The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool | Hacker News Reader

The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool

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505 pointsPretzelFisch561 comments

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). But they're often nice panels aimed at serious running hours, without this sort of junk (which would give enterprise IT conniptions) and can have very useful feature support like 802.1x authentication which so many devices still lack. Players like NEC will even advertise their use of an RPi compute and wink at lack of spyware [0] for some of their products, but lots of major "smart TV" providers also have a commercial lineup.

I think they're well worth considering, particularly for the HN crowd, granted I suppose for people who truly want built-in netflix or the like without connecting something like a Roku or Apple TV maybe it's less optimal. But even they might change their tunes back to the concept of separate boxes and normal panels if they dislike all the ads and data tracking.

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0: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/me501

You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years.

We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV.

Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.

+1 to Sceptre TVs! Recently (past week) bought a 4k Sceptre TV and it was less than $200. 60hz, looks great, the smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself.

Just make sure not to buy the android or roku ones!

> smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself

And, we've come back around to the 80s. <blink>12:00</blink>

I bought a Sceptre last year and one of the hilarious things about it was it had the "lite" Roku interface, just your input selections with no smart features. Those TV's are fantastic for the price assuming they don't fail (and even then it could be argued that it's still a good deal).

I bought a TCL with smart features and there's no ads and I just dont connect it to wifi.

The Firestick 4k Max I got for $75 advertises prime shows occasionally (unobtrusively) but the UI is 2x as fast as my Chromecast so I very happily use it w/ IPTV, Airplay, and streaming apps.

I have a Firestick 4k Max on our main TV and a standard 4k stick on the other TV. They just work compared to my Shield TV which always seemed to fighting my home theater setup. I got them through a Prime deal, so I think I spent a total of $75 for both.

I've been tempted by some in-app features that only seem to work on AppleTV devices but not enough to spend that much when my current devices do the job so well.

Much worse than ads is automatic content recognition (which, of course, is monetized by the TV's manufacturer).

How do you use the smart features without connecting it to the network (and exposing yourself to ACR)?

I was curious and looked up reviews for Sceptre, but according to some discussions on Reddit, they have build quality issues. One of the threads [0] had a discussion on picture quality and build quality issues.

Another subreddit [1] even has an automoderator comment that says getting a smart TV and not hooking it up to the internet is the best option. The automoderator also writes that if one is certain about going non-Smart, then one should "look at a projector or a Commercial Display. A projector means you will also 100% need audio with it. A Commercial Display or Hospitality TV you could pay up to twice or even more for the same TV (or worse) without smart features."

However, I'm not sure how reliable that automoderated comment on r/4kTV is.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/hometheater/comments/a25d5m/are_sce...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/4kTV/comments/qt9wvf/nonsmart_tvs/

Not hooking it up to the internet soon won't be enough with Amazon Sidewalk and other related efforts.

The cheap ones also have a blazing fast non-android menu. This was my last samsung

> gets REALLY slow after a few updates

The curse of smart TVs, I swear.

My TV pops an error and says it's still powering on if I try to change inputs right after turning it on.

Yet, if it is turned on by a device, like I begin casting to my chromecast, or turn on my xbox, it'll go to that input immediately no problem.

> every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates

My Samsung TV just seems buggy. Certain apps like YouTube will choke on certain videos, down to the point of just randomly rebooting the TV.

And newer apps (like Peacock) never get released for the version of the software that runs on my TV.

I guess at some point we'll just either buy a new TV, or maybe now that Apple 'fixed' the remote I'll dig the Apple TV back out.

I dont like 120Hz refresh, it looks weird. I see it a whole lot on bad 4k transfers of older movies, they're either doing a 3:2 pulldown or something else to up convert the scan rate, but no matter what it is, it makes the motion look weird and excessively fluid.

3:2 pulldown is taking 24fps film and making it work in 29.97fps TV video, generally with a couple interlaced frames. If you're seeing something "excessively fluid" the TV is interpolating frames. Which I love: 24fps needs to die. But a 120Hz refresh TV can also display 24 fps exactly, by showing the same frame 5 times, if the manufacturer has provided such a mode. 60Hz TVs cannot display 24fps without judder or interlacing

OMG it has a carrier board for an RPi Compute Module built in:

https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png

That's amazing!

Jeff Geerling talks about this very TV in one of his videos a while back: https://youtu.be/-epPf7D8oMk

If my partner wasn’t so hell bent in decor when choosing a TV, I would have loved one of these!

Funnily enough that's actually featured in the images/video carousel in GGP's NEC link. Was surprised to see his 'YouTube thumbnail face' there!

that's a fascinating review of that TV

Wasn't the RPi hardware originally developed for a STB before being sold separately? Seems like it should be well suited for the task.

I ended up buying a Philips 55" gaming monitor instead of a TV. Seems to be the only way to get a high quality panel and proper HDR without spyware, most of the commercial displays I looked at didn't support HDR properly or had terrible panels.

Yeah, but I don't want a dumb TV. Or the side-effort of some moribund commercial line that will also cost a ton more.

You know what else kind of had this problem? Well, not the spyware as much, but just the crap software embedded: routers. OpenWRT appeared.

It appears most smart tvs are already running linux, but probably in the way that android phones are already running linux.

With android and smart tvs, the corps got a major foothold into managed computing platforms that they can control to do whatever spying was necessary. Firefox on the phone, ubuntu phone, etc, they couldn't break into Android, and nothing has broken into smart tvs.

But man if there was an OpenWRT I could replace my roku TVs with, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.

It's not just that, my relatives have an old LG smart TV that long ago stopped adding apps. If there was an open linux alternative, it probably would be getting updates and AppleTV and Disney Plus would be options on it.

Cursory searches have basically returned "man it would be hard, you'd need to know the board pretty well", yet ... aren't there armies of linux hackers that love hacking stuff like this? Seems like Smart TVs are a big, ubiquitous consumer item with privacy concerns that the linux hardware hacking community has treated with apathy. Which seems strange.

Maybe all the hackers think "eh, plug a raspberry pi into a free HDMI port" or "eh, build a media pc".

This is corporate big brother in your grandma's living room spying. This is freedom on the line, it's strange that the linux-as-hacking-freedom and the linux anticorporate crowd haven't jumped on this.

I worked at a place where they conference room TV's were showing ads for games, netflix. Everybody else looked at it as normal but my TV at home doesn't show ads, so it seemed ridiculously unprofessional to me. Just like when Windows shows ads in the start menu, etc. I don't see how people get used to it.

From what I've learned the key to search for is "hospitality display".

First result from brave search: https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-di...

'smart' is in the title which is a bit concerning

If you want a TV-priced display for use as a dumb monitor, just buy a TV and don't give it a wifi password. My main desktop monitor is a 43" Roku/TCL thing that is still running the factory firmware. Works great.

One issue with TV displays I didn't see mentioned here is glossiness. TVs are mostly glossy and monitors are usually matte. I strongly prefer the latter.

However those TVs are not easy to get and, like you said, they come with an increased price.

I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.

I don't know if you have been following the news about Apple expanding its advertising business. If you don't want a corporation collecting data about your viewing, you could modify your approach slightly and try kodi.tv. I have Librelec running on a RPI with attached SSD as house media server. The add-ons catalog is large and growing, but it won't have all the channels you might want.

Does kodi / librelec have decent Netflix/Prime/HBO Max/Apple TV+ apps? I was under the impression they don't really support the big streaming apps and aren't really of use outside of watching torrented content.

Unfortunately yes, I saw the news about Apple. I'm waiting to see what will happen concretely, but I'm not very optimist. We'll see and maybe it will be time to move to another device :'(

>I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.

I'd be worried that's a losing battle long term though (maybe even short/medium term?), same with other hacks like running your own DNS and blackholing ad stuff that way. At the ultimate level, cellular modules and fixed data plans are getting real cheap, and for that matter for those living in denser urban/suburban areas I've heard people saying some stuff seems to be extremely aggressive about grabbing onto any WiFi they can find. But I could definitely see a point where everything comes with its own 4G module just for advertising usage (and maybe firmware updates so they can hang a fig leaf of "easier, no configuration!" over it). If we start having to talk Faraday cages for our TVs that's really hard to get around. Even purely in software they could use fixed DNS IPs to bypass simple user DNS, DoH to bypass users then trying to force all DNS traffic through their own, VPNs, and all the other ways everyone normally try to punch through aggressive firewalling with.

