
Samsung's smart TVs are inserting unwanted ads into users' own movies - lukashed
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8017771/samsung-smart-tvs-inserting-unwanted-ads
======
snarfy
> Samsung explained that these sorts of ads were supposed to be opt-in only
> and was working with Yahoo to improve the system.

No user would opt-in to commercials, ever. I don't believe for a second this
system was designed with opt-in in mind.

Whenever an ill conceived feature like this is brought to the light, it's
always explained as a bug, glitch, or some screw up in engineering. Well, it's
not a bug. It was specifically designed to do what it does. If anybody screwed
up it's the people at the top that think smart TVs are a good idea.

~~~
ChrisLTD
Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV?
However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the
software that would make for a good experience.

~~~
andybak
Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and
scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The
cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want
their replacement/upgrade to be tied together.

A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many
100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is
probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years.

EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble,
forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG,
Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS
might lead them to be an exception here)

I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times
and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a
Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.

~~~
a3n
I haven't bought a TV for five years (a Samsung, as it happens, plugged into a
Roku). Can you even buy a TV that isn't smart these days?

~~~
anon4
Yes, it's called a monitor. There are plenty of monitors that have hdmi inputs
and a standard audio jack output for connecting to a set of speakers.

~~~
Roboprog
Like how you think. I'm not sure what the biggest monitor you can get is,
though.

~~~
jpindar
The largest monitor I am aware of is the one in the Dallas Cowboy's stadium,
which is 72 feet by 160 feet and 1920 x 1080 resolution.

The largest one a normal person can afford is of course a different question.

~~~
boobsbr
It's not even 2k? Ewww.

~~~
nitrogen
In consumer land, 1920x1080 _is_ 2K. 4K is 3840x2160.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
definition_televisi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
definition_television#Resolution)

------
belorn
This business practice of hiding secret drawbacks in Terms of Service need be
sent to the courts and stopped. In the history of contact law, the practice
has come, been outlawed, reinvented, been outlawed again, and repeated with
new schemes every 10-20 year or so. Last time it was Hidden fees and
surcharges, before that, incomplete prices and hidden costs. The law adapted
and with it business practices, but the lure of addition revenue after sale
are still going strong.

So instead of hiding costs in contracts, companies now simply takes control of
the property they have sold. Same attack vector, same intent as before, and
contract law is lagging behind as usually. It is extremely doubtful that this
kind of TOS is legal, and without the TOS, Samsung is commercially invading
peoples private property. They are not allowed to plant advertisement signs on
land they don't own, and a TOS which no one reads or understand should not
change that fact.

~~~
sheensleeves
Wikipedia: "Asymmetric recognition in this way is authority without
responsibility, on the side of the Master, and responsibility without
authority, on the side of the Slave. And Hegel's argument is that unless
authority and responsibility are commensurate and reciprocal, no actual
normative statuses are instituted." (EULA=master, customer=slave.)

------
RIMR
Smart TVs are completely unnessary. I don't want apps on my TV. Sure, apps on
something connected to my TV can be nice, but even the most basic TVs have too
many features.

Built-in speakers? They sound awful and I have an amp. Get rid of them.

Oh, you cropped my 1080P HDTV signal? Well, I've plugged in a computer, so I
need you to display the whole frame. Oh, less than half of TVs even let you
turn that feature off? Well fuck!

TVs don't need to be anything more than monitors. They can have special
features, like 3D, or built-in cameras, but make it something that I can plug
into something else.

How Samsung thought they could record private conversations in people's homes
and push ads into their private videos without consequence is unbelievable. I
will NEVER buy a smart TV.

~~~
danudey
I love my AppleTV, and I would buy an Apple TV if one came out, for a few
reasons. I actually only use my ATV to watch Netflix and buy Doctor Who and
Archer off iTunes, but I'd buy a TV made by Apple because I feel like they
would do a good job.

My TV, when I hit the power button on the remote, takes about 5 seconds to
give me any indication that it heard me; I then get another 5 seconds of the
LG logo before I get dumped onto whatever input I was last on.

In comparison, when I move my mouse on my computer, my Apple cinema display
wakes up almost instantaneously (display), and my AppleTV goes from sleep mode
to showing me the last menu I was on in less than a second (processing).

Thus, I expect an Apple television to be on and available to use within
moments of my requesting it, and off as soon as I tell it I'm done.

