Vizio TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV
flatpanelshd.com
flatpanelshd.com
Customers should have the right to return a device any time if they don't like a particular update to the product. I know it's drastic, but if companies can turn what should be a basic device into an amorphous system that starts serving ads without the end-users consent after purchase, that should constitute a material change to the end product that was not appropriately advertised.
This is the exact kind of thing that consumer protection laws should be able to cover.
I’ve done this in the past with a few different pieces of tech already, such as Bose speakers and a Samsung TV.
From Wikipedia:
> The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.
The MM act also provides for awarding attorney's fees in a lawsuit against a manufacturer for violations of the act. Pretty sweet.
Separately, there are implied warranties of merchantability and fitness under the uniform commercial code.
US customers are almost completely ignorant of this. It really steams my cabbage when I see people heap praise on a company for warrantying an item that failed horribly, just outside the warranty period, and was an item that is usually quite durable and long-lasting.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-s...
However, yes, Magnuson-Moss also specifies that manufacturers must honor a warranty unless they can prove the failure happened due to damage or misuse caused by the customer. That (I believe) is why jailbreaking alone can't invalidate a warranty by itself.
So you want to file a lawsuit for damages that would be limited to the value of your TV (possibly reduced by the value of the substitute), instead of getting a refund of the purchase price of your TV?
Other than enriching a lawyer, what benefit would that provide you?
Those of us who would rather not waste the kind of time and money needed to sue an electronics manufacturer would prefer a return option instead.
You're free to sue them, but I suspect the lawsuit is going to get tossed almost immediately. Do you really think a multi-billion dollar company is going to expose themselves to a theft lawsuit?
smaller retailers might not have the same terms with their vendors, but for the big ones they can and will pass that through to the original vendor, and that stuff is all tracked. return rates are a big metric that vendors use to measure customer satisfaction and figure out what they can get away with.
source? walmart's return policy explicitly says the return period is 90 days.
https://www.walmart.com/help/article/walmart-standard-return...
As long as it can show images and play sound correctly, those are really non-issues as I'm using Android TV boxes anyway. So disconnect the TV from internet and use a TV box instead, all issue resolved.
That's not nearly drastic enough. Customers should have the right to know what potential updates to the product do in advance, to refuse any particular update to the product, and to roll it back if they don't like it, as well as making any other update to the product they want. That's how products have worked for thousands of years, it's how computer products work when they're running free software, and it's an absolute bare minimum to preserve basic liberal rights like freedom of speech and freedom of association. A future world where X Æ A-Xii Musk can have your Tesla car reprogrammed to scan what you say in the car for possible anti-Tesla sentiment is not a free world.*
The fact that even getting your money back after manufacturers vandalize your product after purchase to spy on you sounds "drastic" to many of us is an indication of how far we've fallen into a dystopian future even Stallman wasn't pessimistic enough to imagine 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, I don't know how we can get these rights in practice without requiring all software in consumer products to be open source/free software, and the software industry is currently organized in a way that is extremely hostile to that course of action. To a significant extent it wouldn't require positive action by regulators; merely refusing to enforce copyright on software would get us most of the way there. Someone would still have to figure out how to update the Vizio Flash chip and reverse-engineer the Vizio drivers, while a successfully enforced GPLv3 would require Vizio to help them, but at least without software copyright they could do it without any fear of legal repercussions. And Linux isn't under GPLv3, iOS isn't under any GPL, and enforcement of even the weaker GPLv2 against Vizio has so far been unsuccessful.
So, at least for the next couple of decades, we are sort of doomed to endure this sort of thing. Maybe a new free software movement founded today could change these things for the better starting 20 or 30 years from now.
______
* Maybe X Æ A-Xii is such a good person that he would never do such a thing, but historically speaking, structural guarantees of individual liberty have been much more effective at promoting the public welfare than ceding unlimited power to either rulers (who we hope are benevolent) or to "the will of the people", as amply demonstrated by the blood-drenched history of human dictatorships. Some rulers really are benevolent, but nobody remains in power forever. There's no guarantee X Æ A-Xii's heir will be so benevolent.
In the EU, I'm fairly sure it doesn't.
* most of local news is just "native advertising" anyway, like that piece on the latest kitchen shelves or the upcoming "fleet week" or the local basketball team's star.
One question though, “liking” something is subjective and ripe for abuse. Use the TV for 5 years and then return it back because consumer wants to take unfair advantage of the law.
It can grossly backfire.
