> When the media device pauses the media content, the display device can determine that a pause event has occurred and insert an ad shown on the display device.
Hilarious. I love how all the streaming companies are hijacking the pause control now. Why do you think I hit pause? Pick one or more of the following:
1. I need to go to the bathroom.
2. I want to inspect the current frame more carefully.
3. I want to see an ad for psoriasis medication.
Hint: One of the above answers is wrong. Think about it and get back to me. I'll wait. (I did hit pause after all.)
If it didn't work they wouldn't do it (and when it stops working they will find something else). Advertising is pretty insidious. I have been adblocking most things for over a decade now and thought I was mostly saving myself from annoyance and wasted time, but in the last 4-5 years in youtube video ads from creators themselves showed up. I only discovered sponsorblock last year so I've only been using it for around a year and it's interesting to see my own unnoticed positive biases to brands where the advertising was previously sneaking through just melt away. Now when I watch a video that is too new or obscure for someone to have marked the ads with sponsorblock I am back to getting annoyed and wondering why I ever thought positive thoughts about this brand in the first place. If this stuff is having this effect on me (highly disagreeable personality, above average but not genius level intelligence, made a living trading commodities calling bullshit on the concensus opinion) then the rest of the world must be screwed.
I am assuming spending as much as they are on advertising would weaken them to the point that a non advertising competitor would destroy them eventually. I don't see much of that so i assume it works. I also have my own noticed response to advertising to go on.
I don't know if I believe that... I can see companies falling for the politician's fallacy (We must do something -> this is something -> we must do this). They have money to spend to promote their product, advertising is a well known way to spend money to promote a product, therefore they buy advertising.
If it's #1, at some point you will come back from the bathroom.
When you do, there will be a moment in between when you can see the screen but haven't hit play yet. This is a prime ad opportunity.
If you are watching with others, they may wait for you while you go to the bathroom. They will also be able to see the screen.
Sorry for not being any fun. I just think Roku is behaving somewhat logically here. (I say "somewhat" because there is one issue: speaking for myself at least, would never buy a TV that does this!)
> No, they're probably earning a fortune they'll be proud to pass down to their grandchildren.
Still a drop in the bucket compared to the billionaires being minted semimonthly through combination lottery games, though at least in both cases not a cent of the fortunes being passed to grandchildren came from me.
actually you could argue that the people who did absolutely nothing for society in return for the assurance that none of their family will ever have to work at all, for the next three or four generations if not longer, have nonetheless contributed a net positive to society when compared with the apex parasites who actively work to degrade the quality of life of everyone else for their own gain.
I'm certainly not defending them, just pointing out that we should criticize them accurately. Not because their work is hollow and soulless (which is more true for those of us who actually have to continue to work to survive), but because it's evil and parasitic, as you say!
"Transfer more value! Transfer more value! Transfer more value!", the shareholders chanted, as the virgin shrieked on her descent into the throat of an active volcano.
"It is done!", responded the CEO, eyes hidden behind the ceremonial quarterly meeting headdress, shielding them from the immense heat of the lava.
Speaking of which, the one question I've always wanted to ask bcantrill is if he meant to say "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Oracle" when he said "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison."
On purpose or not it was a great sentence, but if it were premeditated, that only makes it better.
> You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
and a bit later,
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison
Anyone who cares at all about their privacy wouldn't have a roku TV to start with. Roku is one of the most invasive companies there is. Their devices take multiple screenshots of whatever is on your screen every second and then uploads those images to their servers to be scrutinized so that they can make assumptions about you as a person. If you have a Roku TV they can do that for any non-roku device you're using too.
LG, Samsung, and Skyworth TVs have also injected popup ads over games/DVDs/Blurays/whatever. LG's OLED monitors have even been pushing ads on PC users.
Samsung was caught sending screenshots of your TV too (if a deaf person was using TV as a monitor and communicating over teletype I'm not sure how this wouldn't violate wiretapping laws).
I think from their perspective, the likely $XXm legal settlement wouldn't be worth the time and effort to bring a case against Samsung for this crime. I guess it could go on a backlog somewhere though. Still unfortunate.
Anyway, it doesn't violate wiretapping laws, because the resources/budget to uphold the law isn't high enough. A programmer might say they chose availability over consistency.
I clearly made a mistake, but I bought a Roku after seeing how often my Samsung TV was pinging back on my pi-hole DNS logs (constantly). The last two years it's had an increasing number of ads on the home screen. I won't buy another.
There is no end goal. They're desensitizing consumers and their children until what they're doing is seen as normal and acceptable so that they can push a little farther.