The AppleTV 3rd Gen also maxes out at about 1W of power used[1], which means
that there's no reason why the brains of a smart TV shouldn't be able to be on
100% of the time, ready at any moment to power on for incoming content, rather
than having my television add 30s to the simple act of showing someone a
YouTube video.

That said, Apple make their money by making high-quality, high-margin devices,
and not by racing to the bottom of the price structure and selling out
customers to make ends meet.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6834/apple-
tv-2013-a1469-short...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6834/apple-
tv-2013-a1469-short-review-analysis-of-a-new-a5)

------
lultimouomo
> By either selecting that I agree or by not selecting that I disagree, I
> agree to the Yahoo Connected TV Terms of Service

Written under the deselected "I Agree" checkbox, with no "I disagree" option
visible.

This has to be some kind of record. And on a TV that you paid hundreds if not
thousands of dollars, not in some spooky shareware download.

~~~
verytrivial
This reminds me of Android's terrible UI for opting in to GPS snoop
recording^H^H^HGoogle Location Services: You can either (disagree) OR (agree
and not answer again). It is not possible to to disagree once and for all!
It's like they're trying to catch you off guard.

~~~
higherpurpose
They are. Also when you enable GPS you enable it for everything, which also
sucks. Maybe I want GPS to only work for the Nav app.

------
vidarh
The whole voice recognition thing seemed to me to be an unfair storm in a
teacup to me, but this.... This is beyond ridiculous. My next TV will not be a
Samsung, whether they fix this or not.

~~~
galonk
How much you want to bet the average "smart" TV will start popping up "network
error" dialog boxes every minute in that situation?

~~~
Too
Oh this is the worst part, i could once not start my viasat-app on smart-tv
because samsungs, not viasats, servers were down. The workaround was to
reconfigure the dns to point samsung to a local server that just said "im
alive" and then i could start my apps and use them without any problems. T_T

------
Fundlab
Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole
smartTV hype is still beyond me.

Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my
setup?

~~~
lucaspiller
I purposely bought a Philips smart TV this year as the only stuff I really
watch is Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube and my own ripped content. This TV
advertised apps for all of that and DLNA support, so I figured I wouldn't need
any other boxes. I have used XBMC before and that worked great, except there
is still no Netflix support, so I figured I'd try something with it built in.

Netflix works perfectly, and I really can't complain about it. The interface
is very user friendly and it is very responsive. I guess it's pretty much the
same as you get on an Apple TV or Amazon whatever-its-called box, but it's
nice to have it built in.

YouTube works pretty well. It's sometimes a bit slow to skip to the next
video, but being able to use my phone or laptop as a remote to queue up
content is pretty nice.

iPlayer is pretty hopeless. If I play a SD video it plays in the wrong aspect
ratio, and HD video just keeps buffering (Netflix 720p is fine though...). The
interface is nice though.

DLNA started off well, the browser is pretty basic but even over wifi I was
able to stream 1080p which was impressive. Then some videos I tried just
crashed the player randomly after 10 minutes, so I gave up on that.

I've now got a Raspberry Pi with XBMC/Kodi running. It's a bit slow (seems to
be inefficiencies of the software, as even idle in the menu it uses 80% of the
CPU), but 1080p movies play back fine even over wifi. I use that in place of
the DLNA on my TV and use get_iplayer to fix that. They both support HDMI CEC
which means I can use just the TV remote to control the Raspberry Pi without
any addons.

There are a few other things I should mention too:

The whole interface of the TV is HTML and Javascript (it runs Opera 9 under
the hood) and it isn't very optimised. This means even simple things such as
pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it
to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu)
takes 30 seconds to load.

I specifically bought this TV and an amplifier (both Philips) that support
HDMI ARC, this means that audio can be sent from the TV (or peripherals) to
the amplifier via just the HDMI cable. When it works it works great, but most
of the time for whatever reason it just doesn't. I ended up buying a $3
optical S/PDIF cable from eBay which works as expected (i.e. it just works)
and achieves the same end goal. If I'd known it would have been this flakey, I
would have just gone that route in the first place and I could have got a
cheaper amplifier.

The TV also has Skype built in, and an optional camera for $100. I'm glad I
didn't buy that at the same time as the TV...

So what's the purpose of a smart TV? I have no idea. I would prefer a 'dumb'
TV, but it seems pretty much everything is a smart TV now.

Edit:

I also looked into building my own interface for it. The 'Smart TV' home
screen has ads on it loaded over HTTP, so I setup my router to sent that
traffic to my own server and served up a JavaScript redirect. It worked well,
but I never got around to taking it further. According to the spec [0] the TV
supports 1080p60 x264 at 25 Mbit/s.

[0] [http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-
versions-s...](http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-versions-
spec/smart-tv-version-3) (free signup required)

~~~
Lawtonfogle
How in the world can this be any better than Rasberry Pi (or some equivalent)
+ dumb TV?