My own view on regulation of markets is that it is just an incorporation of externalities into the market (better reflecting the actual “costs”)
Now, 'Your privacy and focus is ours even if you pay for our HARDWARE'.
Unless, consumers start seeing advertisements as an insult to their intellect this will get worse.
What kind of soulless automaton can write corp-speak garbage like this?
I wonder what Adam Bergman would think if his dentist took a piss in his mouth and then charged him for “industry-leading oral antiseptics”.
The kind of automaton that made a business plan thinking they can sell user data but is realizing that they can’t do that effectively.
I heard from a bird that heard from a bird that Netflix barred these companies from collecting and selling movie watching statistics Or they’ll yank the app from their tvs. I’d not be surprised if this is becoming more prevalent with Disney plus and other apps becoming far more walled up and putting in similar clauses (and more more and more people spend their time in these apps instead of cable ). Thus they’re desperately trying to find crappier revenue streams now that they have established tvs to be as cheap as they are now. Vizio isn’t some dumb corporate, im sure they know what such a move will do to their brand image.
We have an amazing ability to justify things that benefit us. I often wonder how many people in advertising and marketing can justify what they do for a living, whereas I view much of that industry as a blight on society.
If you need a large screen, you can still buy a smart TV but simply never connect it to the internet. Or better yet, take it apart and rip out the wifi antenna so it won't connect to your neighbor's open network on its own.
With Facebook, it's not that simple. You're either on there, or missing out and inconveniencing others.
The Romans did it first
Or, as it seems in this case, they wait until after the TV has developed a good reputation and sold in large numbers, before enabling the ads.
I think the answer has to be, simply never buy a TV that you wouldn't be completely satisfied with as a dumb HDMI display. Cos even if it's not abuse like this, eventually the built in functionality will break, or become too insecure to keep active on your network.
In fact it goes for just about any appliance these days: whether it's your fridge, microwave, dryer, doorbell or anything else, if it doesn't have a "dumb" offline mode where you are still completely happy with what it does, don't buy it.
I just loathe the idea of having a TV that (1) is going to have a smartphone-class SoC built-in that I won't even use for anything and (2) is going to be yet another computing device I don't control.
I begrudgingly tolerate the fact that my PS4 and my phone are computers I don't control, because at least they offer functionality that's useful to me, but I draw the line at smart TVs because they aren't even useful in the first place. I'm just going to use my PS4 for everything on it anyway, but then I'll have have another device where I have to worry about software updates and shitty anti-consumer practices.
/rant
2. don't connect it to the internet
3. enjoy your "dumb" TV
They're not exceedingly rare. A tad more expensive, yes, but not hard to find.
The brand is called Sceptre, they sell them at Wal Mart.
Am I missing something? Maybe that brand doesn't exist in the US?
Personally i dont think it's 100% certain that all consumerized technical products start abusing their customers.
Personally it feels really early in on this one. The free hand in this product segment is just exploring what it can do what it can get away with. Markets are conversations. I expect this one is not, like you podit, at an end, but rather just beginning. Perhaps this move survives but seems like it'll be hard to keep going, to defend.
This is ridiculous and is so anti-user. I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs.
This but for everything.
Everything is so full of bullshit no one asked for these days. Refrigerators. Ovens. Cars. Microwaves. TVs. Computers.
You name it, it's full of garbage that both took a lot of effort to put there AND makes the product worse.
It's like capitalism has contracted herpes.
My fridge has a digital display, always on, so I can calibrate the temperature of the fridge and freezer. This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges.
They cut corners by building the freezer shelves out of as little plastic as possible. Bits of plastic chip off over time, and the drawer itself is held together with tiny plastic clips that invariably break.
They're not Smart TVs, but then Smart TVs aren't Smart TVs, they're shitty computers that spy on you.
Things like this new ad "trend" makes you think the "smart" in "smart TV" was just a reference to their marketing ploy.
I appreciate thin TVs that mount on the wall but the Vizio is a bit thicker and has room for a quality set of speakers that, in my opinion, outperform a Denon soundbar we have kicking around the house.
My take is that from one end to another end somebody thought carefully about what features to put in that would make the TV valuable to users.
It's dumb but the best option ATM is to buy the best TV for the money and just use it with an Nvidia Shield. When TVs start locking down basic functions behind EULAs and/or use built-in cellular connections then we'll have a huge issue.
Okay, a sound bar might be a reasonable investment but... my new Sceptre TV doesn't do HDMI-ARC, which means a soundbar is a big ongoing hassle, for the life of the TV.