You're right that at present it's often still feasible to get a hostile TV then neuter it. But I think it's better to just not have a fundamentally malicious device inside your setup at all if it can be helped. To me that's worth some money up front, and I appreciate that it exists.

At the core and unfortunately it appears data harvesting and advertising really is quite profitable, and in a further grim twist those trying to avoid it might be even more valuable than the average. Which means the margins may exist on something like TVs to make it worth it to amoral manufacturers to get fairly nasty. That's a hard race as everything gets more and more integrated, vs just rewarding those who don't do it. Or else get laws passed with enough fines to change the equation!

> But I could definitely see a point where everything comes with its own 4G module just for advertising usage

I guess those Google Maps cars can hook up to everything they can while driving around your block without the need for sim cards.

It's a constant war, and most people don't care.

The options are thus

1) Pay big bucks to avoid it (buying 42" monitors rather than 42" TVs)

2) Do clever things to work around it via cat and mouse (pihole, blocking traffic, wire mesh, desolder the 5g modem, etc)

3) Persuade people to care, so that a company starts building TVs at more reasonable prices but without the data capture

This is a consequence of the fully optimised state of capitalism we live in

It's only a matter of time until these span their own Amazon Sidewalk-like networks and then possibly use the neighbors smartphone as a gateway.

Like "my Samsung TV" <--> "neighbors Samsung TV" <--> 'neighbors Samsung Smartphone" (or skip the Smartphone if their TV is already connected without a properly set up firewall)

How do you block internet if it will join open networks automatically?

It won't. Stories about it happening on the internet is plentiful, but actual evidence is scarce.

But will it join open networks automatically? It is of course entirely possible, technically speaking, but would get any company actually doing that in a lot of trouble in most developed countries.

Has there ever been any evidence of any TV doing this, ever?

Depends on the behaviour. On the times you've observed it

1) will it bounce between open wifi points if one does not allow internet access (set up a honeypot)

2) will it try open wifi if you join it to a secured wifi and block that traffic

3) can you send de-auth packets to any open wifi the tv's radio connects to

4) can you desolder the wifi antenna completely

I just allowed my Samsung TV to connect to the wifi (to access the local network, because the Steam Link client is better on it than it is on the Apple TV) and then, on my router, I blocked all Internet access coming from the mac address of the Samsung TV.

That process tends to require the use of a screw driver and the willingness to perform a bit of modifications.

To join an open network, it needs an antenna, which are easy to identify and permanently remove.

if it's that insidious let it connect to a dummy SSID that appears to be working but can't do anything useful

break antenna would be easiest solution, but you might possibly void the warranty while opening TV

firewall by MAC-address

>they come with an increased price.

Do they, or do the consumer TVs come with a decreased price to make them more tempting as the manufacture knows they will make up that discount in selling the collected analytics?

There was an article back some time now that showed how one brand was making more from the data sells than from the TVs themselves.

Edit: It didn't take as long to find an example:

https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2...

This isn't really surprising, as in general consumer electronics has famously thin margins. If you are in the race-to-the-bottom part of that, any other revenue source has an easy time moving the needle.

"Smart" TV can connect to public Wifis and other devices from the same manufacturer around you. I don't know if they do that already, but they could.

Why don't you just disconnect it from the lan/wifi?

Because of the Steam Link app, it's better at streaming good video quality than my Apple TV. I was really surprised by that but the app on the Samsung TV is wayyy better and doesn't drop half the frames.

I'm considering getting a 70" version whenever I get a house. While I've been renting I always just get the biggest and cheapest TV from the local electronics store.

Besides not having the usual crap, I would imagine these use higher quality component since the TV's might be on 24/7. Even that 50" at just over 1k doesn't seem that bad, that's usually what you would pay for a high end 50" anyways.

Which brands of smart TV show ads? I live in the UK and I've had three different brands of smart TV (Philips, Samsung and Toshiba) and my experience with all of them has been pretty good. Netflix, YouTube, etc. have worked pretty well and I haven't seen any ads that weren't linked to the apps themselves. Perhaps they're tracking me in ways I don't know about, though?

Samsung frame. Hardware: It has physical netflix, prime, somethingelse buttons which immediately switch to that app without asking if you want to close the current app. Frustrating when you accidentally sit on your remote. So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them.

Software: In menu ads, sometimes, for some crap thing like tennistv. I have no idea how to disable it.

The fucking frame store is inbetween apps and starting point of the menu. Alyways need to do 4 (or 5, depending on ad) times to the right before being able to run the app you want.

It started playing samsung tv. After a week. I hate tv. Took me a day to get annoyed enough and then spend an hour to disable the shouting XL Americans.

So, typical Samsung. Software ux just sucks. Luckily a tv is mostly turned off* and that is why I bought it; hardware looks great when it’s off.

*off: it always switches to the frame mode. It is a laughable gimmick. Ever seen a painting giving light? You cannot disable it (i assumed it was possible). Long-hold power off to turn the tv off. Else frame mode. Sucks.

We need to save energy here in Europe. @Samsung: please fix it.

I thought i would not use thr smart functions, but I use it a lot. Tune-in radio and spotify work great. Also a lot of youtube and national tv app are pretty good. Airplay works fine too.

Recommend it? No. Happy with it… just enough to not return it.

>You cannot disable it (i assumed it was possible). Long-hold power off to turn the tv off. Else frame mode. Sucks.

I have this TV; you long press the power button to turn it off. The entire gimmick of the TV is the art mode, as the actual panel isn't very good and you can buy the TV without the gimmick for several hundred dollars less (A regular 65" Samsung Frame is ~2K, while the normal 65" QLED is $1,200). My gripes about samsung software aside - it's an odd thing to complain about.

> So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them.

This is genius - I will do this for the footshoot buttons in my remotes!

I bought my mother a Sony TV which displays an iPlayer notification on every tv show on any BBC channel.

"Press Green to see the show from the beginning on iPlayer"

You can't turn it off and will only go away if you remove iPlayer. While it's not an advert, it's still annoying spyware.

My Samsung TV shows ads in the bottom app bar. Or did until it was disconnected from the internet. Crappiest TV I've ever had, slow and just all around a bad experience. I would love a dumb TV with decent panel in UK! Any suggestions are welcome.

Samsung displays them in the main menu unless blocked. I run a network ad blocker that takes care of it for me though.

FWIW we just upgraded to a 98" NEC "commercial display" C981Q and couldn't be happier with it. I looked into the Raspi compute module but we just have a PC and some Crestron gear running it all, Shure ceiling tile mic and a vladdio cam.

It was $8500 + 1500 freight IIRC

I looked at an LG one, 65EP5G. It's around 10x the cost of other 65" LG OLED displays. I get that it might be higher quality, but not 10x higher, and I know there's some revenue from ads, but not $10k.

> FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc.

Do they have tuners? I've heard many of those are missing them.

If this is a major concern for you, I think you'll be happy to hear that tuners are ridiculously cheap, with built in recording capabilities for under $30. I suspect if you're in the market for one of these pricier TVs and willing to pay the premium then the extra cost for an external tuner unit will be not be a major factor. For cleanliness you can attach it to the rear of the TV and use short cables.

I'm very happy with the Tablo tuner + dvr device. You can place it near the antenna, since it has WiFi. Then, you use it from a Roku/FireTV/etc app. It's more than $30, but they do sell refurb models. And you connect your own storage device, so no markup on space.

That NEC isn't a TV though, i.e. it has no tuner.

It would be interesting to know how many people use the tuner in their TV rather than cable, streaming, or the one in their DVR. Our TiVo use was supplanted by DIRECTV streaming in the past few years, but I don’t think I’ve used the built in tuner in about 15 years.

Is there any regulatory reason to include tuners in displays?