Except for the fact that ads didn't obscure the content, Idiocracy had the right idea
https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/177/116639897...
> Their devices take multiple screenshots of whatever is on your screen every second and then uploads those images to their servers to be scrutinized so that they can make assumptions about you as a person.
Source?
Also, do they do it only on Roku TVs, or even Roku devices like their sticks?
> Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching. (https://advertising.roku.com/learn/resources/acr-the-future-...)
Note that this isn't documentation of their data collection practices, this is ad copy providing one example intended to convince advertisers to pay them. They mention TV but my guess is that this applies to every type of roku device, exploiting your data is how they make their money after all, although a stick is probably not capturing the screenshots in 4K. I would also assume that this applies to all content viewed on the device regardless of the app being used and including personal content cast to the device.
You left the last sentence out of the paragraph from their ad copy. It doesn’t make their practices OK, but it’s important for those who don’t click through:
> We should note, however, that this data becomes aggregated, removing personally identifiable information before it is received by advertisers.
It's not that important though, because depersonalized and even aggregated data can be traced back to a individual and even if roku doesn't hand that information along with your account details to advertisers roku themselves still have it all linked and can sell/leak that info to anyone at any time.
The TV makers don't need ACR when you are using apps on their OS. Those apps all report the currently playing title to the OS maker. ACR is used for when you watch broadcast TV or anything coming in over HDMI.
The margins on TVs are surprisingly small, so being able to show you a few dollars of ads every year dramatically improves that margin, which allows the TV to be either a better value or cheaper compared to other sets you see in the store.
> The TV makers don't need ACR when you are using apps on their OS. Those apps all report the currently playing title to the OS maker.
That would just tell them what show you saw. With screenshots they can see what was on the screen when you paused the show, what scenes you rewound and re-watched or fast-forwarded through etc.
For example, if you pause a movie on a scene with boobs, they can assume you like boobs. Pause a lot on screens with text, they can assume you're a slow reader (with how long you tend to pause the screen indicating how much you struggle with reading). Maybe you're the kind of person who has to go back and rewatch scenes with heavy exposition or you like to watch violence and gore frame by frame, or you skip through certain shows just to get to the songs/musical numbers. Pause/rewind a lot and it might indicate that you're busy/distracted, but also that you care enough about what you're seeing that you don't just let the content play.
Even if they already have the title of the show being played, not collecting those twice a second screenshots when they have the ability to would be leaving a ton of data on the table.
It's dollars per month. I have heard that Netflix is not charging enough for their ad-free tier to compensate the lost ad revenue.
Pricing an ad-free tier is a bit problematic. You would think that it should cost simply the ad-revenue per user more. However, since the more the ad free tier costs, the more advertisers would pay to reach those customers, the marginal ad revenue is higher. Someone on a hypothetical $30/mo ad-free tier has high disposable income, and is probably not being impressed by many ads already.
The redditor who noticed ads pushed to his LG gaming monitor said he connected it to wifi for updates. I think a lot of people assume that updates are really important and don't expect companies to screw them over with ads.
With LG it can all be turned off and as a PC user using their TV’s it works perfectly offline. ACR is fairly easy to opt out of on LG while nearly impossible with Samsung. Their monitor/tv hybrid ultrawide would basically force you to connect to the internet once a month or else DRM content from my Apple TV would stop working.
How many 65" Displays with Display Port are there? Also, don't nVidia GPUs only support the nearly 10 year old Display Port 1.4, which doesn't support variable refresh rates for high resolution/high framerate displays? Sure, buying an AMD GPU is a solution, if you don't mind worse drivers and higher power usage for less performance.
(To be clear: I want HDMI to die, DisplayPort to win, and AMD to get their crap together. But at the end of the day, we need support on both the GPU and the Monitor/TV side, and that's where it's lacking.)
Maybe you loaded the comments in the window of time where I had not yet added some additional details.
I am specifically advocating for using monitors that connect using USB-C connectors and the DisplayPort protocol.
I am not a big fan of the DP connector itself. I have a monitor that supports it, and I’ve used it with that one and others in the past. But USB-C connector (like one of my other monitors has) and DisplayPort protocol is far superior.
Oh yeah, no objections on the principle: DisplayPort is awesome.
The regular DP connector is fine because at least it locks in (sometimes too well), and MiniDP has been pretty great (especially when chaining multiple monitors on systems that support multi-stream, so anything except Apple).
I do have a love/hate relationship with USB-C, mainly because you need to double, triple, and quadruple check that the cable actually has all the wires in it for DP and not just USB 3 or even worse, USB 2.
