Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company.
There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is.
This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet, and I don't use smart features on the TV anyway, so I don't plan on updating the software either. Hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm.
A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up.
B: People don't like ads on their TV.
A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much .
B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?
A: No.
B: Does anyone here like ads?
A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors.
C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?
I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this.
The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs.
Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was followed and they (rightfully) predict that they will get "engagement" on those ads (which the marketing department will rely on to justify or increase their salaries).
The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product, thus not contributing to the company's end goal of selling more product.
I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit. Marketing departments will brag about "conversions" all day long but how many of those are either accidental clicks or people who were already determined to purchase your product anyway (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money).
Ultimately, people have a finite amount of time and disposable money, and throwing more ads at this "problem" won't solve it. Your conversions will go up because of accidental clicks (and your marketing department will capitalize on that to justify their salaries/raises), but that doesn't magically give the consumer more money to actually go and buy your product so your profits will not increase.
Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway"
It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.
We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea.
There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe.
Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).
I think the reason is slightly different. I worked for a web company that made most of its money on ads. Companies have an army of marketing "specialists" whose job it is to find "incremental revenue". Their performance is rated on how much revenue they can add to the company. The possibility that it may cost users in the long run is not part of their calculus. I learned to hate meetings where someone mentioned "incremental revenue".
Big companies need to have an ombudsman department who have the explicit job of reviewing all these schemes and nixing any that will likely lose customers.
There's a practically throw-away line in Ready Player One where the Bad Guy says, "And research has found that we can cover 49% of the screen before our customers begin to experience seizures."
This is too real. I had discussions like this about a big fat cookie wall we needed to track users.
“Why do we need to track users?”
“To give them recommendations!”
“But this wall you’re using takes 4 seconds to load. Do you think this improves user experience?”
“Yes, because the content is adjusted for the user. Besides, we did a test and 96% clicks accept, so the users don’t mind”
“Where is the decline button?”
“...”
“There is no other option. You have accept, or you have to hse settings with 100 checkboxes. I’m surprised 4% even bothered to check these!”
“Yeah but most just accept, so they don’t mind, and users really want the targeted content”
If I have to add it, I’ll at least make sure it won’t take freaking 4 seconds to load.
Absolutely. Can I have a few minutes before I come to your office in order to come up with a list of things I least like when I see an ad? This is a great opportunity to increase engagement from the likes of me by considering what improvement can be made in your ad campaign.
"No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors." is absolutely how marketing turns evil. Basically taking advantage of people that don't know how to avoid ads, etc.
I also bought a Sony Android TV for this reason. Then last month Google pushed an update for the "Android TV Home" app and now there are many people complaining about ads on the home screen [1].
This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth…
> If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it
Just don't connect it to the Internet.
The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.
This is not the solution. Adding a PiHole to your network is not the solution. Disabling features in other places of your network is not the solution.
What if Samsung decides that it will try to connect to open networks for updates or what not? What then? Ask your neighbour to install PiHole on his network? No. This is an example of a game of cat and mouse that shouldn't exist - you pay money for a TV and that's not enough? You giving them your money is not enough and so they decide to shove ads down your throat because profits.
The NVIDIA Shield TV, which runs Android TV, can no longer be initialized without signing in with a Google account, the setup screen will refuse to get past that step, even if you don't have an internet connection.
The forced login is likely illegal, because there is no mention of a requirement for a Google account in their marketing materials or on their sales pages.
The device stays perfectly functional if the the network connection is cut off within seconds after signing in, and the account can be removed after the setup is complete. The only drawback is that you can't update apps from Google Play, unless you add a Google account again.
> The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.
We're closer to that than you think. My Philips Ambilight television (purchased this year) throws a popup every few weeks already complaining that I've not completed setup and connected it to the internet.
As sold as I am on Ambilight (it is actually brilliant), I wont be buying another Philips television.
Then I'll start selling a little $50 box to emulate internet and route all update / advertisement requests to /dev/null :)
Or maybe we (the tech community) just agree on one model and produce an open source firmware. If you look at MagicLantern for Canon, you'll see how amazingly far people will go to control their hardware.
I bought a used projector some time ago. Couldn't be happier. I usually watch something after it's dark and I also have very good blinds. It probably warms up in similar, or better, time that many TVs boot up nowadays. I just have a Chromecast connected to a soundbar connected to the projector. VLC handles Chromecast, although somewhat buggy, so I can watch things from my computer in another room.
Also Netflix experience with Chromecast is mostly superior to smart TVs, because it will not play anything while you just try to find something worth watching.
Connecting Chromecast to the soundbar also gives ability to listen to music from Youtube, without running display. It wastes bandwith however.
EDIT: I wrote "beamer" instead of "projector" at first
I actually ran into one of these recently. I stayed at an AirBnB which had a super-cheapy small-ish TCL+Roku TV in the living room, with a super-cheapy thin antenna thing. The internet was "acting up" (95% of packets dropped, unusable) so we tried to watch some broadcast TV. You had to either sign in with a Roku account, or as "Guest", but "Guest" had to accept a couple long EULA, and it needed internet for that to work, but the internet was fubar ... I had to use my phone as a hot-spot for the TV to get it to display broadcasts! That left the TV's wifi config such that it definitely won't work for the next person, lol ...
I run mine on it’s own network so at least it can’t spy on my NAS and network infrastructure. If it tried this ad nonsense I’d filter it through a pihole or something similar. I will not go down without a fight with these snooping gadgets.
not an option for some recent samsung TVs - if you don't connect the TV to a WiFi AP, the TV "grows up" and will try and connect to any open WiFi APs itself.