I wonder if something like this https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ could be used with the RPi capability

For the technically minded, not neccessary. Just buy a large computer monitor and connect it with a tiny computer. It's a hassle but the system is really yours, especially if you choose carefully what to install.

its much easier to just buy any smart tv and not connect it to the internet

Until your TV decides to connect to your neighbour's open wifi AP

Or just get any smart tv and add a android tv dongle . They don't cost much

That's what I thought we well, but TFA seems to suggest that some TVs may overlay ads on top of any video source:

"Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen and matched them to an existing database of content to find out what a user was watching and when"

"pop-ups would reportedly appear halfway through the show and be injected into the users' own content, such as home videos"

"Automatic Content Recognition" is scary, and seems to work regardless of the source of the image.

https://www.bannertag.com/guide-to-automatic-content-recogni...

I'm sure it's mentioned somewhere in the tome of text you agree to when you startup or unpack the tv. So clearly, everyone is okay with it. /s

Yes, but the moment you plug in an Android dongle, Apple TV or similar, you can just disconnect the TV from the internet, which should solve this.

If the plan is to get a TV (irrespective of it including "smart" features) and then use your own external dongle, then you'd have to be crazy to connect the TV to the internet. I think that must have been an implied instruction in the comment you replied to.

I got a very nice "smart" TV, plugged in my own inputs, and entirely ignored that the TV had its own apps. It works just as well as a "dumb" panel would have.

Android TV now also comes with forced ads (since rebranding to Google TV).

I was pretty upset when the very expensive Android TV gadget I bought (Nvidia Shield TV) specifically to have an external device without ads suddenly had them. They take up the upper third of the home screen.

It takes a bit of work, but you can replace the default Android TV launcher with an ad-free launcher, such as the free and open source FLauncher:

- Instructions for changing the default launcher on Android TV: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/o96npc/ins...

- FLauncher: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.fla...

- Source: https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher

This should work on any Android TV device.

What they did to the shield was a tragedy. It was so refreshing to have a device that I could completely customized to remove ads and suggested content. I don't blame Nvidia I think this is more on the Google TV side. I still think the shield is the best TV box on the market. I keep meaning to look into loading a different launcher that will let me go back to the old style.

if it's Google it's always going to have ads at some point

sad

The problem is that you cannot turn off much of the smart tv junk, including things like ads. Paired with features such as the tv refusing to work if you don't periodically give it a valid internet connection (for it to send its cached metrics and download new ads, of course), which is slowly but surely becoming more common, and you're only marginally better off than just using the smart tv features.

> tv refusing to work [...]

Is that really a thing? I'd never heard of it until this. Is that something that only kicks in if it has been connected at least once?

if you want to remove ads... buy a product (seemingly sold at cost) from google?

seems odd

Luckily, Google has options to turn that stuff off. They could be lying about it, but it's better than generic TV brand which gives you no options, is a security nightmare, and is definitely selling every piece of data they gather to anyone who asks.

If you care about privacy absolutely do not get an Android TV dongle. Get an Apple TV (though yes, they cost more. Maybe find a used one on eBay if you're particularly price sensitive)

If you really care about privacy, don't get either. Apple is just as bad (or worse), they just have a really great PR team plugging away while they're building their ad mega-empire in the back.

Apple is planning on adding ads to the AppleTV.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...

Now let me just open an ADB bridge with my Apple TV and install some third party applications, maybe flash a custom OS, rollback to an older firmware.

> Some may argue that there's no need to be dramatic and that there's nothing wrong in seeing an occasional ad every now and then.

Oh, no, I am very dramatic about this. I will go to any lengths not to see advertising. I will entirely forgo any platform that shows me even one ad, especially when I pay them. Amazon Prime video is already pushing it with their preroll previews. The second it's something else I'm canceling and going back to P2P. Fuck 'em.

Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

It indiscriminately pollutes the environment, and inflicts harm on non participants by incentivising unbridled data collection.

The hard, spikey, jagged, foul tasting pill to swallow then:

Society needs to pay directly for content.

> Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking

I’ll hold my drink while you convince America why it should pay 10x for a TV because ads are bad.

this is a bit silly

It's the principle.

This probably sounds over the top, but at some point it feels like they're saying they own you. You're paying them for one service, and they'll unilaterally decide it's not enough and they are going to make more money on you. But they don't do it via a price increase that gives you a fair opportunity to decide on the value exchange. They just start shoving this stuff on you.

And worst of all, it's your time they're taking to do it. The one thing there's never enough of, and that you'll never get back.

A lot of consumer-facing tech follows the same dynamic as an abusive relationship. "I want to know everything about you and who you talk to." "I decide what's best for you." "You can't leave."

I can't help but conclude that the engineers complicit with this are deeply broken people.

It's not just our time! It's also our limited attention. They think they have a right to it, they even think they can sell it off to the highest bidder. As if it belonged to them.

This puts into words a feeling I've had for a very long time, thank you!

Desire is the cause of suffering. Advertising, in its way, generates desire where there was once none and therefore causes suffering. And, it does so on industrial mass-scale!

Worst of all, there is no mechanism, at all, to restore the bliss advertising has destroyed. Because, money cannot buy confidence, friendship, fulfillment, or (most famously) happiness. So, once exposed, you have no way to regain what has been obliterated from your soul.

Advertising is not harmless, adblocking is not immoral, and your well-being is more important than anyone’s profits.

Yup. It's kind of incredible how these platforms are fucking up their services. Like, all they had to do was to provide the content in a way more convenient than pirating, but they've managed to go down a path where the experience get more and more user hostile by the day.

In my experience, most users are aloof idiots and do not even notice it.

Ditto. I got rid of windows shortly after they introduced ads in the OS. It really doesn't matter to me that there are technical ways of blocking them, I don't want to have to think about it or play cat and mouse with them.

When it comes to websites I really wouldn't care if they blocked my access because I use an ad blocker. I don't feel any entitlement to their content and they have no entitlement to what displays on my machine.

You could just use last good version.

> Some may argue that there's no need to be dramatic and that there's nothing wrong in seeing an occasional ad every now and then.

Not just that, it also means having thousands of companies know every show or movie you ever watched:

> [tv manufacturer] shared IP addresses of its consumers with the data aggregators who then would find a person or a household to which it belonged.

Also, knowing which ads you've seen is more valuable than the shows you've watched. Think how much advertisers are paying TV manufacturers to know the conversion rate of their latest TV ads.

Completely agree. Advertising is NOT okay, ever. There is no acceptable amount of advertising. I couldn't care less how much money it costs them.

It feels like a Clockwork Orange's aversion therapy eyelid-clamper thing sometimes.

I mute the volume for ads to take away some of that edge. It's one of the few things I can control about it.

why not use an adblocker?

The gaslighting by companies is pretty sickening. There's nothing acceptable about ads on a device that I did not ask for.

Especially when it comes in an update months after you bought your device. Looking at you Android TV.

It should be mentioned that "advertising" is not "showing an ad". it is collecting and selling detailed information about people's activities and behaviors.

its both

Amazon Prime Video showing preroll ads is massively dumb on their part. I'm already paying you and already actively using your service. I specifically have a Prime subscription because it gives me access to a huge catalog of obscure sci-fi & horror films. Really awful stuff. I'm not interested in the latest content you paid some outrageous amount to acquire the licensing rights to.

They already started showing ads to people with Twitch Prime a few years ago. It seems like its only a matter of time.

If you're paying for Twitch Prime, but still getting ads, then what are you paying for exactly? Less ads?

Sadly I think it's what happens when companies are pushed to generate more and more profit each year. So you you start just a few ads to the paying users, because: "They won't mind one short ad" and then suddenly it's all ads all the time.

It does make you wonder exactly how ads are so profitable and which products are paying the whole thing. It almost can't be electronics, because ads apparently help finance TVs and phones as well.

While not a solution for every Twitch viewer, sending the video from a browser or the Android app to a Chromecast device gets rid of ads.

I dumped Prime a couple months ago. So far the only consequence has been having to use an alternate platform to watch a specific movie and I have much less random "stuff" arriving in my mailbox/front porch now that I have to give some thought about shipping costs for cheap items.

I don't know when or how it happened, but seeing or hearing even a single ad infuriates me.

The best explanation I can come up with is that it wastes my time, and I value time above all else.

