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.

----

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

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.

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

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

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'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.

I had the same temptations to upgrade to Apple but I've resisted. Android seems to be where it's at for pure variety of software when it comes to TV/streaming media.

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

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/

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.

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.

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

That's amazing!

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

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.

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

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.

Note that unless you're running Windows or Mac, 4k from Netflix is not available anyway. In fact, 1080p would not be available, according to their system requirements. Linux tops out at 720p on both Chrome and Firefox. I have to assume this would extend to Kodi on whatever platform you're running Kodi on.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Meanwhile torrents are a search away and they give me a no-nonsense .mkv file in 5 minutes, to watch wherever and whenever I want: phone, PC, TV, internet or no internet. The choice is easy.

Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p.

But, because of their choices here - or the terms of the content deals they've signed, idk - Netflix doesn't get as much money from me as they could. 720p is not sufficiently better than 480p (to me) to warrant paying them for 'standard' service, let alone their premium tier at $20/mo. So I just get their basic service.

Their loss, really, although collectively the Linux customer base is probably tiny enough that it's inconsequential to them.

Don't you have to enable widevine to get Netflix in Firefox?

Needing the latest an greatest or not being able to wait a year to watch something means they already have you firmly in their grip.

Just pay the media troll toll if you can't wait.

I also stopped pirating music the day iTunes was introduced

What if your CC on file expires?

Well I guess you can just ask (beg) if you need assistance accessing 'your' music library

I've never heard of issues of having to wait any significant amount of time from an official release on the streaming companies.

Torrenting is great but TBH I'm not going to waste my time setting up Sonarr/Radarr and maintaining tracker accounts to torrent stuff that I can watch through services I already have access to.

New gear usually needs time to marinate before it gets some hacking freedom.

New media is best ignored -- if you are always waiting with baited breath for 'the next new thing (TM)' they already have you and you will pay happily.

I personally ignore all new content and the odd time I want to see what's new there is more than enough waiting for me to download...

I'm not consuming every new song or film as they are released or even within a year of release because that is a waste of your attention and it's controlling you like a dog begging for treats.

The intention of the comment was -- if you just can't wait.. then pay your master. Seems you made your choice.

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!

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

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

At least with my objection to shoving ice cream cake into my 1 year old they listen. With electronics I might as well speak Swahili.

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)

Why then is Amazon building out its parasitic WiFi network, if not to give unmediated access to its devices. I bet Amazon FireOS devices will do this very thing in the next 2 years, and not get into any trouble for it in the US

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

At some point everything will be internet connected just because the tech will cost pennies. We're not there yet, but for a big ticket item such as a TV or a car it's either already there or about to happen.

Haha, joke's one them. I live in a nice apartment in the middle of a major US city, and in my last 3 apartments, cell signal reception was ranging between 1 bar and no signal reception at all. Good luck with a built-in cell modem here.

Thankfully, wifi calling is a thing working by default. So having almost no cell reception at home has exactly zero effect on my phone usage.

EDIT: I stand corrected, Sidewalk isn't a wifi network, it is it's own LoRa network that's limited to barely 1Kbps (which, imo, only strengthens my original point). Thanks for pointing out that technical detail in the replies.

when I check cheapest/mainstream 65-75" TVs (wouldn't buy smaller nowadays considering cheapest 75" TV, which is Samsung here cost like 680 USD), all of them are smart

The Amazon Sidewalk or whatever they had planned would be an example of this that might be less obvious than your neighbor just being bad at IT.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

"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.

It was $8500 + 1500 freight IIRC

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

My house sufficiently blocks TV signals that with an indoor antenna I only get a couple channels well, and a couple more intermittently. With an outdoor antenna I can get all those well plus several others.

However the good places for an outdoor antenna from a reception point of view are terrible from a grounding point of view.

So what I was thinking of doing is putting in an outdoor antenna but not having it electrically connected to the house. There would be either no ground or ground to a grounding rod at the antenna site that is not tied to the house ground, and the coax from the antenna would go to a weatherproof box near the antenna. The weatherproof box would contain something like a Tablo or Amazon Recast, and a battery powered power supply.

If I didn't, why would I have a TV at all? /s

But you did a poor job of derailing a thread into one about you and your opinions that are only tenuously related to the topic. You should have mentioned how you "don't even own a TV" and how your choices are so much better than the sheeple's choices.

Is there any regulatory reason to include tuners in displays?

"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"

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

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

sad

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?

seems odd

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

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

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.