I still give Sceptre credit that they have VGA inputs, and handle DVI converted to HDMI properly (separate audio input), which it seems all other manufacturers just shrug off and don't care to support, even if their know-nothing support reps may tell you otherwise.
It's a legitimate offering in the market for those who don't want to spend much. I purchased a Visio TV for my bedroom, where I only use Plex and therefore expected very little interaction with their ad platform (I was right).
The ad being tested in the linked article is an interactive ad by Fox TV when the viewer is done watching a specific Fox TV show and the end credits are rolling letting viewers know they can watch additional episodes of that show within the FOXNOW app on their smart TV.
("But wait," you might ask, "why do you get to decide which features are good and bad? I found that ad very useful - I had no idea one could watch Fox TV shows on the Fox TV app!" The answer is: can you disable it? If not, it's a misfeature.)
That said it took a moment for me to realize what people were complaining about. That banner is basically identical to what they've put in TV shows for decades, the only difference being that this one mentions streaming and is interactive, while the TV ones tell you when the show airs and aren't interactive.
TVs have a design life of three years and often ship design changes during different manufacturing runs, so jail breaking every variation of every device when the manufacturer is potentially working against you isn’t feasible. It’s a small percentage of the population that could do any one model of one device.
I’d also suggest dropping “smart TVs” in favor of monitors and a sound bar might be a an option, however Roku already took it to the next level by implementing a similar scheme on their devices. If Amazon, Google, and Apple followed then you’d just be in the same situation again. So again IMO better to attack the problem in general rather then a particular make or model.
I really prefer the free market to correct this kind of abuse, but I'm not sure how that works when they're all doing it. Theoretically everyone could just stop buying TVs but that's not going to happen. So it's just death by a thousand papercuts (abuses) I guess. Very sad.
I seem to recall Samsung sending me notification banners on my Galaxy phone several years ago, around the holiday season, to buy more Samsung shit. From that moment on, I disliked them.
It has happened which is why manufacturers are struggling now and doing nonsense like this to allow them to sell TVs at the old market prices from back when a TV wouldn’t last that long.
I actually bought a Vizio TV years ago on the basis that it was sold with extremely unobtrusive software -- it had Chromecast support and a configuration/remote app you could put on your phone, but otherwise it did what you told it to do and stayed out of your way. They actually released a firmware upgrade six months or so later that added a crappy smart TV interface that has gotten increasingly crappy and intrusive over the years. It was infuriating. I had no way to opt out.
I guess I'm willing to try smart tv features but the vizio kept getting into broken blank screen states. it works perfectly fine as a dumb device though.
I don’t understand this take. I think it's pretty clear a lot of people use Netflix and YouTube and it's incredibly obvious that they wouldn't want to add an extra $100 for a lesser (read: non-integrated) experience to use it on their TV when the TV can do it natively. Of course I'm going to connect my TV to the internet, that's the only thing I use it for.
I think the only solution here would be for appliance vendors to have a "nutrition box" for privacy and advertising, so the user can pick the least obtrusive TV and the vendor cannot just add ads later.
But in the US I don't see that happening this decade.
A decent Roku can be had for $25 on discount. I think it is $35 regular price. And I'll bet it's better than what most smart TVs offer. I haven't used modern smart TVs, but several years ago, the inbuilt apps sucked. Netflix is more likely going to update its Roku app than some app on some TV. Indeed, those friends of mine who bought smart TVs 10 years ago got burnt by this within 2-3 years of purchase.
This is a completely solvable problem; spend an extra $20, get a Chromecast, and never deal with this again.
There are also bugs that get fixed through updates. (HDMI CEC is notorious for this -- an update might fix something but break something else.)
The menu is annoying (Samsungs) and complains about not being “setup” but it works just fine.
Neither TV has ever been allowed on a network.
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs. That could result in a hacked TV that then starts attacking your streaming box to enable networking etc.
One reason might be if the TV channels are delivered over IP to an app running on the TV. One could move the app to a streaming box, but that would be largely functionally equivalent since it would still require the same underlying platform.
This is the case with my TV provider (https://www.init7.net/en/support/faq/TV7-Voraussetzungen/).
Now, ads haven't been an issue. However, unwanted Android TV updates have (I've now disabled them).
Samsung sells "commercial signage displays" which are kind of dumb TVs. The BE55T-H for example is 55in 4k for $600, stripped down OS / basically just HDMI in. BE65T-H is 65in for $800.
