I mean, normal TV it's 90% ads 10% content, do we need to watch even more ads?
Anyone has any idea on how adding a filter like AdBlocker to your router? Never thought about this but it's getting useful af.
Frustratingly, recently the latest Plex app stopped working with the block rules I had in place, so I've had to allow through a lot more of the TV's traffic to samsung domains than I'd like.
My primary annoyance is Samsung's monitoring of what I do on my TV, and secondarily their IPTV service, which it seems to default to on startup (I only use apps and PC/game console sources, the TV isn't plugged into or tuned for any channels).
Realistically I need to switch to a Shield TV and hope that nVidia's privacy policies are better... and never buy a samsung tv ever again.
For my Roku I have setup a redirection for all DNS port queries to my pihole as some app developers are getting wise to this and using their own DNS.
It won't be long until they encrypt this traffic and lock us out completely though.
Yet another example of the customer coming last.
The vast majority of consumers don't care about this. They're trying to get the biggest screen for the least money. And TV manufacturers are giving it to them.
However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue. So, we get TVs with ads.
This isn't a dystopian thing forced upon us by evil TV manufacturers. This is a dystopian thing we've asked for.
You may be right, but how exactly is someone meant to make an informed decision when they don't know what their TV is doing? It's unreasonable to expect the average person on the street to be an expert on the subject and to have fully researched everything before walking into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say anything about the subject, how do they learn?
> However, to remain price competitive with the other TVs on the shelf in WalMart, they need to rely on ad revenue.
Which other TVs are you referring to? And is this really the case or are you speculating? Surely a company the size of Samsung can be competitive without having to resort to this sort of activity?
It's unreasonable to expect the average person
on the street to be an expert on the subject and
to have fully researched everything before walking
into a store, so if the TV's packaging doesn't say
anything about the subject, how do they learn?
The solution depends on who you ask.
Some would say that it's up to the consumer to be educated. Like you, I don't think this is realistic. It's not realistic to expect every consumer to become an expert in the nuances of every single thing they might buy.
Others would say that if it's really important to customers, we'll vote with our dollars and demand alternatives to the current situation.
Some would say that the government should ban the practice or at least require some sort of very clear disclosure.
What would you like to see?
The vast majority of people just don't care and want the most TV for the least money.
It's a "tyranny of the majority" kind of situation. For TV manufacturers, it's not worth catering to the tiny minority of customers who think like us.
It is entirely possible there are other factors as to why we are not buying from them right now, such as supplier-related issues unbeknownst to us.
In short, the economy is more complex than claiming "demand" and saying we are done.
Yes, admittedly this is anecdotal, but I am talking about an extended family/social circle of hundreds of people over the course of quite a few years. The odds of it being a massively unrepresentative sample are rather low.
Let's turn it around. How do you know that people are concerned about data collection?
All available evidence points to my assertion being correct. All sorts of "smart" devices, chock full of phone-home tracking, are flying off the shelves. There are alternatives, but they are quite niche.
The "smart" functionality is how they achieve low prices. They subsidize the cost of the TV by selling your usage data. They may have deals with app providers as well - similar to how the price of a consumer laptop is subsidized by preloaded crapware.
For all the bad press it got, I'm happy to have GDPR because it very firmly puts the consumers in control of their data.
Enforcement isn't fully there yet, but with Oracle getting sued and pulling the plug on the European side of their Blukai data sales business things are moving in the right direction.
My old Sony Bravia with android tv didn't even honour my DHCP DNS settings so I made the firewall reroute all the requests to my internal dns for "pi-holeing".
GDPR is a massive win for consumers, enforcement will come it just takes time :)
It's a good illustration of why privacy is so complicated: most people wouldn't think that in buying a TV they're compromising their privacy because they don't know about ACR and such. The manufacturers, of course, know all about it, but it's not in their interest to share the information - specifically, to do so in a way that empowers the consumer to make an educated decision at purchase time. (Or am I wrong and they do in fact explain everything "on the box"? I haven't had to buy a TV in a long time.)