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

Society needs to pay directly for content.

I'm a huge advocate of paying for content and artist (when you have the budget for) but what they are doing has nothing to do about it.

I find ads intolerable, but I am privileged enough to be able to afford to make them go away in almost all cases.

For those on a very tight budget, Disney+ with ads, Kindle with ads, podcasts with ads, etc. are the only thing that is affordable.

I suspect for many in the lowest income brackets, traditional cable TV with good old fashioned commercials is a primary source of entertainment.

Thus, we also need to keep in mind that those who cannot afford to make commercials go away are subsidizing this further for those who can in an unfortunate irony.

I understand many don't care, but I hate ads with an intensity I cannot describe with words.

As the upstream commenter, I am in complete alignment. Whenever I have been too broke not to be advertised at, I have always completely opted out.

1) Video games are sold at full price and still include ads and microtransactions

2) Cable TV was originally ad free (and marketed as such), until they realized they could include ads and make even more money.

I hold the opinion that executives at many of these companies hold the view, "Why only get some of our customer's money when we can get all of it?" (though they probably word it differently, something about recurring revenue and monetizing the existing customer base).

This is why I laugh whenever some new ad-free service launches. People forget history and then are surprised when it repeats itself. Any service that touts itself as "the ad-free version of X," will eventually be stuffed full of ads.

And to top that off, the frequent mass sale events on popular game distribution channels have led to a culture of people not purchasing games UNLESS they are on sale.

I'm not a fan of the implementations they have selected to make up for that, but it's a bit disingenuous to imply that all money making on top of the $60 cost is profiteering.

With all due respect, the inflation argument sounds good but is not based in the reality of the market. Other folks have gone into a lot more detail on why this argument is badly flawed.

But to pick a single argument: if the inflation argument was valid, companies - both AAA and indy - would be unable to make a profit without selling microtransactions. But those games and companies they are turning profits. Even companies selling games with microtransactions are getting record profits when you discount recurring revenue - microtransactions.

See Digital Devolver. See God of War.

Valve has proven with lots of data that holding deep discount sales actually greatly increases revenue. It took a long time for the industry to fully realize this.

They are not simply trying to cover costs. It's indeed charging what the market will bear. Which I have nothing against, I'm more upset that gamers fork over cash for all these micro-transactions. But that is another topic.

Then the “Superstations” like TBS and WGN came to cable. They were local broadcast channels that used satellites to broadcast nationwide to cable companies.

Then came cable TV channels like CNN, ESPN, MTV etc with ads.

Cable TV has always had ads.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

Also, there were some Cable TV channels, sometimes bundled with other channels, that explicitly did not have ads (HBO, to name one), just to complicate things further.

Cable never marketed itself as being ad free

> Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption…

HBO has always been a premium add on to basic cable. Just like it is today and it still doesn’t have ads.

> But scores of big companies, including General Foods, American Express, Procter & Gamble and Pepsico, are already cable advertisers, along with innumerable used-car dealers and other local businesses that can afford cable's relatively low rates.

> Many cable channels have yet to begin operating, and those now running commercials, such as Ted Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network or U.S.A. Network's ''You'' program for women, carry 30-second and one-minute commercials that are a standard feature of regular television.

If you look at the earliest basic cable channels, they also had commercials from day one.

The real problem is that content creation/disribution industries are addicted to ridiculous pricing and distribution policies. Nobody can buy what they want, at reasonable terms, we're stuck with them playing stupid games that hurt everyone (likely including themselves).

Unless there's some dis-incentive we can expect to see more ads in more places. People abandoning the service doesn't seem to be enough, I suspect the longer someone has a particular service the more they become accustomed to it and the more pain it takes to get them to move to another service.

People do pay and it does not work. The only thing that works is government regulations.

Pay for subscription services? They show you ads for their own shows at best or half a minute of paid advertising before every episode at worst.

Pay for anything at all? They track everything you do whether you pay or not. Worse: now they know you have disposable income since you're spending money on frivolous entertainment. The value of your attention just went up and so did the opportunity cost of not advertising to you. The more society pays, the more annoyed the executives get at the money they're leaving on the table.

What society needs to do is make advertising illegal. Just straight up prohibit it, consequences be damned. No buts, no compromises.