They're also intended for always-on semi-static content from what I understand, which is nice.
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/pro-tv/bh-serie...
https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/qled...
Might go some way to explain the costs.
While perhaps true, the extra price you’re paying is all in how they need to reach the same margins without that TV showing ads or otherwise having smart features they can sell.
And the money is only there is the customers are still there.
If they're getting up and walking away with their money (or even demanding it returned for a loss of value), an anti-consumer decision isn't so easy to justify.
I'm never going to buy a TV that tracks what I watch, let alone one that exploits that information to advertise to me.
Whether that's actually true would depend on the picture quality. Paying $800 for a TV that has similar picture quality to a $300 walmart black friday TV is not "reasonable" at all.
Just get a stupid Roku stick, Amazon Stick, Apple TV, whatever.
It's obviously not right that they're doing this, but the solution is very simple and probably a better experience anyway.
I have never interacted with any device that did something as egregious as adding a banner on live TV.
Funny how Vizio already got fined for almost exactly this. But now it's back as a ""feature"" for advertising.
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs, so that is another thing to worry about.
1 = https://zatznotfunny.com/2005-11/tivo-cc-tagging-patent-appl...
That just seems super creepy.
I wish that everyone is as creeped out as you. may be that would affect some change.
You "still have time to voice your concerns" when you contact the appropriate government officials, the reseller who sold you the TV, etc.
Someone trying to spy on you and defraud you doesn't get to set the rules for when you're allowed to object.
Imagine a hearing impaired person not seeing a message that a tornado is approaching their immediate area.
Hopefully it's just a poor attempt at an April Fool's joke, and not real.
Wow at that.
For one thing, getting prime time coverage of ads, w/o having to pay networks is pretty amazing but how it's done (Just the spin of it all) is just pure evil and that spin - I don't think any ads benefit viewers though.
They are selling you a below-cost TV and making it up in ads, same as Microsoft selling you a below-cost Xbox and making it up in accessory sales.
I don't think it's correct to say there's not benefit. The benefit of YouTube ads is that you have unlimited 4K content available for free (below cost of bandwidth).
While you may say you'll pay 600 bucks for that 55" TV with no ads, most consumers will disagree with you and they show it through behavior.
I'm starting to think that if creating a crowdsale of a dumb tv panel might be a profitable project.
One disgruntled plumber or maid and suddenly you’ve got Bezos dropping a deuce complete with toilet view all over the internet.
However, if past is prologue then they will probably be off the market in a year.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwYPO_SN0C0
1 - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/google/learn-about-google-tv/pc...
Well, the thing is buggy as hell. It can't connect to the network (wired or WiFi) several times per month. Cycling power does not fix it. The only reliable solution I found is to unplug the ethernet cable, and plug it back in.
When it does come back, it will do weird things. For example, when you last turned it off the volume was set to 7 (out of 100). If you have to the thing to get it to connect to the network it will, every few times, blast you at 100% volume even though the volume bar says 5, 7, 15, whatever. You have to jump on the remote and click it down. Just one click at it is back to normal volume.
And then there's all the garbage on the home screen. I want none of it. I just want the few services we are subscribed to and icons for the input connected to the external PC, playstation and WII. That's it. Just a handful of icons would do. Instead, my $2,000 bought me a circus act every single time I turn on the TV.
I really want to not buy a Vizio ever again. And then you realize they are all the same. Not sure what to do other than, as they say in the movies, "science the shit out of it" and design a full replacement main board for the thing and toss their electronics and software in the trash.
If people are going to prioritize cost while making their purchase decision, it is obvious that the manufacturers are going to see how much they can push.
If people stop buying such TVs, they will stop. So, stop buying such TVs.
No thanks not for me. Maybe I'll get a projector.
It seems to me that if you stop paying companies working against your interest money, or only pay them money for products that aren't against your interest, you're probably going to do a lot better in the long run in terms of protecting your interest from unethical corporate raiders.
Welcome to dark patterns.
I work in helpdesk for an ISP by the way. I see what smart tvs do, and it aint pretty.
It’s amazing to me that anyone would knowingly be ok with their tv spying on what content is being showed to serve ads, somethings that literally no-one except advertisers asked for.
The privacy implication of these systems is huge. Profiles about viewing habits can tell a lot about someone’s political and religious affiliations.