I see an opening for a 'TV Smartify' business selling customized Rasberry Pi's
(or some equivalent) that you attach to your TV, plug in with
HDMI/power/network, and go. Include a custom OS ready to go, a HDMI cable,
wireless Keyboard/Mouse, customer case, and a power supply and sell it
upmarked as a convenience (since the target market would be those who wouldn't
even know what a Rasberry Pi was).

~~~
kjs3
_How in the world can this be any better than Rasberry Pi (or some equivalent)
+ dumb TV?_

Because it's zero config beyond entering your account information. For a
commercial product not intended for the HN crowd, that's a big deal.

 _I see an opening for a 'TV Smartify' business_

So does Amazon, Roku, etc., etc.

------
jsilence
It is easy to opt-out of buying Samsung smart TVs.

~~~
tedunangst
From the sound of it, the ads only appear when using smart TV apps? So you
could still use a "smart" TV but with normal inputs.

~~~
toxican
Then why not just save yourself some money and get a "dumb" TV? I can only
imagine they jack the price up a hundred or two for the "smart"

~~~
jfb
Because the panels are commodities and market pressures are such that "Smart"
TV features are the battleground that the manufacturers are trying to
differentiate on. You can get a reference monitor, which will be the same
panel as a $800 Smart TV for $4k.

~~~
jfb
I am considering [1] replacing my last TV (a 50" Panasonic reference plasma)
with another reference monitor, but sadly plasma is no longer an option,
unless I strike right. this. very. second.

[1]
[http://homonculus.net/2015/01/27/so_i_may_have_to_buy_a_new_...](http://homonculus.net/2015/01/27/so_i_may_have_to_buy_a_new_tv.html)

------
mpeg
A bit disappointing that a hacker community's first reaction is to position
against smart TVs.

Smart TVs are awesome, we just need open source firmware for them in the same
way that we have DDWRT/OpenWRT, XBMC and such.

Imagine the control scheme using a wiimote-style pointer, built-in webcam,
quad core CPU and an API to give you access to your viewing habits, or
interface with other smart devices around your home.

Right now, I turn on my ps4 and the channel doesn't change automatically and
turn on game mode, why? I have a smart TV, it should know exactly what I want
to do.

I do still think this is a bug, and not intended by Samsung. My tv doesn't
seem to be affected by it.

~~~
pfisch
They will never be awesome. It is like having built in navigation in your car
vs an iPhone. Built in is proprietary bs that will always be out of date, and
hardware refreshes will take like 5+ years because how often do you get a new
tv. Right now my roku runs about 1000x faster than my smart tv and is really
just superior in every way. Stand alone boxes will always be better because
the software will be better and hardware refreshes happen much faster.

~~~
spuz
That really doesn't make sense logically. The physical location of the
computer doesn't affect whether it is proprietary or open source, or how
frequently it will receive updates.

The navigation on your phone is probably better than the one in your car right
now, but when Apple or Google take over the car system market you will have
Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in modern cars that have high quality software
with fast update cycles. There is no reason why the same thing won't happen
with TVs. In fact as mpeg, stated if you assume the firmware in your next
Smart TV is open, it will be possible to run customer operating systems such
as Android or XMBC giving you complete control without the external box or
wires.

Edit: Though what you say about hardware refreshes is absolutely right.

~~~
pjc50
Hardware refreshes are an absolute killer. I have a 2007 car, which works
fine, and a 2010 iPad, which is no longer receiving OS updates. Welding the
two together benefits neither.