I have never bought or purchased anything advertised online. And nowadays I consciously try to avoid products that I see on online ads.

> The best explanation I can come up with is that it wastes my time, and I value time above all else.

Yes.

I cancelled prime due to those prerolls

I've already bought the service... why show me ads for it?

Just cancelled Disney+ with the one worded reason: commercials

Disney+ is going to have ads?

... just googled it:

So they are _adding_ a new plan that's cheaper and ad-supported, and they are not touching the current plans. So nothing will change for my current subscription plan thankfully.

> Disney+’s ad-free subscription tier, which currently costs $7.99 monthly and $79.99 annually, will remain available.

and this:

> What’s more, if the Disney+ profile being used is associated with a child, no ads will play.

source: https://tvline.com/2022/05/17/disney-plus-with-ads-subscript...

edit:

A clarification for the advertising to kids things. Looks like it's no ads to preschool kids

> Regarding kid-targeted ads on Disney+, Ferro said, “Yes, we’re going to have advertising… to kids, but it’s going to be controlled advertising with a lot of parental levers to pull. We’re not going to collect data on that.” She added that there won’t be advertising in preschool content on Disney+ at launch.

source: https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/disney-plus-advertisin...

Wow. Thanks for the head's up. I have Disney+ and have not yet seen this, but I'm done as soon as it does.

It doesn't have commercials and there will be a less expensive plan that does have them but that's optional. So your reason is wrong.

Invasive advertising is a form of violence.

Words have meaning. I despise the insertion of ads in every form of media, but it is not violence. That's just silly.

Same.

At home, I've never connected my TV to my network. The few firmware updates I've needed to do were applied using a thumb drive, and I use an AppleTV as my interface.

When I travel, I bring along an AppleTV and plug the HDMI port into their set. This lets me keep the services I subscribe-to and use them with their display. This has worked great until my most-recent rental, which had a RokuTV -- presumably setup on Wifi.

When content was streaming from my AppleTV, Roku would overlay a panel along the bottom-part of the screen proposing that I can watch what I'm currently watching from a variety of other providers. This must mean that the TV set is analyzing the video or audio signal to fingerprint what the content contained, then matching it against a library of content to feed into its profile of my use.

This is the first time I've seen something like this. I'd always assumed that if you used the TV's UI and if it was connected to the internet, then you'd probably be subject to their ads and data analysis, but it never crossed my mind that they'd perform the same data-analysis over any signal passing through its silicon.

Is this commonplace or is Roku the first of what's likely to be many doing the same?

> Is this commonplace or is Roku the first of what's likely to be many doing the same?

As far as I can tell, it's not only commonplace but ubiquitous for any new TV you buy these days.

I recently moved and had to buy a number of TV sets over the years to outfit various guest rooms. All LG and Samsung TVs I've setup over the past 3 years have a "feature" like this you can manually disable if you dig down through menus enough.

Then every firmware update the flag gets reset to enabled of course :)

> Then every firmware update the flag gets reset to enabled of course :)

This should be criminal

My LG TV plays movies from USB stick and never tried a trick like this. Not gonna lie, those were mostly relatively old movies, like LOTR or Heat, but also latest Predator installment.

>At home, I've never connected my TV to my network

The next (already there?) steps are the TV automatically scanning for open wifi network to leverage and/or having a built in 4g connection.

Samsung and Huawei are doing 5G,

https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to...

https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...

Cynical, sly enthusiasm. I just can't imagine 5G bands devoted to adverts passing invisibly through my skin. It is too much like the adverts in your dreams skit from Futurama.

Again, it is increasingly hard to separate satire from prophesy.

Or partnerships between the TV company and the ISPs, to put additional wireless networks on their consumer routers that are accessible to the TVs.

Or Amazon Sidewalk for the mesh network version of this.

Comcast does this in its routers, and no longer allows you to opt-out. They also have all the advertising ecosystem integration, of course.

Not everyone lives in higher density housing, so open wifi networks are not always a given. Also a built-in cellular modem would be antithetical to having a lower cost TV set based on ad subsidies.

I would worry more about mesh networks like Amazon sidewalk

Amazon has had "free" cellular service in their Kindles for over a decade, I'm pretty sure TVs have more margin than that.

> I'd always assumed that if you used the TV's UI and if it was connected to the internet, then you'd probably be subject to their ads and data analysis, but it never crossed my mind that they'd perform the same data-analysis over any signal passing through its silicon.

This is discussed in TFA. It's "ACR" (Automatic Content Recognition), and it applies to anything you watch on that TV, via any mechanism you try. Yes, if you hook up your AppleTV and look at your own videos, the TV is watching what you watch.

Today, it's comparing a fingerprint to a database. Tomorrow a new model or a firmware update will have it shipping your pixels to the mothership and doing things like determining who else watched the same video.

And if this isn't enough, you also have to ask yourself: What is your SmartTV doing with the camera facing your hotel room and the built-in microphone?

If a manufacturer uses ACR on content you brought in through the HDMI port, do you trust them with a camera and microphone pointing into your hotel room or home?

If you do trust them not to abuse that, do you trust them to keep all their TVs up-to-date with security patches to prevent hackers from exploiting them and taking over the cameras and microphones?

---

I can do this all day. Remember, it's not paranoia if there really is a trillion-dollar surveillance capitalism industry out there buying and selling data, and laundering data so that companies can buy it while having plausible deniability that they were knowingly involved in any illegal or brand-damaging shenanigans.

> The few firmware updates I've needed to do were applied using a thumb drive

What kind of firmware updates do you need to do on it, when its only purpose is to act as a screen?

> What kind of firmware updates do you need to do on it, when its only purpose is to act as a screen?

On some screens, signal processing has been significantly improved in later firmware versions. New features are also not uncommon, such as VRR and HFR being added after release[1]. This is particularity nice for modern consoles.

[1] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...

>What kind of firmware updates do you need to do on it, when its only purpose is to act as a screen?

My display had an issue where the video modes necessary for the XBOX Series X were not working properly. The display would drop-out in some 4K modes. It's stable now, so I haven't checked/updated anything in about a year.

There can be all kinds of fixes and features in the FW for the various display modes. From SDR to HDR to audio settings.

Most of the firmware upgrades are to keep the “smart” parts working, but sometimes they fix actual bugs.

My Sony TV came with the newest ATSC 3.0 TV tuner hardware. The software wasn't fully QC'd at launch. They put out a firmware update about 2 months after I bought mine to fully enable the tuner software and hardware.

Otherwise, it's been app updates and some improved HDR processing.

I love my ATV 4K. But it’s useless for traveling since hotels require you to login and the AppleTV doesn’t have a browser. The Roku sticks get around this by temporarily exposing a pass through wifi connection that you can connect to from your phone/computer and log in to your hotel’s wifi.

The only work around with the AppleTV is to buy a second travel router.

With tvOS 15.4, "Captive Wi-Fi network support on tvOS allows you to use your iPhone or iPad to connect your Apple TV to networks that need additional sign-in steps, like at hotels or dorms."

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/tvos-release-notes...

For travel, I have a Raspberry Pi with a second wifi stick to transmute hotel wifi into my own local network. This avoids having to modify every phone/tablet/Chromebook/Switch the family has in tow or fight with buggy hotspots. I keep meaning to add a VPN back to home (mostly for performance) but I haven't got around to it yet.

An upgrade I keep looking for is an external directional antenna so I can get a stronger signal when RVing.

I have a spare AppleTV for travelling and have never had a problem connecting it, even before tvOS 15.4. The router suggestions are also overcomplicating it. Just connect your phone to the WiFi, then choose the same network on the AppleTV and stand near it - a sheet pops up on your phone asking if you want to share the password with the AppleTV.

>When content was streaming from my AppleTV, Roku would overlay a panel along the bottom-part of the screen proposing that I can watch what I'm currently watching from a variety of other providers. This must mean that the TV set is analyzing the video or audio signal to fingerprint what the content contained, then matching it against a library of content to feed into its profile of my use.

My Roku TV specifically said it didn't analyze HDMI inputs, only Roku channel watching

I'm really glad that our "smart TV" just pre-dates all of this stuff. It can't connect to a network - it doesn't have that functionality. Firmware updates? No idea if there are any.