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Around 1994 my parents were paying $110~ USD for a cable package in suburban NY. It was basic cable, the extra premium channels, and HBO. Adjusted for inflation that's $210, I know that inflation doesn't always tell the entire economic story but now I'm paying

Netflix $20, HBO $15, Disney+ $6.76, Hulu is free with my cell phone plan but let's say $10. That's $52, my internet is $65 however I would have that anyway for many other reasons. Even if you added that in it's still much less expensive that in the past. The quality is also significantly better, and I can choose to watch most shows when I want.

Network effect companies (e.g Facebook) would see how useless their network effects are when only some are willing to pay, and they therefore can't get all their friends updates.

And most creators will find out just how little their content is worth (you probably need to be in the top 50% just to make pennies per hour).

I would say bring it on, but most sites would run into the problem that for their media customer it wouldn't be worth the effort to click the apple pay (or whatever) button to get access.

I think paying for content/product doesn't ensure you wont see ads, well perhaps it doea but until the company decides it needs higher margins.

Also, it's common for companies to offer a paid service and then double dip with an advertisement offering as well.

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

It is the TV and media companies that are a) using lies and deception to convince America that it's ok to instead pay (1x + advertising + a hidden loss of privacy) for a TV, and b) colluding to raise the prices of 'dumb' TVs as an added lever against consumers.

Educating people on the real costs, and pointing out better alternatives are the best ways to combat this.

This is just silly; TVs can maybe made a little bit cheaper by some ads, but not much, and TVs were plenty cheap for a long time well before "smart TVs with ads" became a thing (my TV wasn't a luxury model, but not the cheapest either).

Convince people? Any ban on advertising is already likely to enjoy significant public support. There's precedent for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

Edit: also who you vote for, what laws are passed, who goes to prison, who lives and who dies. But no they don't _directly_ give you cancer.

Do people know the risks of being profiled by ad companies? I am not sure most people can even begin to understand the associated risk. The few attempts to show people what companies know about you were shut down pretty hard.

So did the ads that told people to smoke. They were banned precisely because they were driving behavior that causes harm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_advertising

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One free monthly sub + all the free games and DLCs. Cost me 4€ a month and I also have access to the Amazon Prime Video catalog. It's a very very good deal.

There is Twitch Turbo which removes ads but it's an entirely different product https://www.twitch.tv/turbo

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.

Yes.

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

... 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...

But it will not remain available at that price. Instead that's what the plan with ads will cost, and the prices of the current ad-free plan will be bumped up by 30%.

I just found this contradiction to what I had mentioned earlier (going to edit my original message)

> 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.

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

https://dmedmedia.disney.com/news/ad-supported-disney-plus-s...

> Premium (No Ads) $10.99

Fundamentally the problem with paying for ad-free content is that the people who can afford to pay for it are the people advertisers want to target.

> The Dow giant still expects Disney+ to be profitable in 2024.

Disney+ isn’t profitable once you take into account “transfer payments”. They may not be profitable at all yet. But they specifically mentioned being profitable including transfer payments.

That basically means that when Disney movie studios use to sell streaming rights to another company - say Netflix. They may make for instance $500 million (made up number). Disney+ still “pays” the Disney movie studio $500 million. It’s counted against Disney+ profits. Of course the Disney company as a whole keeps most of that money. But it still has to pay part of it to the actors, producers, etc who have a revenue share agreement.

It was a big point of contention when Black Widow was released.

Why should the Disney+ manager get credit for making $450 million in profit by causing Disney Movie Studios to lose $500 million? How is that good for the overall business? Again I’m completely making up numbers.

We had a method to pay one bill and get all of the content you wanted - it was called “cable”.

I'd argue that invasive advertisements including but not limited to ads that make you remember catchy jingles, billboards on highways, ads that specifically target you based on profiling ("addictive") etc. are or can be emotional and mental harm. Ever hear the phrase "stuck in my head"? This happens with commercial jingles all the time. What if I don't want it to be stuck in my head but I happen to hear it? Seems akin to assault, especially if I'm not explicitly opting in to that behavior. It seems strange only because being blasted with advertisements 24/7 is normalized.

I don't have any studies, but this is the first time I've heard anyone state this as a negative. Most people don't seem bothered or might even associate a good time with some jingle.

If you want to take the other extreme of your extreme example here, you should be ok with people driving down the street and blaring advertisements from trucks at full volume day and night.

The trend to conflate violence and words is dangerous. While words can lead to violence, to say that words are violence tacitly allows physical retaliation for speech that the listener does not like. We learnt as children this is wrong, and it remains so for adults.

Advertising is mind rape.

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?

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 :)

This should be criminal

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

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

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

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

I would worry more about mesh networks like Amazon sidewalk

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.