> This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet
Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra quid.
NEVER buy a TV. Even better. They are all horrible. I thought that TVs would be a thing of the past like landline phones, but looks like I was wrong. It's incredible that the gullible are swarming to "smart" TVs.
The thing with TV panels is that they're essentially a commodity, right? Once every TV from a large brand becomes "smart", would the next logical step be for a small privacy-minded collective to go to an OEM and commission them to start making dumb TVs?
Usually I disagree about niche hardware in this way (for example, usual mentions about a similar approach for phones and laptops), but the dumb screen might just be dumb and cheap enough to make work at this limited scale?
In theory, that's how the free market should work; in practice, it's very hard for a new player on the market to get brand recognition and a share of the market.
It can be done, I think, but it has to be VERY well funded - you need to send salespeople / lobbyists to the various on- and offline shops selling TVs, you need "SEO experts" to try and beat the competition's "SEO experts" on the internet and e.g. Amazon's search results, and you need a legal team to help with the inevitable heap of lawsuits you'll get (patents, design infringement, etc). And then you'll have to deal with the competition pushing the prices of their devices below yours; Samsung can afford to sell TVs below market value for decades if need be, JUST to push out that shitty newcomer that does ad-free TVs, and they'll make money off of the ads + subscription services they offer in the meantime.
I think the best way to fix this before it creates legs is to have a huge backslash.
They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.
That rarely works. For each consumer that has the time and understanding to not buy the brand there is a thousand that are not aware. The way to go is lobbying for stronger regulations and to limit where Ads and recollection of data can be done.
Day after day we have more and more connected devices. Samsung is the tip of the iceberg, even if there was consumer backslash for one company the problem will still be there.
I would love to do this, but dumb TVs pretty much top out at the upper-mid range. If you want a high end panel you're getting all the bullshit too, unfortunately.
I have an old (like 2015, not that old) Vizio TV with a built-in Chromecast, which was always handy. Saves me a couple bucks and an HDMI port.
The "home screen" of the TV (where it goes when you turn it on) was always the chromecast, which as I'm sure most people have seen, is rather nice; just endless pictures of art and landscapes, like a screensaver.
One day it updated without my consent, and that screen was replaced with Vizio's, I dont know, some piece of shit interface no human being on the planet wants. Ads for Crackle and other Vizio tvs mostly. Its so bad.
Totally agree, my Bravia was worth every (numerous) penny. I do update to get features like Airplay, but have never seen an ad. The $400 Samsung in my bedroom, however, starts streaming an ad-laden TV Guide equivalent automatically when I turn it on. Beyond awful.
I have a Sony Android TV from the 2015 generation.
It always had a row to advertise random app I don't use (Netflix, Playstation Video, Disney something etc...)
It also always advertise content from those platform, you have to disable "recommendations" from apps one after one as you can only disable recommendations for an app that pushed its crap at least once.
The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide.
My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.
Worth noting that Sony also produces Android TVs AFAIK which I guess have the same prob. My older Bravia doesn't, but then isn't all that smart ;) and the lcd technology is outdated.
Well you see Google selling Pixels which is supposed to be an idiot box to reproduce voice signals but it turns out it's loaded with ads and trackers. Samsung probably followed along the lines that Google pioneered
All of that is disableable, so the user can make it as "dumb" or as "smart" as they want, unlike the iPhone, which has tons of data collection that you can't turn off and survives in the face of much better competition only through luxury marketing or tricking people into believing it has reasonable privacy.
I actively avoided a Samsung TV for this reason a few years ago. They weren't even cheap for their capability level compared to their competitors given they included ads and the other TVs didn't. You could get equivalent TVs for the same price without the ads, I am not remotely seeing the value to a purchaser.
I scream with laughter because most Samsung TVs are sold at MSRP which is 50% more than the competition and you see moron tv buyers going bananas for a trivial discount which makes them 35% more than the competition!
If you want a dumb box, can't you just un-network the TV itself? I don't see the point of smart TV's personally. It's way easier to just use a Roku or AppleTV or w/e. We have Sony's and the built-in smart TV platform is a horrible experience compared to Roku.
Unfortunately, showing ads probably does increase long-term profit. Take a look at the randomized experiments measuring long-term retention & profit with various ad loads: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication
Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and often done anyway. The loss from equivalent ad burdens on TVs is probably much less. (People replace their smartphones more often than their TVs!) The ad revenue also lets them discount the upfront price of TVs (I think I saw an article on HN that the discount due to advertising is at least $50/set?). And then there's the time-value of money: $1 up front in exchange for $1.10 of lost sales 10 years from now when they (maybe) buy an alternative brand is a pretty sweet deal for the seller.
Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.
> Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.
It seems like the smart thing would be to have ads by default but allow the customer to turn them off. Most consumers would leave them on and be fine with it (like you said) and the haters would be happy too.
It would be great if it were just one middle level manager. But, this sort of behavior seems to permeate a their offerings. For me Samsung and all of it's products have gone from mildly annoying (bloatware with a couple cool features) to something I won't even consider when making a new electronics purchase. It was frustrating for a while, because I like the hardware, but I'm past it now.
"Ethical decisons" from a company made out of thousands of individuals caught up in the rat race is a bit much to expect.
For users it doesn't really matter why an annoying feature hasn't been implemented, they don't have a say in that anyway. Most likely Sony is just lagging behind a few months or years in that regard. Enjoy while it lasts ;)
> Fuck the guy who wanted to suck up to the management in some stupid meeting projecting estimated revenue out of this to ask for a raise later because he "contributed to a revenue increase" to the company.