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

How is your TV a "smart TV" if it doesn't connect to networks?

same, except I go even further and instead other online thingy I just use USB driver loaded with movies/TV shows for me and kids, I don't understand nowadays people addiction to streaming, offline experience is much better/smoother, i decide what I wanna watch on computer and just load it to drive

but I guess some people can have moral reasons to pay for some service and/or it's not legal in their country to download and watch video content for free (though many EU countries allow this)

This is spyware.

The new Google TV launcher complete with ads on an expensive TV or a Shield is getting a hammering in the ratings, shows how little they care about customer feedback.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Bonus points for making the preview images in the store not show the ads you'll see. If any other app tried to mislead users like that they'd be banned from the store.

Although it's not like we have a choice, they've also disabled the option to change the launcher on the newest Android TV version as well to coincide with adding the ads on the home screen.

I get we need to have ads to pay for services but come on, the TVs they're doing this to are not your cheap Aldi ones, they're high end Sony Bravias. Most of the ads are even for other paid services like Disney+ and Netflix.

I have the same problems and it enraged me. It enraged me to the point where I back flashed the nvidia and blocked all domains to .google.com at the pihole for that mac address. Above that all NAT for DNS and blocking DoH and DoT. I do not need "new firmware" versions as the software I run on nvidia shield is just fine.

I unlock the shield, manually install the apps I want updated and ignore the rest. It has no external internet so meh if its got zero day exploits open.

Don’t buy hardware from an ad company - problem solved. Why do you think Google got into the TV streaming business?

Sony and nVidia are not ad companies.

In fact that are. They are selling TVs cheaply subsidized by ads.

The first time I saw a TV advertised with Google as the OS I laughed out loud thinking "who in their right mind would buy that?!", but then again, quite a lot of people buy a phone with it so I guess there's enough people out there who simply don't understand why it's problematic.

>who simply don't understand

Most likely they do and their pros/cons calculation is just different from yours.

Google is just a vehicle to get their employees promoted. It's not a serious company with vision or strategy.

You can still adb your way to freedom but it's not a solution for average users.

Downfall implies a failure or ending, it seems like they're still selling like hotcakes. This is why we need regulation to save us from surveillance, most consumers want cheap and don't understand/care that they're selling their privacy instead.

They’re selling like hotcakes because you cannot find non-smart TVs anymore

They do exist if you look for them:

e.g. https://www.sharpconsumer.uk/electronics/tv/non-smart-tv-hd-...

(Edit: size and resolution admittedly not great)

Even if you could smart TVs would outsell dumb TVs by a great margin.

It's called a large computer monitor or projector, but you have to pay a lot more because it's not being subsidized by ads or surveillance.

That's the beauty of great click bait. A word or idiom can mean different things now to people from different social nets. "Downfall" here could mean in terms of sales, or it could mean in industry reputation, or even more things even the author isn't aware of. Either way the headline has apparently tested well probably due to its controversial meaning.

some manufacturers are outright scamming people - philips has added advertisement to TVs after they were sold!

Same with my Nvidia Shield TV which is aggravating.

Sony did too. I tried to bypass it by getting a relatively expensive nVidia Shield. It got home screen ads about a year later.

I thought that was Samsung. Of course it wouldn't surprise me if it was both.

I quite like my android tv on my lg display. It’s responsive with a nice solid feeling remote. I think there are ads on the screen but I’ve never given them more than a passing glance except once or twice I was recommended a good tv show. Most people outside of the HN crowd really don’t think about this stuff at all.

> I’ve never given them more than a passing glance except once or twice I was recommended a good tv show.

Looks like the ads worked.

To my knowledge, LG TVs don't run Android TV, but webOS instead.

Any TV sold in the EU must adhere to the GDPR, so there has to be some sort of opt-out for tracking (and yes, GDPR opt-out also applies for "anonymized" profiling)

My LG TV has opt-in for tracking. That said, a lot of stuff just refuses to work unless I accept it. I refuse to use those features. It's a lose-lose situation.

No opt-out. It must be opt-in - off from the start.

This does not stop companies from making it very difficult to stay opted out, or to disregard GDPR entirely. After all, enforcement is very rare.

So what legislation? How many consumers even knowing that they are being tracked and advertised to are willing to pay the price so their hardware, software, and services come ad free?

If the US follows what the GDPR did, we will just have pop ups before every TV show asking us will we allow tracking.

If there is actually legal force behind our ability to say no, then this is not a bad place to be.

Ideally we'd include in the law the provision to say no once for some extended period of time. CAN-SPAM is a precedent for this, I believe.

Your downvoters don't know that that's exactly what happens. I see cookie consent popups on the TV, every time. I have no idea where they are coming from.

There is a much better option for HN crowd:

Buy a large/modern computer monitor and connect it to your homelab’s media server.

Literally there is no need for a smart TV so long as you are capable of setting up a small homelab.

The existing options for monitors, suitable for use as a TV, are extremely limited. For TVs 55" and 65" are common, for monitors there were just a few, which were dumb TVs basically. And then there are bigger sizes, different types of panels (there are no 4K QD-OLED monitors for example) that are not available for monitors. I think, if telemetry and ads are concern, buying TV without connecting it to the internet (using Apple TV or a homelab media server) is a better choice for many TV buyers.

Just don't use a smart monitor. Yeah, those will spy on you, too.

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-announce...

Frankly at this point I'd just avoid buying anything from Samsung. If there's one company that's displayed consistent disregard for data privacy, it's them.

Not having an TV is also a viable option. Around 2016 my last TV broke down and i have adapted to live without it.

When i say 'TV' i also mean to include Netflix and Hulu and other services serving the same purpose.

So, yes the alternative is not to use a device used by 95% homes in the US.

What next the old Slashdot meme - “I haven’t owned a TV in 10 years. Do people still watch TV?”

I haven't had one since 2006. I haven't missed it, nor do I watch any streaming services apart from the occasional documentary that generally leaves me disappointed.

We are doing that. We have a projector. In its case under the table in the living room.

Setting it up increases the transaction cost of watching a show/movie. The result is that we only put it up for the few cases when we deem it worth it.

And when we do, the experience is awesome.

Where can I get a 65 inch computer monitor?

I’ve done the homelab media server. I did my first one back in 2006 with a Mac Mini running Front Row. But this is 2022. If you want a set top box without tracking, just buy an AppleTV. It cost more because Apple makes money off of hardware and not advertising.

Yes I know the reports about Apple getting even deeper into advertising. Yes it saddens me.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-75-4k-interactive-touch...

Not cheap though.

Eh, I’d rather get that ad subsidy and never connect the tv to the internet

You can find these by searching “conference room monitor”

I’d honestly rather watch adverts than have to run a home server again.

What about over-the-air TV

Who's making 65" 4k OLED monitors?

Not mentioned: Samba(dot)TV... who are probably THE single most aggressive surveillance company operating in the Smart TV space.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/business/media/tv-viewer-...

And the Pi-Hole list you want is here: https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist

I interviewed with them years ago. The technological challenges seemed cool but ethically I wouldn't want to work on tracking what people are watching.

AFAIK it's at least still opt-in (different checkbox on-setup and all), and you can outright disable the APK on Android/Google TV.

https://archive.ph/Lhr81

archive.ph sends tracking to https://top-fwz1.mail.ru

no thanks

Is there an end to the Data Age ®?

Sometimes I have this interesting thought, that someday, when even the oldest people alive will not know or will not remebered how things worked back then. Then someone, or a group of people, will suddenly rediscover, or reinvent (as we always do throughout history) things that today still exist. Maybe someone will come up with "shops where you are served by real people", or paying for content you watch. Or a "shopping mall, but without cameras" ("but who will be watching me?"). Or a vehicle you can drive yourself.

I know it's a silly philosophical thought. But what it points to, for me, is that data harvesting works because it trades privacy for convenience, and even if it's too little, there are ways to opt-out (the trivial case being opting out of convenience). But it's a much too thin line to thread.

People are aware of the massive commercial surveillance. They just don't care. Human society is built upon trust or its lack thereof. When trust can't be established, surveillance arises. It only becomes a moral problem when it is done asymmetrically, and in an unprecedented scale.

