An ad giant wants to control your next TV's OS

[willio58]

This is already extremely common. For example, my TV uses some sort of Roku-branded OS. They literally have ads on the home screen when you first turn on the TV. It's something I've struggled to work around, and eventually gave up. I just kind of avert my eyes until my Apple TV kicks in.

I feel like this should be illegal. It's kind of like billboards on the side of the road, it's something I never want to say but it's forced upon me. I bought your product, why is it allowed that you can just throw ads on it? I understand they sometimes sell these TVs at a slight loss to make up for that, but I feel like they should be required to sell the same TV without Ads for the same 3% margin added on. I bet most people would pay for the latter if it was provided.

[scarface_74]

You can change the settings to switch directly to the HDMI port connected to your AppleTV.

The AppleTV remote will also turn your TV on and off automatically

[add-sub-mul-div]

Roku is the worst thing to happen to television since motion smoothing.

[pier25]

The solution is to not connect the TV to the internet.

This not only removes ads but also content capturing and tracking.

[dartos]

Just buy a TV without ads.

Free market at work.

/s

[CamperBob2]

I bought your product, why is it allowed that you can just throw ads on it?

I think you've answered your own question here.

[geor9e]

I will never use a TV's OS for more than the first 5 minutes it takes to turn on HDMI CEC as default. That lets the device on the other end turn it on and off, change the volume, etc. I recently had Best Buy deliver a 75 inch, only cost me $350, probably because the little garbage computer inside is loaded with ads. I'll never know.

[adamredwoods]

I was wondering about current work-arounds. I was also thinking hacker-sponsored OS overrides for various TVs are coming (similar to rootMyTv).

[dartos]

Can my TV not have a whole OS?

I’m just going to use the hdmi ports.

[daemin]

Maybe it's time people started hacking the TVs and getting custom OSes running on them.

Though I suspect that the processors inside TVs don't have publicly available datasheets, and the actual boards get changed pretty often, so it will be a lot of work for little payoff.

One thing to look at though is to see if your TV has a signage or commercial mode, and switch to using that instead.

[hiisukun]

I recently bought a TV (HiSense) after a very quick bit of research about the dimensions and the fact that it had GoogleTV as the OS.

Unfortunately for me, the operating system for many TVs is region specific! Once the product appeared on Hisense's Australian page it did mention having VIDAA instead of GoogleTV, but this was after I had purchased it. I can confirm that VIDAA is quite bad, demanding agreement to several fairly ad-driven user agreements before you can use any smart features. "Enhanced Viewership Program" or something, which in the text says that VIDAA will monitor what you are watching on the screen, then use that information to display relevant ads. Yuck.

Fortunately it does switch to HDMI when you turn it on, but I've got to decide what system I get to drive that HDMI port. I wanted not to have to bother with an additional device, but that's how it is I guess.

As a bonus comment, VIDAA's kid-mode- content includes a very large number of purported TV programs - but they are actually Youtube playthroughs of video games, cut into "episodes" and presented as a "season".

[davesmylie]

I haven't seen any ads on my HiSense TV (low end/budget brand), though I have been concerned about updates eventually bringing me this feature.

The TV is pretty much exclusively used as a 85" monitor for a media PC so I think the risk is low, but this was the final prompt to finally block internet access for the TV at the router.

I didn't want to completely block it from the network as it's useful being able to hook into it from Home Assistant

[wannacboatmovie]

What a coincidence, an ad giant (Google) controls my current TV's OS and I had to accept a EULA to use it.

[amatecha]

I bought an NVIDIA Shield, but promptly returned it to the store because it will not function without signing into a Google account -- a requirement which was not mentioned on the packaging nor in the printed documents in the box. TBH kinda ultra sick of corporations having unilateral encumbrances on your rights and freedoms to use literally anything technological.

[barkerja]

If you didn't accept the EULA, does it render the entire TV inoperable? Or just the "smart" features?

[vincent-manis]

I have a smart TV running Roku. I still use cable (for news), so the other 2 sources I see are the 2 computers I have connected. The only time I ever see Roku is when I'm selecting a source. The TV is smart, but I'm smarter: no Ethernet cable.

[JohnFen]

At least we're warned and so can make sure to avoid anything using this stuff.

[mxuribe]

One would think that this would represent an opportunity in the market to, you know, sell TVs that only do their basic function, and not try to tack on ads and such, right? Or, is it that not enough people care about this stuff...so the masses simply put up with it, and move about their lives...and Tv makers (and other device manufacturerers) go with the flow of taking as much advantage as possible?

[acdha]

The problem is that ads and tracking data represent recurring revenue for the manufacturers, and they know full well that many people are going to Walmart or Best Buy and picking the cheapest one.

That changes the decision considerably: not many people feel strongly enough about this to pay more, and even people who do care about privacy or find ads annoying usually aren’t willing to pay much more for it.

An Apple TV is the clear market leader on streaming devices but even there you see people talking like it’s exorbitant to pay an extra $50 for something which will last twice as long as a FireTV or Google TV, and for TVs it’s even less favorable because the people who care enough to buy our hypothetical safe TV are going to need one of those anyway so they’re probably going to pick the cheaper (advertiser subsidized) one and never connect it to the internet.

[wannacboatmovie]

Our idiocracy would decry that as some sort of antiquated Luddite device and it wouldn't sell in enough volume to make a profit.

[m0llusk]

customers do not want this, thus this is a business opportunity

[from-nibly]

The customers aren't the consumers, thus this is a business opportunity.

[layer8]

That’s unfortunately not how the market works in practice.