms aren't that great for some users.

I've noticed, for example, that they seem to be particularly upsetting to Android users.

How so?

As a really simple example, the App Store does not have a torrent remote app while the Play Store and F-Droid have them.

If you want a computer connected to your TV instead of a streaming box, you know where to find it.

That's right. I couldn't stream very well from my RPi3, but I can easily play local 1080p videos. We've actually got it hooked up to an old tube TV, so I get 480p when I can.

This is what I do. Many streaming services artificially degrade the quality and sometimes refuse to work at all when I do this.

My HP mini is to crappy to play youtube videos on its tiny poor resolution screen even playing them on the lowest resolution (which shouldn't even count) but if I download the videos and attach a huge monitor to it VLC just cruises though GB+ sized HD video files without dropping a frame. Transmission is good enough. Spend another 7 euro on a TB storage device[0] - you deserve it! More movies to watch than your health can take.

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...

I'm still laughing.

Not that it's Apple's fault that YouTube has ads. But Apple don't seem to allow any alternative YouTube clients on the store.

Hm. My immediate counter to your point was “that is because YouTube doesn’t allow anyone to use their api,” but now that I think about it I’m not so sure.

Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?

Apple have policy that apps cannot be on the store that use a unauthorized API’s

My “Up Next”, which is Apple’s integration to show shows you’ve been watching when the Apple TV app is selected in the top bar, is polluted constantly with MLB games that I’ve not figured out how to disable. Sometimes I have to skip 3 or 4 games in the bar to find a show I watched yesterday.

And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).

Settings -> Apps -> TV, turn off the sports recommendations in there. Those are off by default, so you must have turned them on at some point.

Yeah, I’ve done that plus one other remotely related setting. Doesn’t help.

E.g. “Show sports scores” is off, “Games in Up Next” is off, and “Exciting Games” is off.

FWIW, I have all those things on and have never seen anything sports-related. I have changed the settings for the TV app to only show what's in "Up Next" instead of "What to Watch", though. Maybe that's the difference?

Yeah, I’ve had that set to show “Up Next” for a while. I use it mainly as quick access to series I’m watching. Which is why having MLB games show up in the middle of them is frustrating.

Is the MLB app installed? Is it in the top row?

Nope, not sure it’s ever been installed (not 100% sure, but it’s definitely not installed now). Like I said, clicking any of the MLB games in the bar will ask me to install the app.

I moved top row apps that show promos to the right end. This way I'm not exposed to promos unless I'm on those apps (instead of seeing the promos on my way to another app).

My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher. I think a lot of people will jump ship to third party launchers because of this, though, and the damage will be done. Then we just wait for an HN post about thousands of Shield devices being hacked because users installed launchers from who knows where.

>My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher

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...

They'll just delete the bad reviews after the initial PR storm subsides. Various big apps have been "caught" in the past doing it. Apparently if you have Google's ear then everything is possible under the table.

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.

They won't even wait that long. If they can find anyone on the internet telling other people to go give negative reviews to an app, they claim all negative reviews are due to that call to action. That gives them "justification" to delete all of them as "inauthentic".

Why would they need justification?

No idea. Makes the lawyers happy, perhaps?

I am beginning to go insane from YouTube ads, but in this case I'll say those reviews should be considered illegitimate.

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.

What is the harm if a company that screws its customers over gets punished out of proportion? It incentivizes companies to be better to their customers.

This sort of thing is so sad to hear about, because it’s hard evidence that people won’t stop using a platform even when it’s literally exercising censorship to sway their opinions.

We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?

Do we have a free press? ;)

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.

> Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face.

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?

You actually think they care? I get ads for apps I already have installed. YouTube says "time to revisit this app".

Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.

That has long bothered me as well, like we have some of the brightest minds in CS working on…how to collect, analyze, and extract value from telemetry via targeted advertising, yet so much of it is still so awful and irrelevant. The best kind of ads would be like a great salesman IMO - help me solve a real problem that I’m having and teach me something that is actually valuable to me in a non-condescending pressure-free way, then let me conclude that I must have whatever it is. Ads today a lot of times just go off of keywords that I’ve interacted with recently. Example: I recently purchased my second double-edge safety razor. I now own two. I don’t need any more. Now I see tons of ads for other razors that I have an approximately 0% chance of buying. I might be open to trying some new shaving cream, moisturizer, or other skincare products, but all the ad algorithms understand is “user searched for / clicked on an ad for a razor, so show them ads for new razors for the next xx days”. There seems to be zero understanding of potential customer needs in the actual targeting. I supposed it’s better than showing cigarette ads to non-smokers, but it still feels so irrelevant that it’s just super annoying.

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.

Some of the brightest minds in CS are working on maximizing ad revenue for their employer. That isn't necessarily the same thing as making the most relevant (whatever that means) ads.

Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.

> 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.

They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.

The Android TV Launcher is this one app, with an even worse score: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Supposedly part of the Android TV certification requirements include only using their launcher.