In a perfect world, HDMI would be a historical artifact. In the current world, it's sadly a necessity for big TVs or many gaming setups :(
The ludicrous part is how many TVs display 4K@120, but can only input 2K@120 or 4K@60, just because they have exclusively HDMI 2.0 ports instead of including a DisplayPort 1.4 port.
Funny, on my gaming windows computer I turn off my OLED monitor BEFORE I turn off the computer to let it do its special processing reliably. I’ve had the opposite issue to yours, several windows will remain on the turned off monitor! I have that one on HDMI and the second monitor on a DP connection.
...that seems like a really good and intuitive feature. What would expect it to do instead? Close the window? Keep it on some invisible virtual desktop? (how large is the mysterious off-screen area in which windows can be lost?)
My laptop has a 15" 1080p panel. It's attached to 2x 32" 4K panels. When I'm done for the day, I turn the screens off.
When I come back the next day, all my windows are on the laptop onboard display, and if I'm lucky, resized in a way that makes them movable. If I'm unlucky, I need to close the application, re-open it, and hope it's back in a helpful way.
The 2x 4K panels show me my wallpaper every morning. They don't show me any windows that were on them.
For anyone else who gets stuck with a window where the draggable part is off-screen on Windows, if you click the icon in the taskbar to "focus" the window, hold Win+Shift and hit the up arrow, it'll maximize the window so you can see the controls. If it's on a different monitor, or on a "ghost" monitor your computer thinks is plugged in but isn't actually, use Win+Shift and left/right arrow keys until you can see the window :)
You can ask Windows to try and remember the location. It's not fool proof, but it works 90% of the time.
In fact, I've got more issues with windows opening on a non-connected screen (and then having to do Winkey + right a couple of times until it shows up on my laptop screen.
Suspend the machine instead? The external monitors will go to sleep when they lose the signal.
I don't know how you expect that machine to know that you're only disabling that monitor temporarily and you expect it to restore your windows at some future time when it reconnects.
If you plug in a new monitor, should windows jump onto it spontaneously?
I do the same, either my Dock, my Laptop or my screens, or all together give some weird issues where the screens turn on every 5 minutes and go to sleep.
And searching for 'Dock screen wakes up during sleep' just floods <search engine> with 'screen does not wake up after sleep'. And with <search engine>'s removal of respecting + and -, I am not sure I'll ever find a solution...
I'd start with the question: where do you want them to go? Windowing systems generally don't have a 'limbo' where windows can live without being displayable, and that probably isn't what you want, either.
Do you want them all to auto-minimize? You can probably get that. But it starts with answering the question.
I could imagine a tiling window manager like sway having a "temporarily gone" pseudo-workspace that holds windows that were on another monitor until you plug it back in or pull them to another workspace. Or to remember that workspaces 1, 3, and 5 were on another monitor recently, and to put them back there when you plug back in.
Sway does the latter. When you have multiple displays, every workspace gets assigned to a display. When you remove a display, those workspaces move onto a remaining display, but, importantly, every window stays on the workspace it was on, so you don't get shuffling and rearranging windows. When you plug that display back in, those workspaces go back to that display. I get that there's no "perfect" way to handle this situation, but the way Sway does it is so much more simple and predictable than Gnome or Windows.
If it's the same problem I've had, I feel the pain!
On a laptop, reconfiguring to use monitors as and when you connect/disconnect them can be great.
However, I'm often on a PC with a fixed multi-monitor setup. The situation where one monitor is briefly out is transient. But some windowing systems decide to permanently erase all your painfully eked out settings at the drop of a hat.
The correct behavior in this particular case is actually just to do nothing, the fact that a monitor seems to have gone away should just be ignored. (Because it didn't go away, really. Maybe I'm just messing with it for a sec, or it's a different brand and turns on/off a few seconds after the others)
[IIRC on KDE you can prevent auto-reconfiguration by turning Kscreen OFF ]
Or even cheaper, there are little HDMI EDID emulation dongles. That said, you end up with windows staying on unreachable displays, so it's not always the best solution.
Reason #27,621,938 to stop watching TV. The media creators hate you, the device manufacturers hate you, the streaming companies hate you. It’s amazing what hoops people are willing to jump through in order to poison their own minds.
Yeah, all that mind poison from nature and science education, documentaries, great films and TV shows that entertain and help us experience the human condition through great visual art and storytelling. Are you from 1950?
No, just someone who managed to keep his sanity in the onslaught of advertising, someone who sees the forest through the trees.
