• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2410 months ago

    That’s one reason I ditched cable years ago. Why the hell should I pay Comcast for the “privilege” of watching commercials?

    Fun fact, Mythbusters episodes have a longer international edit length because America has substantially longer commercial breaks.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      510 months ago

      My attitude is if I’m paying, I’m not watching a single ad.

      If it’s free you can send me ads.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      110 months ago

      Do you know of a good tutorial on how to do all that? I’m planning on buying a new TV towards the end of this year and want to have the pi-hole, etc working first

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        6
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Pi-hole is super easy. Literally just install it, and set your dhcp on your router to push out that IP as your dns server. Configure pi-hole to use an upstream dns server.

        https://pi-hole.net/

        There’s a bunch of launchers out there. I did mine a while back and used Wolf launcher, but later found out it was a “hacked” version of some other paid launcher. I used launcher manager to “enable” it on boot. Right out of the box, it has all apps and no ads. I suspect any launcher you go with will be similar.

  • Lord Wiggle
    link
    fedilink
    English
    610 months ago

    I don’t have a TV. I have a beamer as a screen for my PC, playing media with Kodi from my NAS, which runs Radarr (for movies) and Sonarr (for series) to download using usenet. I don’t have to give consent for the stupid agreements from streaming services, I’m not limited by them either, I don’t have to pay 10 different services to see everything I want. I pay for usenet, VPN and indexers. My VPN (Proton) blocks ads, trackers and malware. I watch YouTube using the Grayjay app (including sponsor block). I live ad free. I have more rights, freedom and access by piracy then I would have by paying those fucked up companies.

    I don’t want to pirate, I want an honest transaction where I pay just money so I would own the content I bought. Instead I have to pay money, agree to have no rights, give all my personal information which they are free to sell, all for limited access to watch content I do not own. Fuck that. Piracy it is.

    Whenever I see an honest company providing a decent service, I gladly give them my money. Even if it’s kind of expensive. They deserve to exist. I gladly pay for quality. Like Proton for example. Larian studios, I wish I could give them more money. They deserve every penny I payed for baldur’s gate 3, I even bought the useless deluxe pack just because they deserve it. It Takes Two is a game I pirated. It is so good, I wanted to purchase it to support the devs. It was on sale, so I waited for the sale to end before purchasing it. Sadly it’s not on GoG so I still do not own it, because with Steam you just pay for access to a game you do not own.

    I only pirate to avoid asshole companies and ads. I do not wish to pirate, I feel forced to do so.

  • Frozyre
    link
    fedilink
    5410 months ago

    My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.

    Like, what hasn’t advertisement infected?

    I think it’s about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.

    • knightly the Sneptaur
      link
      fedilink
      English
      810 months ago

      I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your screens are showing you ads then they aren’t your screens…

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1910 months ago

      “We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3610 months ago

      Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.

      The billboards are the only thing that aren’t billboards.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    25010 months ago

    “each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”

    Fuck me, this is the amount of money that’s enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?

    I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      610 months ago

      If a company could pay $5 a customer for a competitive edge in customer satisfaction over their competitors, they would. Either they are getting way more than that or there is some cartel/monopoly action going on in the market. Maybe they are playing the long game to introduce an ad free model at a premium.

      Still don’t see how nobody is undercutting existing players with ad free, smart tvs.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        910 months ago

        Why is basic math.

        In a made up scenario let’s start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It’s at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.

        Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the “smart” chips. So let’s say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.

        So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.

        The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.

        And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV’s as being the best thing.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1310 months ago

      I’ve heard somewhere else that it’s a 50/50 split between the TV sales and ad revenue

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        310 months ago

        Roku is selling televisions at a loss with the intent on injecting ads based on whats on screen including detecting when you pause a show/game and injecting ads

        Patient Pending…

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1210 months ago

      That was the sentence that stuck out to me the most in the whole article as well. Incredible how much is lost for so little. I imagine it’s like drug dealers though, maybe $5 for the first seller, then gets chopped up and cut again and sold for less and chopped up again…

      My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android’s launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1110 months ago

        My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android’s launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.