Having nebulous third parties manage these databases, probably badly, risking leaks, providing ad and government agencies yet another intimate way to monitor and profile citizens…
I hope some government body like maybe some EU body is going to highlight the risks these technologies pose to all of us.
Samsung does the same, and it seems the race is on for manufacturers to provide these ‘features’ as a way to remain competitive and get additional revenue streams.
I bought a Sony Bravia BZ40H Digital Signage Display. It does have Google's Android TV crap but unlike consumer TVs I refused the agreement when asked and the TV works perfectly fine without talking to any Google services or spying on us even though it is connected to the network (I check its traffic). It also has an API, though I haven't made use of it yet. We use it as a dumb monitor to an AppleTV and so far it has worked OK. It doesn't pop anything onto the screen - that would detract from its use as digital signage after all :)
I went with this model because I specifically wanted a "Digital Signage" display that had a reasonably good panel (a lot of them are garbage).
This is nothing new , second screen technology is now 10 years old. There are multiple ways
1. Gen 1 ,was more like Use audio cues from TV with phone or remote mic picking up for showing relevant ads 2. Gen 2 ,Use ACR (automatic content recognition ) to identify what you are watching and do ad analytics or present ads/ notification to devices using same wifi/login etc.
To escape from any of these , you need to disable ACR and smart recommendations in Roku, LG, Samsung , Vizio, Fire tv etc.. or buy a dumb Tv.
Almost all smart tv have one or more ACRs. They do a screengrab or audio grab every few seconds and send to check fingerprint to identify what’s watched. Also every video you watch from streaming platforms have tracking Id inside from Nielsen Gracenote or something similar and reports back the data as you watch them along with information of which devices it’s being watched on.
So technically it can identify your video that’s being played on tv - is from any pirated website or torrent. HDMI CEC also can coordinate to recognize if it was played from a real Blu-ray or not. Might be able escape if you go HDMI without CEC on smart tv, or go to same argument buy Dumb TV.
Put it this way , As long as you are using internet connected devices/TV , you are not escaping tracking what you are watching.
If you've already gone down this path, just block it on your wifi hotspot/etc. I've got a pile of ways I block things, from wifi blocking, nameserver blocking, to full blown firewall rules blocking IP ranges.
Solves untold grief too, no longer do my windows machines update on their schedule, they don't report usage metrics to MS/etc. Same with my LG tv, it doesn't get to talk to LG services except when I allow it (which is rarely). It just has some generic LG backsplash on the left hand side where it has in the past wanted to display ad's (although they backed off it at one point, but by then it was too late and lost its privileges.
My current monitor is a 4K TCL Roku TV, but it's only connection is an HDMI cable to the PCs video card.
You can still slide load but they clearly want to be able to spy on you and shovel ads in your face. This for a $3k TV I paid for. It's as bad as Windows 11.
Further, Sony also wants to spy on you via some service who's name I forgot. AFAIK you can opt out (well, they ask you to agree with a bunch of stuff when you first turn on the TV and I didn't)
It's infuriating but I don't know where you can get any TV with high end features that doesn't have all the smart TV crap. You can get industrial displays but they aren't top end panels.
First: It's from April 1.
Second: What's described is not Vizio inserting their own ads wherever they feel like. It's a way for the network to show interactive ads in their ad breaks, instead of the usual "dead video".
So, assuming this is not an April Fools thing, the viewer doesn't get more ads, the ads they get are sometimes interactive.
Here you go, from March 31, 2022 01:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220331005913/en/
It's effectively more surveillance even if it's more "more ads".
I read it as "as many ads, but now some are interactive".
WiFi chips plus a deal with one of the big ISPs that already uses customer-site equipment to provide their own hotspot network app would be more economical and cover most urban and many suburban areas quite well.
See the recommendations on this thread for the additional work you'll have to do: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/recommended-strategy-for-cli...
Some consumer routers may not allow the configuration necessary at all.
Root My TV: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29938520
PiHole: https://pi-hole.net/
Usually not from the tv maker, but still a big banner at the bottom with a cheesy animation of the sitcom star or whatever?
Certainly never seen that just mid broadcast on a TV show
Note of course that even common Linux distributions have privacy issues, here are the ones that we knows about for Debian:
No more hidden updates for me or my family. Fight and complain to the dealer. Returned tvs is how we get these marketing morons and douche nozzles to shutup
Samsung does this nowadays too but at least they show ads in g their own content (they broadcast some TV channels) which I think is fine. I can choose to just not watch their content.