When is too much too much? When your TV starts showing ads, even when unplugged from electricity? When you have to watch an ad to start your EV car (unless you purchase the Quick Start+ package for 9.99/mo)? You can take a break from ads today. That, in a way, ensures that you can consume ads for longer. But industry seems to be moving in the direction of eventually leaving you with no way to opt out. Then, the convenience might not be worth it anymore. That means either a market demand for ad-free products, and a subsequent return to pay-for-content business model, or some sort of social turmoil.

Or maybe that's their plan to get us to consume less: just stick everything with insane amounts of obnoxious ads, so we won't buy anything anyway.

One thing I fundamentally don't get: all this endless shoehorning of ads into everything is dependent on there being a seemingly unlimited amount of ad revenue on the table.

Why? Do ads actually work this well if everyone hates them? What about ads shoehorned into marginal spaces and presented in ways that are barely relevant to the material?

The only ads I EVER click on are relevant ads that come up from a search in which I am looking for something potentially to buy. In media and platforms (software, OSes) I usually associate the presence of ads with low-end crap.

Am I weird? Are there tons of mindless ad clickers out there who actually buy based on irrelevant ad spam?

Why are companies so stingy with wages and willing to outsource their core competencies in exchange for small gains but at the same time are willing to piss endless amounts of money away on ads?

> Why are companies so stingy with wages and willing to outsource their core competencies in exchange for small gains but at the same time are willing to piss endless amounts of money away on ads?

Because there's a whole analytics industry that tries to demonstrate ROI for each ad purchased. And as long at that ROI is positive it seems like a no-brainer to throw more money at advertising.

I wonder how much of said analytics industry is bullshit. Especially since these analytics are often provided by the same companies that are selling you the ad space.

I wonder if a good chunk of the whole industry isn't a giant grift against advertisers.

Problem is they have to invade our privacy and ruin our products and media to keep the grift going since the ads have to actually be shown somewhere, even if they're ineffective spam.

I don't remember ever clicking through an ad on Youtube or similar, so I also have to wonder if ads really work so well. I guess I'm not the average ad-viewer since I doubt I've ever purchased anything that I didn't already need or want because I saw an ad.

I run an hdmi cable from my laptop and have a bluetooth keyboard with a scroll pad on it. My wife doesnt like it. But its so much faster than a "smart tv". My issue isnt even the ads. Its that half of these tvs feel like they are running on low memory because of how slow they are. Add in the streaming apps that crash just often enough to be really annoying...

I wish it didnt have to be that way.

Yeah these threads pop up on HN all the time and everyone starts talking about apple tv and roku whatever and I think they're all... pretty dumb.

HDMI + Computer is just the best answer. Works in hotels just fine. I'm not aware of any smart TVs that push ads over your connected devices feed even if you do let them update for no good reason. Keyboard and mouse is better than remotes. Web search is the best search. You can use streaming sites. It's basically free. You can... use it as a living room computer. Hit up spotify and now it's also your sound controller. Have browser tabs. Play videogames.

PC's are intentionally gimped to prevent trivial copyright infringement.

Netflix forces you to use Edge on Windows or Safari on Firefox to stream in 4k because they integrate with the OS's DRM.

HBO Max doesn't allow 4k at all on PC's but I think will at least do 1080p if you use an approved browser.

I don't think Hulu will stream anything higher than 720p regardless of which browser you use. Disney+ is the same.

Good luck getting anything over 720p running Linux and Firefox.

I'm right there with you. Still "only" have a 1080p TV but a living room computer is the most robust option, that you get more control over, and it doesn't even need to be an expensive high-end machine either. Added advantage of being expandable and upgradable too, depending on what you're working with.

I stream games from my gaming PC with Steam too and it works flawlessly. Controllers work great too. I'm lucky to have been able to wire everything with Ethernet though, but modern WiFi has gotten surprisingly decent from what I've heard.

The latest Sony TV's that offer Google TV can leverage "Basic Mode" which disables the 'smart' functionality leaving you with a dumb TV with best-in-class picture quality.

It's perfect to pair to the device of your choice (Roku, Apple TV, Media Server, Xbox, etc).

https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en

Does Sony have a history of remotely disabling or otherwise changing their hardware features? Because if they do, this Basic Mode is at their pleasure.

Probably correct URL: https://adguard.com/en/blog/smart-tv-ad-blocking.html

Oh, look:

> If you're in for a more advanced and comprehensive solution, you may want to set up your own AGuard Home server

It's an ad!

Did not read; I just looked for the likely URL.

I have a Samsung smart TV but have never agreed to the EULA or connected it to the internet. Not sure if this is good enough but I never see ads or really anything unexpected, just good old fashioned TV. I do worry though that some other EULA I’ve agreed to might give them the ability to connect the TV through SmartThings or something similar without my permission. Doesn’t this seem crazy to even have to consider?

I bought a smart LG TV about a month ago. This is my first smart TV, and I was very cautious about it because of "too smart TV" stories. It is OLED and the picture worth every euro I paid for it (and it was quite a few euro, to be honest). I am downloading HDR 4k movies and playing them from USB stick. I also watching YouTube occasionally, casting it from the phone (TV plays it by itself, not receiving a stream from phone, which is great for quality).

I didn't see any ads yet (including YouTube, because of Premium). What am I doing wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong. I have a 65" LG C9. And nearly everyone at my company has an LG TV. I've never seen or heard anyone mention ads. My parents have used the same TV for several years.

When used with inputs such as cable box, Apple TV, or native apps like Netflix, Amazon, etc., everything works as expected.

I'm genuinely confused as to what people are referring to. The last ads I saw were in the Peacock app to watch Parks and Recreation (and they were surprisingly non-obtrusive mainly Apple and EV ads). But I didn't have a subscription--the ads weren't coming from the TV.

I purchased a high-end Samsung TV in 2011. That was my last Samsung purchase ever. I also had a Sony X900F, and suffice it to say, I'll never purchase another Android-based TV (the UI was slow unresponsive garbage, unintuitive, and user-hostile). The actual TV itself was of decent quality but hamstrung by its operating system.

In general, unless something has changed, stick with LG.

Another case in point: my TCL series 5 has made 11K (!!!) DNS requests for scribe.logs.roku.com, just last month.

As a matter of fact, it's now the top-blocked domain in my pi-hole.

It's a shame Roku won't allow you to at least opt-out of telemetry.

11k blocked requests for that domain in a month? Seems low... My pi-hole is blocking that domain about 50k times A DAY. All from one TCL TV.

I also have a TCL Roku TV and NextDNS. In the last 30 days, just over 16k connections to scribe.logs.roku.com have been blocked.

Maybe your TV is a little overactive for some reason? 50k in a day almost makes it seem like something is broken somehow.

YouTube's advertising strategy is pushing me to get rid of my SmartTV, or at least find a 3rd Party solution to completely block the ads. I was completely fine with one or two 6 second ads randomly playing before a video, or during a lengthy video. Then they added 14 second ads, which was very annoying, but bearable since it's about the same length as the two short ads.

But now they're advertising even if I simply open the app. Furthermore, they're "hiding" 14 second ads behind the shorter 6 seconds. I've even seen 41 minute advertising content. I'm guess they're banking on users leaving the app on "autoplay" to dupe advertisers into thinking that people actually consume this trash.

These days I just cancel every ad out of principle until the video plays. This takes on average 6-7 attempts. But now more often than not I just quit the app completely. So they are depriving their own content creators of views. And then they have the gall to present surveys asking what my advertising experience has been like...

YouTube do have a paid option, which doesn't have ads (unless the content creator has some sponsorship deal). It is the subscription service I get the most value from. Based on a few videos from content creators, it also seems like it's a good deal for them. I think Linus Tech Tips phrased something like: It matters much more than you think. Other have shown data suggestion that Premium customers contribute as much as 20 to 30% of the revenue.

Having used a device, not my own, to view videos while not on YouTube Premium, I do have to say: You can't really watch YouTube without the subscription anymore, the experience is just awful.