I knew something was fucky when smart TVs started to be sold for less than the dumb ones - all things being even, smart TVs had to cost more to produce, so something had to be subsidizing the prices.
Ads are not shown, when the TV is asked to "reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it". And the TV is sold on its ability to show all sorts of things that are not just the signal passed to it. Like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the menus related to those services.
The Ads are shown when the TV is asked to show its menu of applications and features.
Still not great, but not at all what you are implying.
I own a 250$ 4k TV that doesn't do this. Samsung does this shit with their cell phones too. Rocking a cheaper brand Android phone now. Also helps I'm not being forced to keep Facebook installed
I have an LG Smart TV. I didn't consent to any of the tracking features and haven't seen a single ad for years. I strongly recommend it as an alternative to Sony.
Exactly!, our down stairs Samsung's TV UI looks like it was designed by a group of toddlers who over dosed on E supplements and decided to use all the crayons in the box
> This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead
I went with the opposite approach- I paid the small bucks to buy an Avera display, and connect it to my own media box. Also, a decent soundbar, because the built-in speakers are terrible. Now I have better sound than any built-in speakers at any price, a decent display, and the best "smart" features (with no ads), all for a price much lower than a "Smart" TV.
The PS4 is full of ads for apps. I find it to be less enjoyable of an experience than the PS3. It's good to hear that their TVs haven't been corrupted yet.
Sony support within my region (Asia Pacific) is 10x better than any of their competitors too. They ship new TV's when there's a minor defect, and they price match directly so you don't have to worry about the retailer going out of business if your TV breaks. Admittedly I've yet to use Sony support personally - nothing has broken.
Pi-hole. Works like a charm. Also does the same for every device in your house. Moreover, if you don't mind spending an additional $5 a month, set up your Pi-hole in a Digital Ocean droplet and you can blocks ads everywhere YOU happen to be, even on your mobile device.
I have a huge Vizio Smartcast display (no tv tuner) and it doesn't have any advertisement displaying dark patterns. Crossing my fingers they don't sell out with ads.
I sometimes wonder if someone at the top is trying to drive people away from TV/film/video. Yes there's more content than ever before but as regards drama etc. the writing is generally dreadful and the stories lack originality, on YouTube the adverts are becoming obnoxious and if extremely one-sided political messaging isn't to your taste, well, good luck finding a single programme that isn't stuffed to the gills with it.
YouTube adverts have been obnoxious for a long time, but it's got far far far worse this year. Unfortunately, I think it is necessary to support the media industry thanks to the diminishing returns from sales of music/film due to the proliferation of "art is disposable and very cheap" $9.99-a-month streaming services, plus the fact that every new album ends up on YouTube within a week these days as an "entire album" upload.
The sheer amount of content available these days is probably what you are noticing regarding dramas / films; I can remember very few decent Hollywood films recently as utter garbage seems to make billions of dollars, so the studios believe it's what people want.
It isn't a new issue though - "Penny Dreadfuls" were the old poor-quality entertainment of yesteryear where I suspect people were saying the same things that we are saying now. The only difference now is the availability of immense volumes of instantly accessible tripe.
As for political messaging, I am entirely apolitical but do see a lot of ideologies being promoted/pushed in programmes, with an opposing stance on any "modern" issue descending rapidly into a shouting match instead of a reasonable, logical debate; it then turns into a witch hunt regarding the opposing party's behaviour instead of a balanced discussion of the first issue raised. Exercise your free will and turn the rubbish off like I do!
... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection.
By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it is only a matter of time until all of them show more aggressive ads.
But if you fully wipe it and then keep it fully offline, most TVs have a great screen and they can be configured with "gaming mode" to work like a low-latency HDMI / DisplayPort display. And without internet, there are not ads :) and no forced (useless) updates.
BTW, my LG OLED is completely ad-free, defaults to using HDMI port 1 and even has GSYNC. Just connect any barebone with an NVIDIA card and you have 100% control over what you see.
> and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection.
That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.
Is there any device you might connect your TV to that actually provides Ethernet over HDMI (at all? unprompted?)? People keep citing that ability, but I can't remember ever actually encountering devices that do it.
There is a difference between it having a network connection (i.e. ethernet) and having internet connectivity - you just need to be able to control the tv's traffic.
If the manufacturers start adding a 4G modem to their devices then that might change things. Hopefully the economics of that never work out.
I have an LG. I never connected it to the internet, but it still has a built-in, always-on, no-way-to-disable wireless access point that pollutes the wireless channel it broadcasts on.
I suppose you could open the back and unplug the aerial cable from the motherboard. Unless they’re using one of those tiny surface mount aerials of course :(
My alternative, as I actually like my Samsung TV (lots of features including AirPlay 2 and Apple TV for not a lot of money): block the shit out of any connection it makes using https://NextDNS.io.
If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.
Agreed but would you mind sharing which Samsung connections you are blocking in order to prevent ads from being displayed on the TV? I'm running NextDNS.io too (router config) and their logs show a plethora of Samsung queries that are all allowed, but I also have a Samsung phone and refrigerator. The only one they block by default is smetrics.samsung.com
Well fuck. I didn’t know that. I was just about to buy a nice new 50” 4K Samsung smart TV. Purchase cancelled. Will keep my dumb Samsung 32” ass end model.