The best compromise would be car-as-peripheral; have all the buttons map to a
USB HID device connected to a flush-fit tablet dock. Just remember not to
bridge the UI directly to the same CAN bus as the fly-by-wire throttle.

~~~
VLM
"car-as-peripheral"

I have a 2300 pound, 2014 model year, gasoline powered bluetooth speaker,
exactly as you suggest. In the showroom they had a "smart nav smart
entertainment system" upgrade for only $1200 that was as much of a turd as the
typical smart TV. Its hard to buy a dumb-stereo for a car that doesn't have BT
pairing today.

Mostly I stream podcasts and audiobooks from my phone. Hit play on the phone,
put the transmission in drive, thats my commute.

------
JohnTHaller
Smart TVs' apps generally lag FAR behind the equivalent apps on a Playstation,
Xbox, Roku box or similar anyway, so it's generally a better option to go with
a regular TV. The money you save can more than pay for a Roku box. Or even an
Xbox 360 depending on brand.

A TV without the annoying apps, added commercials, and privacy issues is a
smarter choice. Stop calling them dumb TVs. They're "Smarter TVs".

~~~
winslow
Are non smart TVs even available (once you get into the big 55in and above
range)?

I suppose you could always buy the smart version and just don't enable/use it

~~~
JohnTHaller
I bought a 50" RCA in October for a really good deal. No smart features at
all. Don't need em, don't want em.

------
arca_vorago
You know what I'm curious about? Why so many people rail against GPL for
business use, claiming it makes it more difficult to monetize a product, but
then companies like Samsung and Google turn around and use GNU/Linux and other
GPL code on a project and then lock it down with proprietary blobs and DRM.

Doesn't seem to really be hurting them at all, but it is certainly hurting
consumers that linux is being used to abuse peoples rights.

If I buy a TV with a quad core processor in it, there is no reason I should
not, if I so choose (and potentially void warranty) that I shouldn't be able
to install whatever I want to on that. The only technical limitations to
rooting a Samsung smart tv are artificially placed there by Samesung, and with
recent updates they made it so trying to root can brick your TV!

I would love to buy a completely FOSS smart tv, but it infuriates me to know I
have linux but can't do anything with it on mine.

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm increasingly convinced that RMS was just a
man ahead of his time and the principles of the GPL are more important than
ever to uphold.

~~~
jessaustin
I haven't used one of these TVs, but if they're using linux and you can't
patch it, why haven't they been sued? That is the _point_ of the GPL.

~~~
tbirdz
You're thinking of the GPLv3's anti "tivoization" clause. Linux is released
under the GPLv2 only, and that license does not include that clause.

~~~
jessaustin
You're right; thanks. There is a difference between "providing source code"
and "providing source code that may be built and run by the user". RMS was
right, about tivoization.

------
jensen123
If I had seen this story on The Onion, I would have laughed, and thought "that
would never happen in the real world". But here we are. In the real world. My
mind is blown. Just WOW.

------
occam65
That's it, I've had it. I'm going to set my router to take all traffic from
the MAC address of my TV and route it to 127.0.0.1. I'll disable the redirect
when I want to check for firmware updates, but that's it.

~~~
TheCraiggers
Might want to reconsider that last part. My Vizio had an update a week or so
ago that seemingly broke optical audio out. In the future, I'm leaning towards
the "if it ain't broke, don't let it patch itself" mantra.

------
ourmandave
They're not unwanted ads until you tell Samsung and Yahoo they're unwanted.

And that convenient opt out is only 5,000 clicks through a maze of twisty
passages away.

I'd bet the pop-up confirmation box on the opt-out has a Pepsi ad on it.

~~~
cauterized
Is there such a things as a wanted ad?

~~~
rblatz
Lots of people watch the Super Bowl for the ads.

~~~
jbob2000
Only because they're unique and don't get repeated for months on end. If you
could show me a unique ad every time, I might be ok with it. But in general, I
see the same shit day in and day out and that's what's annoying about it.

