Comment by RiverCrochet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RiverCrochet | Hacker News Reader

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A lot of people do their grocery shopping at Walmart (even if you don't). This positions Walmart as being able to offer discounts for food and other daily necessities to people right on their TV. People are going to like this-especially the cohort that would buy a cheap TV at Walmart. They're going to really like saving a few dollars on groceries or gas. Not to mention Walmart can now offer perks through the TV to its millions of employees. They're going to like it too.

Walmart is one of the most litigated companies ever, and probably has 10+ active lawsuits against it at any given time. So if they're getting into this, they're fairly sure it will work legally now and in the future.

The battle against personal-data-collection by default on TVs is probably lost at this point. It's over. Non-smart TVs will probably become specialized, super-expensive corporate-class expenses out of reach of most people before too long.

Projectors are capable of creating a big image on a wall like a TV, and while it's not as bright, it comes with much less privacy invasion, and is also portable. That's where I'm likely spending my future TV dollars until those gets caught up in this as well.

Great point! My knee-jerk reaction was that this is an intrusion and the enduser would be held hostage unless he/she gives up personal information to Walmart...and maybe that is the case for some, but some will surely benefit from the personal advertising and discounts. I do believe there should be a large, bright, unavoidable notice on the outside of the TV packaging stating that a Walmart account is required to use the TV.

And that will also benefit Walmart. They have Walmart+ which is their grocery delivery and in-store checkout app - which, if you've ever shopped at a busy Walmart near a city, both of those either enable you to avoid actually entering a Walmart or make it much quicker if you go in the store.

So that sticker will be a big "This TV requires a Walmart+ account - Sign up for Walmart+ and get free grocery delivery on orders over $30 and discounts at the self-checkout AND deals on streaming!" Their electronics department people will probably be trained to answer any questions and help people sign up on the app (if they're not already).

Walmart's pretty smart here.

Get an actual projector screen and mount it on your wall, you'll get a much brighter picture than just projecting on a painted wall.

Brighter picture perhaps, but good luck being able to have anything resembling "actual black", best you'll get is dark gray.

Alternative solution that doesn't require worse picture quality, never hook up the TV to the internet. State of the art quality, none of the data collection.

I would bet five figures that within 5 years it will be commonplace for TVs to require an Internet connection in order to be used at all. One is ATSC 3.0 and its DRM encryption capabilities. The other scenario is probably be that, because the TV has pre-installed applications, then the TV has to record your age and register it upstream to comply with an age-verification law or interpretation thereof.

Agreed, you'd still need to darken the room for the best picture in any projector scenario, as the darkest black you can get is whatever the ambient light level is.

> People are going to like this-especially the cohort that would buy a cheap TV at Walmart.

What? If anyone truly believes that "People are going to like this", then just make it opt-in.

There is a reason it's not "opt-in". They know damn well people are NOT going to like it.

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