At this point I don't think any Samsung TVs have cellular connections built in. So just stay away from the 'smart' features. I recently bought a 70" Samsung "smart" TV but the only interaction we have with it is to switch to the Apple TV input. The TV has no network configuration, and it never will.
The difference is that you had to accept their EULA. I didn't because even if I technically prevent their data extraction, I still want it to be illegal for them.
> I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data
I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking.
Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere?
If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.
I checked the German models. And yes, it is a GDPR violation. Plus it makes the integrated 4k movie player stutter because the CPU use from the adware causes thermal throttling on the GPU. That's why I investigated in the first place...
there are numerous sites out there with long term tests on this subject and it comes down to, you have to go out of your way to harm the TV. As in, keep specific channels on 24x7 across a long period of time. Also, unplugging when not in use is not allowed.
How do you force WebOS to default to HDMI? I replaced my parents TV with a LG LED last year, and it defaults to showing "No signal found" when turned on, then you have to switch to HDMI.
I dealt with getting blasted with the "No signal" thing on my LG webOS TV for several months before finally figuring it out. I wish I could remember how and tell you, but I can't recall. But don't give up! It is possible.
EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure if I got it to default to HDMI but I did definitely get it to show something other than no signal. Try using the picture frame feature (where it shows art in a picture frame). After so doing, I think it at least defaults to the picture frame. I also have a Roku connected that seems to be capable of telling the TV "hey switch to me", so sometimes I get the Roku HDMI and sometimes I get picture frame, but at least I never get No Signal anymore.
It should default to showing whatever input is currently marked as "TV/Cable". Out of the box, that is the OTA tuner. If you want it to default to an HDMI port, you will need to use the connection manager to tell the TV that there is a cable box connected to an HDMI port and to use that as the TV input.
I'm guessing that in addition to them pushing their data stats to AWS they don't make that data available to you for free or indefinitely? (kinda like how Nest only lets you see 10 days' worth of thermostat data via their own service with absolutely no option or ability to download a CSV of all data since day 1 even though they have that data in a SpannerDB somewhere in a Google datacenter)
Exactly, we bought my 75ish year old father in law a new TV because he was using a small SD flat panel and his eyesight is going.
But he hates it because there's a million buttons and menus to navigate, when all he wants is to type in the channel numbers.
It even needed a firmware update out of the box and he didn't have a clue why a TV would need new software and immediately panicked and refused to use the thing until we drove 150 miles to accept the update for him
We just wanted a TV that receives terrestrial TV and has a couple of HDMI ports for his DVR which he knows how to use without over complex menus, is that so much to ask?
Just looked at a price checking site, checking the oled and "no smart tv" boxes. Zero hits.
It is not a question about affordable TV. The only ones that does not have smart features (as far as I can identify) are the cheapest LCD ones at the bottom of the price list.
The best alternatives that I can find is projectors or monitors, as those seems to so far not expect an Internet connection.
Let's play a hypothetical game. Your TV attempts to literally control your life. And is ultra HD and really cheap. But you have to keep its front facing camera uncovered or it blares an alarm saying that its front camera is covered. The alarm also activates, but more quietly, if it loses its internet connection.
Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing with its sponsor.
So say the sponsor is Coke and it sees a 2 liter bottle of pepsi in your home. It displays something literally equivalent to (not in exactly so many words) "we are punishing you for bringing pepsi into our home, because our sponsor is coke." It then counts down a 30 second punishment timer. As a shopper you dont have THAT strong of a preference between coke and pepsi. So the next time you need to watch a movie on the dictator (name of TV set) you buy coke that night instead of pepsi.
Does that cross a line? How would you legislate against it? Devices shall not act as slave owners over humans who have bought them?
Well that does get very difficult with TV since a large number of people stream, the app on my LG is actually better than my Apple TV but it is toss up with the Roku on the other TV.
So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it should just act as if its not connected at all.
It's just a matter of time until Smart TVs deactivate themselves if they can't connect to their telemetry and ad servers -- or the manufacturers enter into agreements with streaming services to proxy ads through the same IPs used to stream video.
This would not be without precedent. Some Samsung TVs already refuse to exit setup mode if they can't connect to the Internet after initial power-on to geo-lookup their IP to make sure that they're being used in the country they're sold for.
The best solution for streaming is a low-end PC with hardware video decoding and the ability to run Ublock Origin.
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Edit: I see from other comments that Samsung TVs already go into degraded functionality mode if they can't connect to their ad servers, and already serve some ads from endpoints used for necessary functionality.
I have also a LG TV, and I used to keep it disconnected at all times as all my streaming comes from the nVidia Shield anyway.
However recently I wanted to setup my home automation system to automatically turn the TV off when I go to bed or outside, and for that I needed to connect it to the home network.
I solved this by confguring the router firewall to drop any package from the TV to the internet. It works!
Integration brings unneeded obsolescence and reduces choice and control. May be hard to avoid in space constrained phones but should not be needed on tvs.
My TV can connect, but is happy to live without. Though I've never used the smart features, just terrestrial digital TV, a PC over HDMI, a Pi running Kodi over HDMI, and an old DVD player via SCART. The TV doesn't enforce an interactive menu to pick those sources from, it is a simple selection on the remote, so it doesn't have anywhere to force ads.
If it becomes impossible to buy a TV that doesn't just display what I chose by the time this one is due for replacement, I'll take a device sold as a computer monitor instead. Or a projector. Maybe I'll pay extra, but I'll be fine with that.
LG still makes them, if you carefully navigate to their Business "Commercial Lite" or digital-signage options. I love my 55" 4k dumb TV. But you might not get some high-end features like HDR.