Pay for Premium - YouTube is one of the few services that actually lets you pay to stop the ads, it’s worth it.

I wish that also fixed all the bad product design that results from building something corrupted by ad incentives.

You can also disable all tracking in settings.

With YT I pay for Premium. With how many ads they throw in to videos now I find it very worth it.

I have actively returned to using my computer to watch YT/Hulu because the overhead of seeing the ads is just too high on our TV.

My solution is https://nextdns.io/ with a special TV profile that has basically all adblock lists added to it, and then some.

I also use NextDNS for my home network. They specifically have a section for native tracking protection (Privacy tab -> Native Tracking Protection) for some of the major consumer electronics brands, including Samsung and Roku. With that option I've never seen an ad on my Roku TV, works great.

I use this but it works intermittently. It seems the Samsung TV randomly decides not to use the DNS IP I put in its settings.

Last year I gave our smart TV to a friend as a gift and bought a “dumb” TV for $190 from Walmart. It has two inputs: one for an old fashioned antenna lead, and the other is HDMI.

I plugged an Apple iTV black box into it, and except for a slightly funky remote, it is a fantastic viewing, navigating, and discovery experience. I did give up image quality but I am much happier.

Signage displays are the solution, that is, those big screens used in malls, airports, stations etc. they're sturdy built and guaranteed to work 18/7 or 24/7, so don't expect to pay them like a shiny but crappy consumer Smart TV. However pay attention before buying since manufacturers started to add Android based crap and "smart" features to them as well. Usually the lack of any networking, both Ethernet and WiFi, on their technical sheet is the indicator they're dumb enough to be worth of trust. This arrangement of course requires an external receiver since they're essentially beefy monitors. They also make almost-dumb TVs for the above markets.

As for the brands, I'm aware of Swedx.com in the EU and Sceptre.com in the US. Samsung also makes some interesting products employing the Tizen OS (any jailbreaking available?). I don't have any direct experience with any of those however.

I bought my first TV as an adult last year. I’m 44. I barely use it…

The problem I had with Smart TVs (Samsung then return to get the LG) are their absolutely abysmal system performance. Jerking, stuttering movement, menus that lag, a counterintuitive controllers, and streaming services usurping the experience; I do not want a permanent Disney+ button!

Raspberry PI + OpenElec + dumb tv + Pirate everything

Not one single filthy obnoxious advertisement. Ever.

Access to the WHOLE media library.

Do it today.

This is a hyperbolic article that doesn't reflect reality for most people.

I use my smart tvs for two purposes: 1) to use the native apps for streaming services (and I never get ads except the internal advertising of the apps themselves), and 2) to connect my personal devices (computers, game systems). The native apps are much more convenient than using an external device for my non-techy partner. I stream to another TV from my devices via HDMI and a switch.

For most "cord-cutters" that use only streaming services, I expect them to have similar ad-free experiences.

Seconded. I use Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV, Prime, and YouTube on my smart TV at various points in time and I never see ads. And I have my Switch, Chromecast, and Blu-Ray player hooked up. In fact the only place I see unexpected ads is on the stupid Blu-Rays.

Both my smart tv are not connected to internet, I just use chromecast and my phone for everything since 8 years. I just hope google never break this.

I also am not fond of TV's that snoop on everything in my living room and spew out unwanted ads. But recently I had to buy a new TV. Here's my setup.

The TV is an LG 55" model OLED55C1 (could be a Costco specific model number), very good color and sound. I expect to keep it for ten years or more as I did with my previous LG plasma.

Next I got an Asus PN51 Ryzen 3, very cute, small and quiet mini computer (had to add an SSD and memory). I loaded the latest Linux Mint onto it and used an HDMI cable to connect it to the TV. The TV was not happy about not being connected to wifi (that's what the PN51 is for) but eventually it succumbed.

The final piece is a Logitech MX Ergo wireless blue tooth mouse. The result is fabulous all around as a TV and a computer.

So all in it's about $2k USD which is a lot up front but given the hours of use by our household over ten years it's probably the best value I've bought since my last TV.

I hate this too. I got a top end Sony TV and it was covered in ads. I left it in Basic mode but it's still covered in an ugly ad to please sign up for Google TV

Then I finally got a PS5 two days ago. It's also covered in ads with no way to turn them off. I might sell it as I don't want to support such crap and there is nothing I absolutely need to play.

The thing I find most infruiating is that someone else gets to decide what I see every time I use either of them (well the tv works in basic mode tho it's an eye sore)

Often what's being shown to me is something I find offensive or hate. I hate sports for example. Or it's a TV show I can't stand or a movie with an actor that rubs reminds me of a bad relationship .

I get there are lots of situations in life where other choose what I see but for some reason my TV's default when turning it on is one too many

I feel like these anti-consumer practices by BigCorp can open the door for new companies to emerge on the market: build an ad-free tv, ad-free smartphones etc. Or is it just the effect of me living in a bubble while 99.9% of the customers don't care about this?

Bigcorp has their hands in many cookie jars and don't care if they take a loss on selling the panel in the smart tv if it means they gain in licensing deals from having "Netflix" printed on the remote. You can come in, your offering will just be costlier than the subsidized smart tv and you will be driven out of business before long. Or, no suppliers even want to work for you because they are busy fulfilling orders from bigcorps who will gladly buy up all their capacity to keep people like you from having an easy time starting a small business.

I think there are two reasons. First, most people might be mildly annoyed by the ads at most, and certainly wouldn’t make a buying decision based on them. Second, it’s almost impossible for new companies to compete on both quality and price at the same time, unless they’re subsidizing the product somehow (ads, perhaps? :) or as an unsustainable VC funded business I guess). How often is it that we see a new company that can make a smartphone that has the fit and finish, camera quality, and specs of an equivalently priced iPhone/Samsung/Pixel phone?

I guess this comes down to the balance between the marginal cost of offering an additional product line with a different firmware and the marginal revenue of winning the privacy first market.

Then there’s the constant problem with pay-to-avoid ads… the people who have the spare cash to pay are the ones the advertisers want most. Removing them from the target population lowers the overall value of the targetable group and reduces revenue for your ad-supported products.

Yes because consumers have history of paying more for quality in aggregate…

There is a reason that two of the five most valuable companies in the US are adTech - Google and Facebook.

How many consumers are going to choose to pay $300 more for an ad free privacy first TV?

How many consumers right now are willing to pay for an AppleTV over a $30 Roku stick?

You need a surprisingly small number of HN crowd like folks to ruin the market. Most ad targeting - regardless of actual product - goes after people with high discretionary income. If a chunk of those folks self selected out of the video ad market, it ruins the overall economics.

This is an idea I've toyed with - corner the >200K income TV market with privacy features. Make it as easy as Roku to block all this.

Non-tech people I talk to hate ads too. Boomers have been talking about how facebook is all ads now too.

Being very bad at any commercial initiatives, most probably I am way off, but I think there could be a market for some "enhanced" versions of those "universal" TV/LVDS boards to replace the internals of new TV's.

Something loosely along the lines of:

https://diy.viktak.com/2014/02/giving-new-life-to-lcd-screen...

I.e. in a perfect world you could be able to buy a (subsidized by ads) "smart TV" and (voiding the warranty) be able to replace the innards with a "dumb" card.

"smart" tv's remind me too much of 3d tv's. those were a fad for a while and the only non-3d tv's you could buy were high end retail displays. they are thankfully gone now.

I wanted a higher quality display than what a retail display could offer me, so I chose a "smart" tv that has oled with an appletv connected. as long as I never hook it up to ethernet or wifi, it acts as a "dumb" display and I can use only the appletv remote.

I really look forward to good displays being panel and sound only again.

BestBuy has plenty of non-smart TVs in their insignia brand

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-...

I need a 4K TV since mine is only 2K but the only non smart TV I've found are at Walmart, the Sceptre brand. Does anyone know of any other?

https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/me501

With commercial displays usually the problem is to find a dealer who is not doing B2B only

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234299003266

https://www.beachaudio.com/nec-multisync-me501-me501/

Is there anything holding back an OpenWrt-style project for TVs? I can imagine something like that becoming popular among hacking communities if TV manufacturers ever resort to installing SIM cards.