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=...

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.

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

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

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

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

A travel router will do the trick.

https://a.co/d/4Y6UwOE

Not even to mention, you can be 100% sure you can get whatever extra features you need working, such as the aforementioned VPN.

I was just informed that Apple added support for captive networks in March.

It didn’t work with all iPhone apps though. For instance it didn’t work with Netflix.

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

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

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)

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 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.

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

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

(Edit: size and resolution admittedly not great)

Looks like the ads worked.

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.

[1] https://www.datenschutzkanzlei.de/grenzen-des-nudging-lg-ros...

[0] https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/datenschutz...

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Edit: The slippery slope: 95% of people are straight.

Where did i suggest that? I only showed that what i did is a possible path. At no point i judged the other paths.

Watch my phrasing.. "... is an option", "you don't have to ...".

I suspect you are reading too much between my lines.

If you want a TV in your life so badly, you can say just that. Like "But i love Star{gate,trek,wars} and i can't watch it comfortably without a TV/Streaming". The thing with the 95% is a unecessary pretense.

Also there are so many other types of media available, like video games, audio-books, podcasts, online articles, e-books. You can be just as informed and entertained without a TV.

Try Kingdom on Peacock.

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.

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.

Not cheap though.

And it will probably stay feasible as long as the number of people who do it is relatively miniscule. But economics being economics, we’re freeloading off the customers who hook their smart TVs up to the internet and provide manufacturers with enough revenue that they don’t care about us.

But should the practice become widespread and manufacturers notice a material impact on their revenues, or should growth stall and manufacturers start looking to squeeze more revenue out of customers, they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled, and work out deals with wireless carriers to have a private data channel as Amazon does with its kindles.

my 4K “smart” TV is the first I ever bought, and I believe the last. By the time I will want to replace it, I believe manufacturers will have closed this “loophole” and it will be impossible to keep a new TV from phoning home.

Open up the TV and solder the antenna to ground. If the TVs refuse to work when there is no Signal, good luck with customer complaints - here in Germany, we have huge black-spots with no reception whatsoever (mostly rural areas, but people still live in those).

Magnuson-Moss Waranty Act. It's the same law that allows you to use aftermarket parts without voiding your car warranty.

In the U.S., "Warrantly Void If Removed" stickers are lying, and potentially illegal.

The real reason we "need" 5G, instead of better 4G, isn't so our cars can suddenly drive themselves and every hospital with be magically populated with surgery robots. It's so that every item we ever buy can spy on us.

There’s no need to start jumping at shadows here.

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

The news of Samsung's upcoming TV will likely be a blow to Huawei, which is reportedly working on its own 5G 8K TV. Sharp is also working on its own 8K+5G initiative – both companies will need to hurry up if they want to beat Samsung to the punch, though.

5G TVs may not be in our homes yet, but they're on our doorstep.

And this comment is late to the conversation, but with 5G TVs, all of your streaming will go over 5G. No opportunity to use tooling to block ads or inspect what is being "phoned home." There are a good number of people whose primary uses for home internet are streaming and web browsing.

If these same TVs have a "WiFi hotspot app" that turns on a hotspot for an extra subscription, the TV manufacturers and their telecom partners will execute an end-around on the wired connectivity business.

Competition is good, but not when it's offering cheap internet in exchange for stripping consumers of any control whatsoever over their privacy.

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

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

And to add to this: There has been no proof ever that modern TVs do this, and it would be quite easy for anyone/journalists/reviewers to check this (just run an open wifi and monitor it).

And no, Facebook/Instagram aren't listening to users either, it would need too much bandwidth/server power to process all those conversations, and if you say "they can do the speech recognition on the users' phones", the majority of users use budget phones that don't have that sort of power.

I wonder what's easier to check and verify, a secret government tapping of the Internet, or if the TVs in millions of people's living rooms are trying to connect to open WiFi networks...

You’re right in that this should be easier to find. But I haven’t seen any concerted effort to buy N number of smart TVs and do security analysis on them in order to find something like this.

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

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

It literally will not work for any input source -- including OTA TV -- until it has been hooked to a network where it can register itself.

It appears to work afterwards without a network connection... but I cannot recommend HiSense at all.

you see post after post of people complaining about things but doing little about it.

Returning products as "defective" is pretty hard on manufacturers as stores do not like this happening.

The nice part is that I can control the tuner with the same remote as the TV.

The not so nice part: my TV is now connected to the internet.