One tip I've found useful - most TVs have a so-called "Hotel mode" (or a Service mode) where they can have most of their smart features disabled and can be locked to a single HDMI input (e.g. AppleTV / ShieldTV / Chromecast). That makes them into rather dumb panels that usually also disable those ads.
At least I know it's possible on all Sony AndroidTV models and most Samsung models (not sure about their latest Tizen).
LG TVs also have a "display mode" that's used for live restaurant menus and the like (think: the TVs above the registers at McDs). We had to flash a special firmware file via USB to enable it though.
The life time of TVs is simply on a different time scale than most smart thingies you connect to them. It's an appliance like the air conditioner or dishwasher, not a gadget you throw into the bin and replace. The intelligence of your media center should be elsewhere, in a dedicated gadget that you can easily replace and upgrade, connected via a standard, dumb interface like HDMI.
I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and the picture quality is stil superb compared to recent models (except OLED). Its HD and not 4K, but it makes no difference, my eyesight is not getting any better and I might use it for the next 5 to 10 years probably. It's internet capabilities are laughable, pre-smart TV. Picked it up for 100 quid second hand, no doubt some idiot replaced it with a "smart" piece of junk with thinner frame, less durable LEDs, and now, good God, mandatory advertising.
I really wish the whole home theater was way more modular.
I'd like separate boxes for video display, video signal switching, audio signal switching, stereo and surround sound decoding, speaker driving, OTA TV tuning, AM radio, FM radio.
I want these boxes to all support a common control protocol, with another box or boxes handling controlling the system.
My current system with a receiver that is 8 years old and a TV that is around 3 or 4 years old is fine, except for three things: (1) the receiver cannot handle 4K video, (2) the receiver does not work with any voice assistants, and (3) the TV does not work with any voice assistants.
With a modular system, I'd just replace the video switching with a 4K switching box, and replace the control box with one that supports a voice assistant (or add another control box...no reason a module system has to have only one such box).
With the current approach, I'd have to replace the receiver and the TV for that.
I have a 1080p Vizio from about 2013 or so. It's "smart", but doesn't phone home or anything. I use a Roku to get more modern apps for it (I block Roku's phoning home in my pihole).
I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably can't see the 4K improvements from across the room anyway.
In EU I think a "consumer complaint/guarantee" would work (the law, not a warranty given by the producer). As in: the product is no longer working as advertised/expected, so I want my money back.
For instance, when an older PlayStation (3?) in an update made it so that one could no longer run Linux (which was advertised as possible), I know of people that got to return it and get their money back after the Norwegian Consumer Council ruled against Sony.
I concur. This is also likely the reason why Oculus stopped selling the Quest in some EU countries. Their planned EULA update will make it impossible to use the device without a Facebook account, which might make them legally liable to provide a refund in case anyone complains about it.
It would be nice if there was a right to get back the product you paid for (i.e. revert the adware update), rather than being forced to either accept the ads or return the product.
Exactly this. I was surprised by the ads that they apparently shove down your throat but outraged by the fact that samsung knows what you watch. Most people that have a new TV will probably not even know this, only mentioned in some small letters in an eula that nobody reads.
How is that even legal?
I've had my Samsung TV for 3-4 years, it works just as well as well today as the first day that I bought it. I've never connected it to the internet and get streaming capabilities using 3rd party devices. Dumb TVs are much better than shit ones.
This. Just buy an NVidia shield and use your TV as a monitor. The UI and the fact that it uses AndroidTV and not some shitty Samsung OS is reason alone to buy it. Also my Samsung TV gets a start signal from my NVidida Shield so I do not even have to bother with using 2 remotes :)
That's exactly what I've been doing with my 2019 Samsung TV and and a Shield Pro. The TV is unplugged from the internet and all my streaming is done from the Shield, which is even better because:
1. The Netflix/Prime Video etc apps are snappier because of the beefier SoC
2. Content looks better, because DLSS does a better job at upscaling than the TV's native upscaler
3. I can use it to stream games from my PC, which is making me reconsider buying one of the new consoles just for couch gaming since I could spend the money on a new GPU to upgrade my rig an just stream from there.
And as you mentioned, the presence of HDMI CEC makes remotes rather interchangeable
I also didn't connect the antenna cable and didn't even notice during the entirety of the (Italian) lockdown since I never watch "normal" TV. At this point I wish it could be possible to get TVs without a tuner, I could stop paying the TV taxes!
I had my ks8000 for 2 years before it hit the dreaded green lines which seem to be common on Reddit. 1500 dollar top of the line TV that hardly lasted.
Luckily, Samsung was awesome about it and I was able to RMA through Best Buy, who just gave me my money back. I took that cash, put a bit on top, and bought an LG OLED. Best decision ever. OLED is absolutely dominant in TVs these days.
Readit News
There's absolutely no after thought to this decision - If I paid 1000s of dollars for an "idiot box" that's supposed to reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it, showing ads is unacceptable, no matter what the context or reasoning is.
This is one of the reasons I paid the premium and went for a Sony instead. They haven't done anything stupid like this yet, and I don't use smart features on the TV anyway, so I don't plan on updating the software either. Hopefully they face backlash over this stupidity and this doesn't go on to become a norm.
That would be really, really terrible.
A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up.
B: People don't like ads on their TV.
A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much .
B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?
A: No.
B: Does anyone here like ads?
A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors.
C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?
The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs.
Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was followed and they (rightfully) predict that they will get "engagement" on those ads (which the marketing department will rely on to justify or increase their salaries).