        I’d like for us all to stop for a moment and appreciate just how thoroughly and comprehensively fucked up it is that Linux, which is what all these TVs are running and which is supposed to be Free Software (which exists for the express purpose of empowering the user’s right to control his device), has been subverted so goddamn badly!

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            410 months ago

            They should, but they won’t. Between Torvalds’ (wrong) opinion and the logistical issues of getting approval from all the other copyright holders, the Linux kernel will remain vulnerable to tivoization in perpetuity.

      • NullPointer
        link
        fedilink
        English
        410 months ago

        “commercial display” is a worth while route to explore. They do cover a wider range of image quality and features, so it does take paying close attention to specifications.

        • Yggstyle
          link
          fedilink
          English
          510 months ago

          Be cautious with the commercial display route. A lot of them come with “management system” software the company is trying to push which can paywall control features or break things on you if they get online for firmware updates.

          In general though they do make good displays: they are typically a lot more expensive (and heavy!)

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      7510 months ago

      A quick check online says that Samsung–which has about 25% of the global market–sold at least 1M OLED televisions and 8.3M QLED televisions in 2023. So, let’s say that they sell 9.5M televisions annually (I’m not sure if the numbers are global or US-only); that’s $190M in pure profit from advertising alone. For a billion-dollar plus corporation, that might seem small, but it’s certainly enough to get them to take notice.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        It’s even better for them: those $190M are per-year for the lifetime of that TV.

        So if for simplification we said they also sold 9.5M TVs in 2021 and again in 2022, in the year of 2024 the will be making $570M from the TVs they sold in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

        If Samsung TVs are used in average for 10 years, in 2033 they will still be making money from TVs sold in 2024 and all the years in between. If their rate of sales remains 9.5M per year and how much they generate per quarter in data and advertising revenue from those TVs remains $5 (true, all big simplifications), by 2033 they will be making $1.90 BILLIONS from just this in addition to what they make from selling TVs.

        No wonder they’re full in on this monetization of users even whilst making user experience significantly worse - they would need to lose a huge number of sales due to this for it to not be worth it for them.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        910 months ago

        That’s just 1 year’s sales. If the TV lasts 5 years it’s raking in 5 times the data. 190M x 5 = 950M/year, and 5 seems conservative.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4910 months ago

        Samsung is also trying to make its ACR data more valuable for ad targeting, including through a deal signed in December with analytics firm Experian.

        This should add to their profits.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2910 months ago

            Experian has a program where you connect your bank account and they monitor transactions for things that could improve your credit by a couple points. I’m sure they’re not also harvesting the rest of your data to use in their analytics, right?

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              13
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              That deserves to be its own headline. Something like “consumer electronics companies now conspiring with credit rating companies to surveil the public even more invasively.”

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      110 months ago

      Amen. I recently switched over and I haven’t been happier. I even got my parents onboard with it instead of satellite TV and streaming services.

  • DominusOfMegadeus
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1910 months ago

    Pro Tip: Connect your TV to your Wi-Fi so the TV doesn’t bother you constantly, and shut off access outside your network at the router level.

  • Flying Squid
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1010 months ago

    My TVs are pre-smart TV and only 1080p and I have yet to feel that I was missing anything important.

  • MaggiWuerze
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1710 months ago

    Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package

    • Diplomjodler
      link
      fedilink
      English
      510 months ago

      There are commercial displays that don’t have any of the bullshit. But you’ll have to jump through some extra hoops for the sound.

        • Diplomjodler
          link
          fedilink
          English
          310 months ago

          But if your display has no digital output, you may need to plug it into the analog output of the computer you’re using to drive the display. That’s not optimal.

          • MaggiWuerze
            link
            fedilink
            English
            710 months ago

            No, I just plug the video input into my AV-Receiver and let it split it up, and then an HDMI cable from the receiver to the TVs input