Hopefully there's some negotiation going on. If Google insists that the ad-laden launcher MUST be the default, they are killing any possibility of an "upscale Android TV". Seems dumb to purposefully kill that market.

I was thinking the other day about the Hollywood red carpet event backdrops that are plastered with logos and how tacky that makes the photos look. People even pay thousands for designer fashion goods that have “all-over” logo prints (e.g. most LV stuff, Supreme, Gucci, etc). I get that for some it’s desirable for the virtue signaling, but to me it just looks tacky. Let the quality of the leather and design of the handbag speak for themselves. It’s not as if an Eames chair has leather embossed with the Herman Miller logo every few inches, yet it’s still an iconic and recognizable design. Related: https://www.businessinsider.com/discreet-wealth-logos-status...

Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?

Is that required for the play store, or just branding as "Android TV"?

The entire GMS suite, including Play Store and YouTube.

What makes you think NVIDIA did not opt into those ads, and is getting a cut of the revenue?

>but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.

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.

>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.

You saw the recent Audacity situation, right? That's the point; developers may still make hostile decisions. Those decisions may still be merged to the "main" branch. But the community is still left with recourse, whether that takes the form of a fork, or more simply, one user heading into the code and removing the hostile additions just for themselves.

And on the other side, how does not being open-source stop people from patching the bits anyway (maybe not legally, but no one can stop you writing to a storage device you own)? If anything, I think OSS is just a distraction from the real issue, which is companies trying to lock out users from the hardware they own in the name of "security".

Use a Intel NUC or similar device instead of a Nvidia Shield and it will offer more functionality without ads.

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.

It will offer much poorer compatibility with streaming services, because most streaming services do not trust the DRM on a NUC for high quality content.

(Correctly, tbh).

It works with Edge mostly, but that speaks only against Netflix and Amazon DRM. I don't want to get compatible to that. Subjective, but the content isn't worth it in the first place.

(Correctly, tbh) - It is still a service problem.

I think at least Amazon fixed it in the meantime, I can play 4k without problems.

Take a look at what just happened with Audacity. Open Source is no protection, unless you were aware of the situation and downloaded a fork.

My copy of Audacity hasn't auto-updated to include any of that crap and it looks like future updates will come from a fork where it's stripped (if muse group even bothers to continue) so I'd say that's an example of it working.

Unless you were unaware of what was happening with Audacity. If you didn't hear about the news, you'll update and have no idea.

I installed it from guix, the package maintainers are aware of the issue and will not distribute updates containing telemetry.

On Debian, updating won't add unwanted internet connectivity.

It's delusional to think you have an absolute choice in this matter. Of course at any one point in time you can always chose to pick options that make a slightly different trade-off between convenience and freedom than the mainstream. But a few years into a strong persistent trend in society at large, even a tin-foil hat, self-flagellating setup will be offering you far less freedom than experienced some years back by someone who always chose convenience over freedom.

Which phone is that?

I use apple TV all the time and I've yet to see an ad. Meanwhile both the TV itself (gone) and other devices seem to push ads all the time.

When we say Apple is as bad - what are we talking about?

Inside the individual apps obviously developers do push things.

Apple defaults to playing big trailers on the home screen, but it's easy to turn off and IMO not nearly as bad as what Google has done here

https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/19/how-to-remove-home-screen-tra...

Very helpful.

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.

> Apple is seems almost as bad too.

This is a frankly ridiculous comparison.

I half suspect adb tricks will alway be available. If you allow a technically difficult escape valve for your most motivated users you can probably push the envelope a lot further for everybody else, as long as it's not easy enough for many people to do.

Like enabling the 30-second skip forward on Comcast DVR remotes.

Wouldn't a hosts file or a local DNS[1] or VPN[2][3] with hosts file support solve that without having to switch software ?

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

I'm using pihole and blocking Google DNS and yet my tv was showing that awful banner. I think google serves the ads using some not-only-ads domain.

It could be that you haven't added the domain they're served from onto your blacklist.

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.

Presumably Google devices will just resolve DNS queries through a tunnel, if you block 8.8.8.8

https://getintra.org/ is the only DNS client I know of that doesn't leak DNS connections over TCP, most other DNS apps (including the 3 mentioned here) do. Blokada is marked with anti-features tag by f-droid for telemetry: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/8536 (Note: Intra, though open-source, has telemetry in it too).

Disclaimer: I co-develop a Intra fork.

AFAIK personalDNSfilter lets your route the DNS however you want. Not that it matters too much to me. I'm not trying to have airtight privacy, I just don't want to be buggered by trash. I'm interested to see your fork, though.

It is up here: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app and discussed on hn a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26133661

I haven't resorted to changing my launcher yet, but I will definitely avoid purchasing a new shield (when my old one no longer suffices) as long as this is the user experience

Can you use it without accepting the terms of service? If not, it should be required you accept the terms at purchase, otherwise it's just a trojan horse (assuming you're somebody that actually reads the tos).