The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product, thus not contributing to the company's end goal of selling more product.
I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit. Marketing departments will brag about "conversions" all day long but how many of those are either accidental clicks or people who were already determined to purchase your product anyway (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money).
Ultimately, people have a finite amount of time and disposable money, and throwing more ads at this "problem" won't solve it. Your conversions will go up because of accidental clicks (and your marketing department will capitalize on that to justify their salaries/raises), but that doesn't magically give the consumer more money to actually go and buy your product so your profits will not increase.
It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.
There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe.
Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
—Upton Sinclair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV?
A: Yes of course I do. If you don't like ads on your TV why are you working here.
B: Does anyone here like ads?
A+group: yes of course we all like ads (lying in a meeting is not a crime, and occurs all over the world)
C: ok no objections, we love it! Ship it!
A, C gets a paycheck at the end of the day.
B gets fired if they don't change their mind.
Big companies need to have an ombudsman department who have the explicit job of reviewing all these schemes and nixing any that will likely lose customers.
Yep, sounds about right.
“Why do we need to track users?” “To give them recommendations!” “But this wall you’re using takes 4 seconds to load. Do you think this improves user experience?” “Yes, because the content is adjusted for the user. Besides, we did a test and 96% clicks accept, so the users don’t mind” “Where is the decline button?” “...” “There is no other option. You have accept, or you have to hse settings with 100 checkboxes. I’m surprised 4% even bothered to check these!” “Yeah but most just accept, so they don’t mind, and users really want the targeted content”
If I have to add it, I’ll at least make sure it won’t take freaking 4 seconds to load.
"We need to think of our devices as small hyper local billboards with untapped potential"
This is not really Sony's fault but rather Google's but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth…
https://9to5google.com/2020/08/18/android-tv-homescreen-ads-...
I plugged in my Apple TV instead.
Every now and then the Android TV pops up when I turn the TV on and asks me to complete the set up. I always tell it to fuck off.
So far, no ads. It'll stay that way till the TV eventually dies - without ever connecting to the internet.
Just don't connect it to the Internet.
The bigger problem is that at some point there will not be any "idiot box" models at all. The TVs will refuse to work if they aren't seeing the Internet. Then we'll be truly fucked.
What if Samsung decides that it will try to connect to open networks for updates or what not? What then? Ask your neighbour to install PiHole on his network? No. This is an example of a game of cat and mouse that shouldn't exist - you pay money for a TV and that's not enough? You giving them your money is not enough and so they decide to shove ads down your throat because profits.
Simple solution would be just not to buy Samsung.
The forced login is likely illegal, because there is no mention of a requirement for a Google account in their marketing materials or on their sales pages.
The device stays perfectly functional if the the network connection is cut off within seconds after signing in, and the account can be removed after the setup is complete. The only drawback is that you can't update apps from Google Play, unless you add a Google account again.
We're closer to that than you think. My Philips Ambilight television (purchased this year) throws a popup every few weeks already complaining that I've not completed setup and connected it to the internet.
As sold as I am on Ambilight (it is actually brilliant), I wont be buying another Philips television.
Or maybe we (the tech community) just agree on one model and produce an open source firmware. If you look at MagicLantern for Canon, you'll see how amazingly far people will go to control their hardware.
One also has to be cognizant of HDMI Ethernet in case of "unintended" connectivity:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HDMI_Ethernet_and_Audio_R...
Also Netflix experience with Chromecast is mostly superior to smart TVs, because it will not play anything while you just try to find something worth watching.
Connecting Chromecast to the soundbar also gives ability to listen to music from Youtube, without running display. It wastes bandwith however.
EDIT: I wrote "beamer" instead of "projector" at first
Haha, just wait until 4g/5g will become so cheap that TVs will have them built in for doing software updates and sending telemetry when offline :)
sure, the monitor was atleast 25% more expensive than a similar screen with a smart-tv function in it, but I think it's worth it.
There was a company that made just a good tv, no smarts, but I can't find it right offhand. It think it was a european company
see https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...
Wait until they start including a cellular modem that can't be turned off.
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Oh they have. Many times over. Two instances affected me[1][2] and that was enough to swear me off all Sony products for the last 10 years. Only now am I contemplating buying from Sony again (a PS5). I don't think any multinational company is above trading their customers needs for a few extra quid.
[1] Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
[2] Removal of "Other OS" feature from Playstation 3's after users had already bought them: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3088169/sony-agrees-to-pay-m...
https://streamingclarity.com/android-tv-staff-pick-highlight...
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They have the same contempt for software that they do on their phones.
They NEVER update their firmware. It's amazingly slow and latent.
When they DO occasionally update they usually break things that were working or remote features you used.
About 2 years ago they implemented some weird/stupid popover commercial thing which you could eventually disable but they hid the feature.
I'd be watching Game of Thrones or something and in the middle of the show they'd bring up a popup for a new TV show or something along those lines.
NEVER buy a TV. Even better. They are all horrible. I thought that TVs would be a thing of the past like landline phones, but looks like I was wrong. It's incredible that the gullible are swarming to "smart" TVs.
Usually I disagree about niche hardware in this way (for example, usual mentions about a similar approach for phones and laptops), but the dumb screen might just be dumb and cheap enough to make work at this limited scale?
It can be done, I think, but it has to be VERY well funded - you need to send salespeople / lobbyists to the various on- and offline shops selling TVs, you need "SEO experts" to try and beat the competition's "SEO experts" on the internet and e.g. Amazon's search results, and you need a legal team to help with the inevitable heap of lawsuits you'll get (patents, design infringement, etc). And then you'll have to deal with the competition pushing the prices of their devices below yours; Samsung can afford to sell TVs below market value for decades if need be, JUST to push out that shitty newcomer that does ad-free TVs, and they'll make money off of the ads + subscription services they offer in the meantime.