------
verytrivial
Attention Samsung mobile phone division! Malignancy detected in TV division!
Excise without delay!

~~~
jimrandomh
This sounds humorous, but it's also true; this will damage Samsung's
reputation and affect everything sold under the name, not just televisions.
The little bit of extra revenue goes to one division, but hurts the others,
and they should take action to defend themselves. I would certain hesitate
before buying a Samsung-branded phone, watch or VR headset now.

------
JonFish85
Just a continuation on a theme, and I'd expect this to become a bigger thing.
I imagine that advertising will continue to move closer and closer to the
consumer and away from the "medium". Until recently, media ads were
essentially controlled by the networks (whether radio or TV), but I would
expect the trend to be towards cutting them out of it a bit.

In-game advertising is already a ~$1bn/year thing, and this seems a logical
extension of that. Imagine if your TV could insert ads depending on exactly
what you were watching, based on your specific habits--it's an ad company's
wet dream. Coca Cola wouldn't have to spend the time figuring out which
programs to advertise to, they could target specific customers without having
to go to a second-order of research (who do we want to advertise to, and where
are they?). That second step is completely cut out.

I hate it, but I could definitely see a trend in this direction. Isn't this
essentially exactly what Google Glass is about? If Google can figure out
exactly what you're looking at, exactly where you are and draw conclusions
from that data, they have extraordinarily valuable information for
advertisers.

~~~
shostack
This trend is nothing new, and is one of the main reasons that video CPMs for
digital media are as high as they are. Sites like Youtube can bring a wealth
of targeting data to the table, and Google is obviously very good at making
that as accurate as possible. It is one of the main reasons behind their big
push to get you logged-in whenever you use a Google service, device, browser,
app, etc. A single GUID to link behavior across everything. One ring to rule
them all so speak ;)

------
frik
The brand new xmax 2014 Samsung SmartTVs models come with a crippled firmware.
Many features are disabled until you connect to the internet and "update". You
cannot even use the menu bar (smart hub) and therefor cannot access USB
devices. For me this was the only time I attached the TV to the internet. The
two different remotes have entirely different navigation buttons and changing
a sender with the "mouse remote" is a nightmare. But LG and other TV
manufactures are not better. Suggestion: Remove the dozens of buttons on your
remote and scrap your complicated menu structure.

I would buy an Apple TV (a television screen, not the box) in a second - at
least Apple (and Google) understand how to design an user interface. A simple
remote like the second generation iPod touch wheel would be enough. Or a dumb
TV, but they are already hard to find - and then you have to use at least two
remotes with dozens buttons as well.

------
spiritplumber
Step 1: Buy a projector. Step 2: Buy a roku box, or a used laptop. Step 3: Buy
a decent pair of speakers. Step 4: Set it all up. Step 5: Enjoy a large screen
that is also portable, and that probably cost significantly less than the
same-size TV would have.

~~~
jessaustin
Do you have recommendations for projectors? Anything that can be used during
the day?

~~~
spiritplumber
Good blackout curtains. Pretty much anything with HDMI input will do,
honestly... I generally get projectors from places that recycle office
furniture, you can get a 4000 lumen XGA projector for $75 that way.

I prefer LCD over DLP because they degrade more gracefully.

[http://robots-
everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.Projec...](http://robots-
everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.ProjectorLampLifeExtension) may help
with lamp life if you end up with something pre-LED.

------
IgorPartola
This is why I am not keen on smart TV's. They are getting too smart for what
they should do. Voice control? Why? Otis slower and more annoying than a
simple remote. Streaming content? Unless this is the One True TV the company
will make, they will quickly drop support for it. Then, when FooBarTube (tm)
comes out and is the new Netflix, good luck getting the software for it.

Do what I do: buy the TV for the nice screen and get a Roku 3. Your life will
get easier.

------
mariuolo
It's time to start buying large monitors, I think.

~~~
thinkr
I haven't done much research on this but is it possible to even buy a 70in+
monitor?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I haven't done much research on this but is it possible to even buy a 70in+
> monitor?

Yes, though for many uses you may be better off with just getting a projector
and an appropriate projection surface if you want 70in+ display.

------
beloch
I've become convinced there's no such thing as an "opt-in" feature. There are
only obfuscated opt-out "features" that companies claim they meant to make
"opt-in" as a way of mollifying the few who figure out who is to blame for the
"feature". Meanwhile, the silent majority watches the advertising and Samsung
watches the ad bucks roll in.

------
Evolved
Isn't the solution to this just not having an internet-connected TV? I don't
know about any of you but of the TVs I've used to run apps, the ones with an
Xbox/PS or Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV run YouTube/Netflix/etc. a lot better than
the ones that run these apps natively.

------
Sharlin
So... do smart TVs actually have a single feature that's actually useful to
the consumer?