This is nothing new , second screen technology is now 10 years old. There are multiple ways
1. Gen 1 ,was more like Use audio cues from TV with phone or remote mic picking up for showing relevant ads 2. Gen 2 ,Use ACR (automatic content recognition ) to identify what you are watching and do ad analytics or present ads/ notification to devices using same wifi/login etc. It can even present with a add to shopping cart button on tv or phone , while an ad is playing.
To escape from any of these , you need to disable ACR and smart recommendations in Roku, LG, Samsung , Vizio, Fire tv etc.. or buy a dumb Tv.
Almost all smart tv have one or more ACRs. They do a screengrab or audio grab every few seconds and send to check fingerprint to identify what’s watched. Also almost every video you watch on TV has tracking Id inside from Nielsen Gracenote or something similar and reports back the data as you watch them along with information of which devices it’s being watched on.
So technically they have the capability to identify your video that’s being played on tv - is from any pirated website or torrent. HDMI CEC also can coordinate to recognize if it was played from a real Blu-ray or not. Might be able escape if you go HDMI without CEC on smart tv, or go to same argument buy Dumb TV.
Put it this way , As long as you are using internet connected devices/TV , you are not escaping being tracked of what you are watching.
We now have TVs that have cameras built in.
We now have TVs that display ads without our consent.
When do we get the TVs that cannot be turned off?
Big Brother awaits.
I'd like to upgrade to a TV with 4K and HDR eventually but guessing it won't be that easy unless I use a monitor instead.
Fine print should not be able to excuse this.
I wish they made themselves dumb tvs, it seems to be a good fit for their business.
If they do this in countries covered with reasonable privacy laws (e.g. the EU), go directly to regulators.
I got one for free, and I regret it.
Navigating the menus is painfully slow. After a few weeks, it started losing about 1-3 scan lines per week. It's unusable at this point, only about 18 months old.
Nvidia Shield + "Console Gaming Monitor" (from e.g. Gigabyte, LG, etc)
Yes it's more expensive, but that's how much they'd make from you with ads.
The real best way to avoid this is disable it in the settings and filter the device on your network then use something like a Shield TV for the smarts, unless you particularly want your TV to be a console gaming monitor in which case that's a fine substitute just not an initial assumption to avoid ads. So far (and likely forever given the average consumer) it has not been cost effective to serve these ads out of band and jurisdictional requirements on requiring opt-out (or defaulting to opt-in) have been getting better not worse on top of that.
Note on something like the Shield (and regardless of display) if you truly want a 100% ad free experience you will need to unlock the bootloader and either patch the official OS or install a stock Android TV image. Either of these options will disable official access to certain content/qualities but at that point you're probably avoiding those sources anyways as such content sources are themselves covered in ads. That or an OTA adapter for non-smart content in which case you're still going to get ads OTA, but at least not additional ones from your viewing device.
I imagine they'd get sued though
Oh hell no. I will never, ever, ever buy any product from any company who does this kind of bullshit. Are you listening, Vizio? I mean forever. I'd rather go buy a 40-year-old tube TV than deal with this.
I just have a pc connected.
If you don't want ads, don't buy this device.
And no one seemed to have thought "wait, I'm being a complete cunt here – every user who will have this 'feature' inflicted upon will hate it!"
Sorry-but-not-sorry for the strong language, but I've taken to hold people individually responsible for this kind of stuff. Excepting people in social/financial circumstances where they don't really have a choice, if you're doing this kind of stuff then you're just being a gigantic twat. These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.
I just don't understand how people can do this kind of thing – I'm not surprised because I've seen it many times before, I just don't understand it.
I've worked for about 9 different tech companies in my career and I only truly believed in maybe 2-3 leadership teams after a year working there. Execs are politicians at the end of the day, the only difference is that they're chasing profit instead of votes.
> These people are all fairly well paid, so none of this "just doing muh job" nonsense.
Changing jobs is time-consuming and stressful, and there's a lot more to a job than just total comp. Flexible hours, company culture, etc. also play a role. The reality is that if you've been around this industry long enough, there's a semi-decent chance that you have a company on your resume that you might not be proud to admit working for, either due to public or internal knowledge.
Fortunately, in this case we know exactly who to direct the complaints toward.
The most logical explanation I can come up with is that there are compensation incentives tied to financial performance (or even just project completion), and this sort of thing will probably boost the financials enough to trigger those payouts. When enough money's on the line, I'm sure it's easy to wave away any feelings about the end user.