They should feel social pressure to backpedal this stupid decision by hurting their marketing for fear to be known as the brand that has ADS in their television sets.
That rarely works. For each consumer that has the time and understanding to not buy the brand there is a thousand that are not aware. The way to go is lobbying for stronger regulations and to limit where Ads and recollection of data can be done.
Day after day we have more and more connected devices. Samsung is the tip of the iceberg, even if there was consumer backslash for one company the problem will still be there.
The "home screen" of the TV (where it goes when you turn it on) was always the chromecast, which as I'm sure most people have seen, is rather nice; just endless pictures of art and landscapes, like a screensaver.
One day it updated without my consent, and that screen was replaced with Vizio's, I dont know, some piece of shit interface no human being on the planet wants. Ads for Crackle and other Vizio tvs mostly. Its so bad.
So, I'm never buying another Vizio TV.
The last update also broke hardware video decoding for a whole range of h264 videos as well as pushing some kind of weird 3rd party that seems to be something that basically monitor everything you do with your TV. It was advertised as a feature to access the TV guide.
My next TV will not be a so-called "smart" TV and not certainly not a Sony.
True, not like this. But they've done worse things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit
After all, most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?
Often, despite the ~10% user/activity loss, profit is increased by increasing ad load. And this is in tech contexts like web browser/smartphone/music-streaming where switches and upgrades are pretty easy and often done anyway. The loss from equivalent ad burdens on TVs is probably much less. (People replace their smartphones more often than their TVs!) The ad revenue also lets them discount the upfront price of TVs (I think I saw an article on HN that the discount due to advertising is at least $50/set?). And then there's the time-value of money: $1 up front in exchange for $1.10 of lost sales 10 years from now when they (maybe) buy an alternative brand is a pretty sweet deal for the seller.
Some consumers may hate ads like poison. But most of them are just fine with it, and prefer the micropayments to the macropayments, as it were.
It seems like the smart thing would be to have ads by default but allow the customer to turn them off. Most consumers would leave them on and be fine with it (like you said) and the haters would be happy too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/sony-bmg-rootki...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_roo...
For users it doesn't really matter why an annoying feature hasn't been implemented, they don't have a say in that anyway. Most likely Sony is just lagging behind a few months or years in that regard. Enjoy while it lasts ;)
Sony just pushed an update to the homescreen of android TVs that pushes ads for shows and services on the very top of the screen.
I knew something was fucky when smart TVs started to be sold for less than the dumb ones - all things being even, smart TVs had to cost more to produce, so something had to be subsidizing the prices.
Google is purely Ad company and is worth a trillion. Here is your context and reasoning, combined.
Ads are not shown, when the TV is asked to "reproduce faithfully the signal that I pass it". And the TV is sold on its ability to show all sorts of things that are not just the signal passed to it. Like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the menus related to those services.
The Ads are shown when the TV is asked to show its menu of applications and features.
Still not great, but not at all what you are implying.
I went with the opposite approach- I paid the small bucks to buy an Avera display, and connect it to my own media box. Also, a decent soundbar, because the built-in speakers are terrible. Now I have better sound than any built-in speakers at any price, a decent display, and the best "smart" features (with no ads), all for a price much lower than a "Smart" TV.
Do we have any evidence Samsung TV sales have taken a hit from these measures?
The sheer amount of content available these days is probably what you are noticing regarding dramas / films; I can remember very few decent Hollywood films recently as utter garbage seems to make billions of dollars, so the studios believe it's what people want.
It isn't a new issue though - "Penny Dreadfuls" were the old poor-quality entertainment of yesteryear where I suspect people were saying the same things that we are saying now. The only difference now is the availability of immense volumes of instantly accessible tripe.
As for political messaging, I am entirely apolitical but do see a lot of ideologies being promoted/pushed in programmes, with an opposing stance on any "modern" issue descending rapidly into a shouting match instead of a reasonable, logical debate; it then turns into a witch hunt regarding the opposing party's behaviour instead of a balanced discussion of the first issue raised. Exercise your free will and turn the rubbish off like I do!
By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it is only a matter of time until all of them show more aggressive ads.
But if you fully wipe it and then keep it fully offline, most TVs have a great screen and they can be configured with "gaming mode" to work like a low-latency HDMI / DisplayPort display. And without internet, there are not ads :) and no forced (useless) updates.
BTW, my LG OLED is completely ad-free, defaults to using HDMI port 1 and even has GSYNC. Just connect any barebone with an NVIDIA card and you have 100% control over what you see.
That's increasingly difficult, e.g. HDMI offers ethernet communication. I also don't think salespeople care to be informed well enough on this feature. It seems that the last resort is digging through the user manuals found on the internet before the purchase.
If the manufacturers start adding a 4G modem to their devices then that might change things. Hopefully the economics of that never work out.
If the tv can’t load the ads it also cannot show them.
although those devices might also have their own privacy issues. :/ best of the bunch i guess?
until all TVs will have built-in 5G SIM
They could easily be delivering ads and siphoning user metrics with 3G, 4G, or LTE sims today.
Don't believe coverage maps from wireless companies - 5% will get reception at best.
I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking.
Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere?
If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.
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My only concern is the longevity of OLED.
lg seems to have the best OS and the best panels.