~~~
Sami_Lehtinen
No? I use my TV purely as monitor from a few HDMI video sources. Of course the
TV malware could still scan for open wifi's and leak my information even if I
haven't connected it to any of the other networks. Btw. Does HDMI standard
allow data relay, so they could use connected devices to relay the data to 3rd
parties over alternate network connections?

~~~
anonymfus
HDMI Ethernet Channel (HDMI HEC):
[http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdmi_1_4/hec.aspx](http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdmi_1_4/hec.aspx)

------
click170
First of all, outbound filtering. You might want to look into it. I'm
installing outbound filters for all my friends and family, with stuff like
this it's not hard to help them see the benefit.

Second, what's the big deal? If it only takes 15-30 minutes for an ad to
appear, simply return the TV the first time it displays one. I could
understand the outrage if the TV waited until after the return period had
expired before doing this, but this doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Return
it and blog about your experience, naming and shaming the manufacturer, and
share your experience with your friends and family as well so they can avoid
the same mistake.

Shame on you Samsung for thinking it would _ever_ be appropriate to insert
advertisements into the consumer's own content.

Edit: As an afterthought, I wonder how the TV behaves if it can't access the
Internet to download said Ads. Anyone with experience able to speak to this?

------
bitL
Basically, buy a NUC or 4K Android XBMC/Plex box, and use Smart TVs as dumb
TVs with HDMI 2.0 input. BTW, I have just bought a Samsung UHD TV so it's
completely necessary for me now...

~~~
morganvachon
Or do all of that and buy a dumb TV instead of the "smart" TV, putting the
~$200 savings into the NUC or other box. No sense in paying for a component
you'll never use.

~~~
jbinto
As others have noted here already, the smart TVs are quickly becoming the only
thing you can buy now, at least in North America.

~~~
VLM
How aggressive are modern smart TVs?

The salesperson conned my MiL into buying a smart TV, and/or it was the only
one available. She doesn't have internet, she's just not into it.

I could imagine a TV refusing to operate until its connected to the internet
to upload your viewing habits and download new ads... but the smart TVs from a
year or two ago were not that aggressive.

I would never connect one to my LAN. How can I know its security holes and
upgrades and issues, how do I unbrick it once it inevitably gets owned, how do
I virus scan or otherwise clean it up, its just too difficult and complicated
compared to my simpler system. As long as they still operate without ever
having a wifi connection, I'll be OK.

Edited to add, "the tv asked for my wifi password so I told it, what could
possibly go wrong?" is going to be the next decades "someone on the internet
asked me for my bank account number so I told him, what could possibly go
wrong?" Right up there with browser toolbar installers.

~~~
pjc50
In the future we'll have browser toolbar installers _on the TV_.

(Tangentially, does anyone else remember the awfulness of early 2000s WebTV?
Mostly expressed through badly formatted usenet posts)

------
joannerr
Samsung may just feel they haven't good luck this time. Compared with it, I
personally prefer Chromecast or Apple.

------
debian69
So like boycott samsung already?

------
eridal
that's why I bought a dumb-tv.

we need to go dumb-everything: phone, tv, computer, car..

------
juliangregorian
And this on top of spying on all your conversations? Sheesh, what kind of
world are we inventing for ourselves.

~~~
aluhut
We don't know. But we'll find out! We have algorithms for that.

------
rathish_g
It clearly says... SMART TV

------
gadders
I am running out of curse words to describe the people that make these
decisions.

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acd
Not so smart Samsung Tvs, not so smart watches with 1 day battery life. Why
are these products called smart when they are not? iStupid

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hamoid
In this thread it looks like there are only two options: smart TV and dumb TV.
But there's a third one: no TV. It has it's own set of advantages.

~~~
fsloth
But that's like suggesting selibacy in a discussion about sex positions.

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bane
I submitted this at the source of the report a few days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9021305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9021305)

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EliRivers
Well of course they fucking are. YOU'RE THE PRODUCT, punters. They're selling
you. This isn't new. They've been a bit clumsy this time and you've noticed,
but nothing will change.

~~~
MereInterest
The usual line is "If you're not paying for simething, you're the product.".
As a follow-up, if I am paying for something, I certainly expect not to be the
product.

~~~
freyr
> * if I am paying for something, I certainly expect not to be the product.*

And yet cable exists.

Pay $30+/month to watch 15 minutes of commercials an hour.