Only if you don't value quality.

A did a price comparison about a year ago, using Best Buy and B&H. The plain display panels from B&H were either the same, or only marginally more expensive than the equivalent "smart" televisions from Best Buy.

People on HN too often parrot that Vizeo CEO's claim that his TVs are only cheap because of all the spying they do. While true, it only holds up in you're interested in watching a Vizeo-quality TV.

FWIW, mobile ads are worse. Avoiding them is easier, though. I almost always tell it when to show the ad and I can just look away with it muted for a while and do something else. I'm usually already watching TV while I play ad-based games anyhow. But if I had to actually watch the ads, I'd just stop playing those games.

These days there is nothing more than plug and play..

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

no thanks

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.

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?

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.

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 wish it didnt have to be that way.

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.

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 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.

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

> 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!

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

My brain can easily block a banner ad or tune out until the "skip ad" button appears. But when a content creator spends 90 seconds on message and then jarringly shifts to trying to sell me a mattress or a water bottle (Linus Tech Tips) for the nth time, that makes the video lose all value for me.

Content creators gotta eat, I get that. But the ad-supported model is garbage.

I subscribe to some very niche content creators on YT and am a YT premium subscriber. One of the creators I follow has 200,000+ subscribers and is very open about the fact that without his patreon supporters that his channel would be unsustainable.

This was surprising to me - I (naively?) thought more of my premium subscription would trickle down to my subscription channels and that 200,000 subscribers would be enough to make a channel at least somewhat self-supporting.

I generally have a rule where I won't pay for something if it doesn't remove the ads. The podcasts I pay for have private links that have ad-free versions (except for Honestly which I'm on the fence about paying for because of it).

YouTube premium removes ads, but patreon often doesn't.

I think I'd seen some YouTuber with around that many subscribers say they make ~20k/yr? So it's not nothing, but definitely not enough to be full time. The bigger ones with millions of subscribers like MKBHD and such I think do really well (7 figures?), but I'd guess a lot of that is extra stuff like the sponsored deals and merch stores etc.

40 minute ads? Who even does this? The only way someone would even consider watching this instead of the content they actually clicked on would be if someone let it autoplay. This is the kind of thing my 5 year old nephews would do.

Absolutely disgusting predatory behaviour...

On Android, I use Newpipe (via F-Droid). On laptop/desktop I use uBlock and SponsorBlock which do a great job together.

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.

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.

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!

Not one single filthy obnoxious advertisement. Ever.

Access to the WHOLE media library.

Do it today.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

My solution has been a Raspberry Pi running Kodi.

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 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.

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...

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

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

[1] https://www.roku.com/intl

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

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

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

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

You can't disable that in the settings.

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.

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

Would you feel the same way if a commercial entity violated the GPL?

But no it isn’t legal to download content that wasn’t authorized to be uploaded.

that's certainly not truth in many EU countries and one of the reasons is because downlaoding is legal, so DDL is king, heck even I pirate since 90s and started to use torrents just in recent years, until then was downloading all my movies/TV shows legally from DDL where are illegally uploaded by someone else

> But no it isn’t legal to download content that wasn’t authorized to be uploaded.

wrong, it's legal to download/stream video content for your personal usage and you don't need to care about any authorization, that's problem of the hosting provider and uploader, you as downloader are off the hook

check question 11 for various countries - Czechia, Slovakia, Spain and many other countries allow this https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/web/observatory/faq-cs...

No it isn't.

> Films, series, etc. can be downloaded or streamed online thanks to various websites (services) that offer this content legally. *However, users can also obtain this content thanks to various online file-hosting services and websites with embedded videos, which do not have the appropriate authorisation for this kind of communication of works to the public.*

> *Users are not liable for copyright infringement in the case of downloading or streaming the work for their own personal use* — based on the private-use exception and the three-step test.

Answer nr 11. Source: https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/web/observatory/faq-cs...

Same applies to Slovakia, same applies to Spain, etc.

Next time you better check your sources before giving misleading answers about something you have no idea about.

The answer in Slovenia's FAQ is badly written, and hasn't been updated since 2016 when there is a European Court of Justice ruling that contradicts it from 2017 - https://www.ip-watch.org/2017/04/28/european-court-justice-t...

The Czech Republic is the only country where what you said could be considered in any way accurate, and their copyright law on this isn't especially compatible with their European treaty commitments and will unquestionably go away at some point.

Perhaps you should consider checking your sources instead.

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

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

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

Edit: fixed!

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

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.