Samsung TV displaying smart ads

jack_christie

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Hey, Ross. Congratulations on your new TV. You wouldn't be able to disable the ads we're afraid. ^HA
— Samsung UK (@SamsungUK) October 27, 2021
A Register reader triggered a kerfuffle for Samsung after asking the electronics biz if he could disable large and intrusive adverts splattered across his new smart TV's programme guide.
 
My Vizio TV has ads on its home screen. That's way more annoying to me than the program guides would be, simply because I've been conditioned to seeing ads on cable TV channel guides anyway.
 
This was the reason I returned the Amazon Fire Stick I got on sale a couple months back. Turn it on, first thing in my face? A half-screen sized Hyundai ad on top of the main menu. Started to watch a thing, got ads for unrelated Amazon shows with no obvious way to skip. Fuck that.

The "new" smart TV I currently have is a 2015 Sony with Android TV. That's actually bearable, because I could replace the launcher with one that only shows the apps I actually want and none of the "promoted" or "suggested" crap (took some fiddling with ADB, but worked eventually), and because there's SmartTubeNext to watch Youtube without ads, and VLC/Plex for stuff from my local NAS.
 
Yeah my old fire tv stick is really getting on my nerves. Used to only us it for Netflix and ARD/ZDF apps, so didn’t care too much about the Home Screen and ads. Now they’ve reworked the whole system and it’s extremely frustrating to use - plus of course it got super slow and constantly crashes.

… need something else maybe :|

Edit: tbh with a 20€ device from Amazon I wasn’t expecting anything else than an ad invested crapbox.
 
y'all got any time to hear about our lord and savior Pi-hole? :p

it doesn't make it any less scummy, but it continues to make arguments for the ethics of pirated content :p
 
Roku only has an ad when you are selecting the ap. At least it is normally related to stuff you can watch, with an occasional Roku product ad.
 
y'all got any time to hear about our lord and savior Pi-hole? :p

it doesn't make it any less scummy, but it continues to make arguments for the ethics of pirated content :p

I can't be fucked to get that set up just yet. I may soon, but who knows.... I like the youtube app on my tv but hate the ads I can't get past. I don't mind the tv has them built in, they're in the background and I'm so used to being thrown ads in my face that I for the most part can tune it out. Once it makes consuming media a giant pain in the ass, then I will push back and get a pi-hole.
 
Its not the first time Samsung have been caught, Previous they were caught collecting user viewing data.

Some suggest pi-hole may not stop fingerprinting.
 
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