I’d love a link on how to replace the launcher. I have enjoyed my shields and it is now gaudy like ads results on search.

Apple TV is less intrusive with ads in the interface and during the viewing experience.

I think people here need to realize that in terms of preference, they are massive outliers.

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...

Source on it not creating money? Where I've worked, they had recommendations (for shows and movies) and we definitely were paid for showing them. Companies would pay us for priority, direct buy of a slot or to get certain keywords/demographics. They were really no different from ad slots at the end of the day. Only difference was that there was a small, but unlikely chance, someone that didn't pay could have been promoted.

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).

At least in the UK there are four recommendations in the top row, and two are explicitly marked with an "Ad" logo, so they are definitely paid ads.

(I agree broadly users do not care, but some of these are definitely paid, placed advertisements by Google.)

I think you’re referring to the TV and movie ads banner at the top? There’s a technical reason for it and a pretty simple fix. That banner shows for whatever app you have in the top left corner of your apps list. To fix it, all you would have to do is to move a different app to be there. I moved the Photos app to be the first on mine and all I see now is a color wheel/flower whenever I turn on my Apple TV.

> I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.

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.

No need to sideload anything. Just remove all updates of the Android TV launcher in the settings and disable auto updates. You'll get the good ol' launcher.

No unfortunately that may not work. Even if you revert all updates, the old launcher now has the ad. It appears they are doing this from their service side somehow. I removed all updates and disabled updates, but it didn't work. Mine required side-loading a launcher.

You have to also revert the play services app and then disable it, in addition to reverting the launcher app.

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.

I'd be curious if it depends on when you purchased the shield. I just tried this on my older shield reverting/disabling worked, but my newer one does not.

Do you know a guide on rooting the device? I also would like to put youvanced on it. Cannot really find info about it.

https://developer.nvidia.com/shield-developer-os-images

With more resources at: https://developer.nvidia.com/shield-open-source

What launcher did you switch to?

Wolf Launcher, seems to do everything I need from a homescreen. Lets you hide apps and has some basic customisation. Not amazing, but it has no ads.

Supposedly Wolf Launcher stole its code from some abandonware launcher, and is not open source. I'm wary of using it, personally.

Hmm, so it seems. Well, I've been looking around and there seems to be only one open-source launcher I could find. I'll give it a try.

https://gitlab.com/etienn01/flauncher

Honestly, why do people buy shit like this when you can just hook a raspberry pi to your tv and stream through that? I'm asking a real question here, I simply can't understand what makes this a desirable thing for anyone.

Ease of use. Pis are great, but not a trivial setup, especially when you get in to adding ir commands.

But you're making a mistake: you never owned this device, you obtained a perpetual license to use it :D

YOU DON'T OWN "YOUR" DEVICE. go ahead and buy more close source crap

You don't have to bend over and take it, you can throw the device in the garbage.

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.

There's not a comparable device short of plugging a pc in to my tv and I'm not going back to that life. I play retro arch installed from the play store, stream my pc from my office in to RDP, and connect a wireless kb to one of two usb ports in the back. I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration. The device is perfect in every way and I shouldn't have to throw this $300 device that's worked great for years in the trash because Google made a bad decision about the launcher. It's better than roku, firestick, and apple TV and they all have worse problems.

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.

Yep, the Shield TV really does seem to have some of the best hardware and sort of "just works"

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.

I had the exact same problems. Especially when you're trying to get Netflix out PrimeVideo in 4K, you're pretty much out of open source options.

The recommendation if your fridge starts showing ads one day is indeed that you throw it in the trash and get a fridge that, you know, doesn't do that.

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.

> 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".

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.

Wasting thousands of dollars tossing working hardware doesn't seem like it's really sticking it to manufacturers at all.

In some cases you be forced to. Discovering a hidden camera that takes random photos and send them for audience verification might be one reason I would drop a product.

Well, maybe, but that's a different claim.

Google, the vendor in question here, has been previously busted putting hidden microphones in their hardware.

Have you considered alternative ROMs? https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/h7ihw3/shi...

One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot of software is that they need a steady stream of software updates in order to remain useful and functional.

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?

Yes, it is a bad thing. I paid fair and square for the device. I expect the vendor to have factored in all costs beforehand for the expected lifetime of the device. If it physically lasts 10 years then bill me all your expenses for those 10 years. Don't bill me for 3-4 years and then go "Oops, you still have that device, huh? Take those ads because we can't finance support for 6-7 more years out of all our billions. No really, we promise that we can't".

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.

You own the device, sure, but you don't own the content that's playing on it, nor the servers delivering it.

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.

Well, I wish them luck. Practically every family knows one "IT person" and when we all collectively get fed up, come and watch how quickly do we drain the second-hand market of $200 laptops that we will repurpose as complete private home content consumption solutions.

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).

> 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?

Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from your vendors.

> One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot of software is that they need a steady stream of software updates in order to remain useful and functional.

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").

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