So if I turn it off while on HDMI 3, it turns on to HDMI 3. If I turn off to antenna, it turns on to antenna.
Only irritation I really have with it is that it's run into the odd error and will reboot suddenly. :|
EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure if I got it to default to HDMI but I did definitely get it to show something other than no signal. Try using the picture frame feature (where it shows art in a picture frame). After so doing, I think it at least defaults to the picture frame. I also have a Roku connected that seems to be capable of telling the TV "hey switch to me", so sometimes I get the Roku HDMI and sometimes I get picture frame, but at least I never get No Signal anymore.
Never buy a consumer product that expects an Internet connection.
If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data.
From their perspective, they probably gave you a discount for your data. See also https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...
This is a nice trite trope, but getting an affordable TV without these features might be nearly impossible for most people these days.
But he hates it because there's a million buttons and menus to navigate, when all he wants is to type in the channel numbers.
It even needed a firmware update out of the box and he didn't have a clue why a TV would need new software and immediately panicked and refused to use the thing until we drove 150 miles to accept the update for him
We just wanted a TV that receives terrestrial TV and has a couple of HDMI ports for his DVR which he knows how to use without over complex menus, is that so much to ask?
It is not a question about affordable TV. The only ones that does not have smart features (as far as I can identify) are the cheapest LCD ones at the bottom of the price list.
The best alternatives that I can find is projectors or monitors, as those seems to so far not expect an Internet connection.
Finally, there is a 30 second "sponsorship punishment" if it sees you have brought a product competing with its sponsor.
So say the sponsor is Coke and it sees a 2 liter bottle of pepsi in your home. It displays something literally equivalent to (not in exactly so many words) "we are punishing you for bringing pepsi into our home, because our sponsor is coke." It then counts down a 30 second punishment timer. As a shopper you dont have THAT strong of a preference between coke and pepsi. So the next time you need to watch a movie on the dictator (name of TV set) you buy coke that night instead of pepsi.
Does that cross a line? How would you legislate against it? Devices shall not act as slave owners over humans who have bought them?
Well, um....
So I am going to say, for the technically inclined its time to chase down your router firewall logs and find where the TV is going to for ads and block the IP or port range. Would be curious what the TV does, properly engineered it should just act as if its not connected at all.
This would not be without precedent. Some Samsung TVs already refuse to exit setup mode if they can't connect to the Internet after initial power-on to geo-lookup their IP to make sure that they're being used in the country they're sold for.
The best solution for streaming is a low-end PC with hardware video decoding and the ability to run Ublock Origin.
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Edit: I see from other comments that Samsung TVs already go into degraded functionality mode if they can't connect to their ad servers, and already serve some ads from endpoints used for necessary functionality.
However recently I wanted to setup my home automation system to automatically turn the TV off when I go to bed or outside, and for that I needed to connect it to the home network.
I solved this by confguring the router firewall to drop any package from the TV to the internet. It works!
Integration brings unneeded obsolescence and reduces choice and control. May be hard to avoid in space constrained phones but should not be needed on tvs.
If it becomes impossible to buy a TV that doesn't just display what I chose by the time this one is due for replacement, I'll take a device sold as a computer monitor instead. Or a projector. Maybe I'll pay extra, but I'll be fine with that.
At least I know it's possible on all Sony AndroidTV models and most Samsung models (not sure about their latest Tizen).
I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and the picture quality is stil superb compared to recent models (except OLED). Its HD and not 4K, but it makes no difference, my eyesight is not getting any better and I might use it for the next 5 to 10 years probably. It's internet capabilities are laughable, pre-smart TV. Picked it up for 100 quid second hand, no doubt some idiot replaced it with a "smart" piece of junk with thinner frame, less durable LEDs, and now, good God, mandatory advertising.
I'd like separate boxes for video display, video signal switching, audio signal switching, stereo and surround sound decoding, speaker driving, OTA TV tuning, AM radio, FM radio.
I want these boxes to all support a common control protocol, with another box or boxes handling controlling the system.
My current system with a receiver that is 8 years old and a TV that is around 3 or 4 years old is fine, except for three things: (1) the receiver cannot handle 4K video, (2) the receiver does not work with any voice assistants, and (3) the TV does not work with any voice assistants.
With a modular system, I'd just replace the video switching with a 4K switching box, and replace the control box with one that supports a voice assistant (or add another control box...no reason a module system has to have only one such box).
With the current approach, I'd have to replace the receiver and the TV for that.
I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably can't see the 4K improvements from across the room anyway.
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For instance, when an older PlayStation (3?) in an update made it so that one could no longer run Linux (which was advertised as possible), I know of people that got to return it and get their money back after the Norwegian Consumer Council ruled against Sony.
1. The Netflix/Prime Video etc apps are snappier because of the beefier SoC
2. Content looks better, because DLSS does a better job at upscaling than the TV's native upscaler
3. I can use it to stream games from my PC, which is making me reconsider buying one of the new consoles just for couch gaming since I could spend the money on a new GPU to upgrade my rig an just stream from there.
And as you mentioned, the presence of HDMI CEC makes remotes rather interchangeable
I also didn't connect the antenna cable and didn't even notice during the entirety of the (Italian) lockdown since I never watch "normal" TV. At this point I wish it could be possible to get TVs without a tuner, I could stop paying the TV taxes!
Luckily, Samsung was awesome about it and I was able to RMA through Best Buy, who just gave me my money back. I took that cash, put a bit on top, and bought an LG OLED. Best decision ever. OLED is absolutely dominant in TVs these days.
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