For now I just don't connect my TV to the internet and it works just fine. My laptop, an HDMI cord, and a Logitech K400+ makes for a much better experience than any smart TV interface.

Call me crazy, but I think it's only a matter of time before windows in our living spaces will be monitors with overlaid ads. The in-app purchase will be "allowing us" to remove the ads so we can look at the view in peace.

In the meantime, all my TVs never see the light of WiFi and have ROKU sticks.

I can see the progression like this:

1. Bright monitor that looks like a windows, to brighten up spaces that can't have windows. As it gets more popular, production ramps up, its price decreases.

2. Buildings are now built with these instead of actual windows, because now it makes sense economically. Maybe as more affordable housing.

3. Windows monitors get internet connected in the meantime, and now that there's a guaranteed number of eyeballs on them, become attractive for marketers.

4. Windows now sometimes show ads - Landlords get the option to get a cut if they install them, or it could be factored in the base price like how it's done with smart TVs now.

I don't own a smart TV. If I were to buy one, am I forced to connect it to my WiFi before I use it? Can't you just use one without an internet connection?

My dumb TVs have Chromecasts attached. I know I'm handing my data to Google, but I don't (yet) have to put up with injected commercials.

This type of expectation is why I've always gravitated towards Roku sticks.

They're cheap, really well designed, centrally controlled on your account and you avoid any need to over-invest in specific TV vendors to have the same experience across the board.

And it can't do anything that the HDMI port can't do.

I get what your saying but the article specifically mentions Roku partnering with Walmart to not only show ads but even facilitate the purchase...

My solution has been a Raspberry Pi running Kodi.

There's a part of me that wonders if this wasn't by necessity.

I went into Best Buy just before Christmas and they had Google TVs and Amazon TVs everywhere, prominently displayed and fully stocked. They only had 2-3 little Roku TV's hidden in the back corner that I had to ask somebody to even find.

If I go into Sam's Club or Walmart, I can find Roku everywhere with great options.

It made me wonder if the other vendors were trying to push Roku out and because of that they were forced into a deal with Walmart to remain viable.

You have gravitated toward Roku even though the CEO outright admitted in a podcast interview (referenced in the article) that Roku is an advertising company not a hardware company?

You see those four hard coded buttons on your Roku remote that are shortcuts to streaming services? They went to the highest bidder. You see that non removable banner ad on the right side of your Home Screen? You see the advertisement for the Game of Thrones prequel right in your menu?

Roku is the worse offender. Yes we have multiple Roku TVs and I recommend them to almost anyone because they are cheap, Roku has the best SmartTV operating system, support for every streaming service comes to it first, and it has a long history of updating its software. But, the two TVs I use most frequently also have AppleTV 4Ks attached.

I also take a Roku stick when I’m traveling because it works with captive networks that require a login. With the AppleTV I would have to configure a travel router.

Copying from another comment, in case you didn't see:

With tvOS 15.4, "Captive Wi-Fi network support on tvOS allows you to use your iPhone or iPad to connect your Apple TV to networks that need additional sign-in steps, like at hotels or dorms."

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/tvos-release-notes...

> This type of expectation is why I've always gravitated towards Roku sticks.

I like Roku's interface and price, but it's a shame that they're nigh-useless outside the US.

I can do youtube, Netflix, and Amazon prime with mine, plus BBC and ITV etc here in the UK.

What else can they do that I'm missing out on?

yeah. I've made the 'not going to do nothing but also not going to dedicate my life to self-hosting everything' choice: I bought a dumb spectre generic tv, then hooked up a roku stick, and am letting the pihole catch whatever it can, and hoping for the best from there.

So far, the banner ads in roku stay away, so it probably works well enough?

They can show you ads over anything they're displaying from an HDMI port.

But they can't access built in hardware on the TV to listen in.

An update to my tv changed it from having a clean startup screen to give me ads for shows on network I don't have, and I hate it with passion.

Ironically they have a button that says I can customize the screen, which means I can add more crap, not take anything away.

My current main television is a Sony Bravia I got right before the explosion of smart TVs. For all that it is "limited", it does all of those things very well.

I get much more functionality by plugging in a computer than I do by using any smart TV.

Don't connect a smart TV to a network, ever. Instead, use a Google TV, Apple TV or a RPi running Kodi (and maybe PiHole?) for a Smart experience without all the bloat.

It's cheaper to replace the external device than replacing a TV.

The downfall of smartness: from promise of power to subjugation via data extraction.

Step 1: Get an LG WebOS Tv Step 2: Don't connect it to the internet Step 3: Use a separate device for any smart features, Apple TV, Google TV, nVidia Shield Step 4: No profit for ad sellers.

It should be noted that Vizos used to not show ads. But now in a firmware update my tv is now forcing you to go to their smartcast input option that shows ads.

You can't disable that in the settings.

Never had a smart TV.

I have gone the computer monitor route for all my TV needs.

No need for more vulnerable IoTs in my home.

By denying them Smart TV manufacturers a piece of my mind (viewing habits), I now have a peace of my mind.

Unless you use your television solely to experience encryption-free OTA programming, any cable provider or streaming app has the capability to sell your viewership data to third parties.

If you have children you have a moral imperative to pirate content and prevent this from infecting their lives.

Search for a plexshare. $20 for everything, zero ads. Screw these greedy bastards.

Same reason why Facebook still pervades here in Thailand. Facebook offers 'free' internet access to their site. The have discounted 'social' bundles for data plans (providers necessarily have to snoop your traffic to see what you're using). People grow up with it as the 'normal'. Teaching kids that data collection is just a part of the internet does have moral implications—just like we should stop training kids on Microsoft and Adobe software or letting Google's Chromebooks invade the education space.

You’re right, it’s a moral imperative to show children that if you can’t legally get what you want just do it illegally…

Legal != moral.

I thought this was the motto of startups. "Move fast and break things." etc.

downloading video content copy for personal consumption without owning original is legal in many European countries, uploading/distributing would be very different matter, let alone software

I have an LG C1, which is an amazing TV, but even after disabling every single ad-related option, I'll still occasionally get a pop-up ad when the TV turns on.

Interesting! I have the same TV and never see ads (I'm on the latest WebOS update). My Pi-Hole actually blocks everything and the only times when I see ads are when I disable the blocking to be able to access the app store.

Edit: To clarify, ads served on the WebOS interface. YouTube ads are still there.

I am planning to migrate from smart tv to just panel + some android tv box. Any suggestions for the box? Needs to be android for some local tv apps to work.

I’ll never allow a tv in my house to connect to the internet. I just stream everything via my apple TV set top box. Nice separation of concerns.

Please lets stop calling devices which spy on people "smart".

Dumb devices are smart for privacy. Smart devices are dumb for privacy.

That ship has sailed, it has been widely used since smartphones. And it actually become a useful identifier (for me, for stuff to avoid).

That's why Sony TVs have always been ahead of the competition and the only ones I ever buy.

I like it. They keep making it easier to read more books!

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." - Groucho Marx

The URL is borked

Edit: fixed!

tl;dr; disable Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)

It also doesn’t help that my privacy is always (*ALWAYS*) wrapped in some platform specific jargon.

So my genuine question - asking if this post (an advertisement for AdGuard) is within HN rules - got flagged. I've since checked the guidelines and while it doesn't explicitly say product placement posts are verboten, they do seem against the spirit of the site ("Please don't use HN primarily for promotion"). But what guideline makes my comment flaggable?

Users flagged it as well as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554218. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I think they probably just thought the comment was off topic, and not in an interesting way.

The key for whether an article is good for HN is not its "adiness" (if I can put it that way) but its interestingness - i.e. does it gratify intellectual curiosity. In this case plenty of users clearly thought it did. It may be true that an article was written as part of a startup's effort to promote its product, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the content itself is interesting. (Of course, it tends not to be, because content marketing tends to be boring, but that's a different issue.)

The rule in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html about not using HN primarily for promotion is about how people post to HN. In the case of https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=PretzelFisch it seems clear that the user isn't posting to HN primarily to promote anything, and certainly not this particular product.

Still, I'm glad you noticed that rule! It's a relatively recent one and I think it added a lot.

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