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Comment by jokowueu | Hacker News Reader

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"

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.

You're going to have to put it in a faraday cage when they start including modems into the TV. lol

Two can play this game if they provide free SIM card they should expect people hacking and freeloading this built in SIM card.

I'm sure 1% of their users will do that. I'm also sure they'll still make money from ads.

I'd tend to think this 1% group overlaps a lot with HN readers skilled to do it.

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.

"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

>"So clearly, everyone is okay with it. /s"

Cue the responses confidently dismissing the issue because there is some convoluted setup involving additional hardware and network configuration that any consumer can surely set up if they don't like what these products are doing.

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.

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.

I have no proof, but I have a feeling nVidia is working to fix this problem. They were probably blind-sided and so it's taking a while, but I fully expect them to create their own launcher now to combat this. Their customers were quite upset about it.

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

sad

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.

Thank you for this. I've now spent my evening going down a wormhole of launchers for my fire stick.

Finally got it all working, with wolf launcher and some adb commands to set it up as the default.

So much cleaner than the amazon launcher with its ads all over the.

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?

I've seen a few of them. They usually start with nudging for the first few weeks ("hey, you should really plug me in and get an OS update!") before eventually refusing to work at all.

You’ve seen a few TVs do this? What’s an example so that I may see it for myself?

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)

Apple is planning on adding ads to the AppleTV.

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

That was a long article to read only to discover ZERO indication that Apple is planning on adding ads to the Apple TV (other than the author’s pure speculation).

Thanks for linking the article so I could see that for myself.

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.

That doesn't negate my original point.

You literally have full control over what happens on an Android device most the time and Apple devices are always in a locked down walled garden where you have absolutely no idea what is going on with your data.

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.

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