As to the nature and science education, documentaries, great films and TV shows that entertain and help us experience the human condition through great visual art and storytelling, those can be had without subjecting yourself to advertising (other than whatever advertising they put in the programs themselves) by using ad-free platforms like Jellyfin or Kodi running on whatever available piece of hardware (old laptop with broken screen and keyboard, SBC, discless workstation, ...). There is no reason to give in to the ad juggernaut, it can not force your door or pry open your eyelids to force you to watch. Just don't use anything which pushes ads and you're set.
This is not fantasy, it is the daily reality of countless individuals and families. You don't need to give in to the advertising industry.
I don't get this bombardment with ads anymore. For all the talk of targeted ads I routinely get them for products like tampons which I definitely do not need. Most of the time it's some noise I hear until I can press the skip button. I can't really remember what's the last time I bought something I saw on an ad.
Ultimately I'm not sure there is an end goal, except figuring out reasons to extract more money out of VC's. Buying consumer data to confirm your biases is probably a good one.
Just because ads don't work on you doesn't mean they don't work.
If ads are cheap and margins for your product are high, you don't care if your ad bounces off of 1,000 people as long as it turns 1 into a paying customer.
It may be very targeted compared to traditional television and radio advertising.
Yet it could still be less targeted than ideal.
Let's say my ad was profitable via traditional radio and television advertising.
If only 1% of viewers were in my target audience for traditional television and radio advertising, and Roku can get that number to 2%, they've just doubled my roi.
Targeted doesn't mean perfect, it just means better.
Talk to someone who heavily uses Instagram. I guarantee the ads there have gotten them to buy something. I never succumbed to ads until using IG in the last few years.
I cannot imagine they make more money off me with ads than just asking me money to buy them away like YouTube premium (minus that they allow sponsors in the videos which I think should be a violation if I have Premium but ok). So why don’t they offer that; let me pay something to stop tracking, snooping etc and showing ads. I have never clicked an ad in my life.
Alas, if you let the people with enough money pay for making the ads go away, your remaining ad audience will be poorer on average, and perhaps less interesting for ad space buyers.
Well, it's all about compromises. The market mostly provides what people are willing to pay for.
Yes, it's a shame that other people have different preferences from me sometimes, so that the market for what I want is smaller. But, hey, variety is the spice of life.
This is why targeted advertising is so much more effective than un-targeted. On Facebook/Instagram I frequently see ads for products I was not aware of that are relevant to my interests.
> On Facebook/Instagram I frequently see ads for products
I never have that; it’s always irrelevant stuff OR stuff I just bought (because the ad tracking know I was on that other site looking at that product; somehow they don’t know I bought it so now I get weeks of a product I no longer want to buy aka fully useless) so will definitely not buy again.
On fb I mostly see advertisement for programming courses.
Of course with a master of science in computer science, after years and years of posting links to my open source projects; what I need the most is a programming course or a no code platform.
(IANAL.) I'd like to remind Big Co's that contracts aren't valid if there isn't consideration. And continued use of my own TV isn't consideration. (And this is backed by legal precedent, too.)
Read further and you'll find it was just Roku identifying that users were using the same password across multiple services of which were separately breached and credential stuffed.
If anything this reflects positively on Roku that they announced it
When given choice, people escape them - via netflix or adblock. The same people spend their free time watching youtube reviews, chatting on gear forums, or recommending each other deals on social media; it looks like people genuinely want to learn about good and fairly priced products.
I sincerely hope we’ll find a better way of reaching an audience than forced ads.
Don't worry, there will be a small monthly subscription of $9.99 to disable them! Or if you buy the new Roku Plus Extreme you can opt-out of personalized ads! What more could you want?
And then they will decide that no-ads should actually be slightly less ads instead. And if you are still using that Rolu Plus Extreme after two years, you don't deserve to be able to opt out anymore.
In my grandparent comment I mentioned “fairly priced products” - if the price (including ad removal) is fair and the product is good, I have no problems with paying.
What's a reasonable amount, in your opinion, to disable ads on a piece of hardware you purchased (i.e a Roku) to watch your own locally streamed media?
If that was added after I bought the product, zero for sure. If I knew about the cost upfront - whatever I’d be fine with at the time of purchase. Then again, likely a competing device without a subscription would be of better value.
The amount of money that Roku is making, as well as their market cap, are utterly irrelevant, and the only reason you're bringing them up is a manipulative tactic to divert attention from the fact that the vast majority of Roku's revenue comes from ads and streaming.
More lies and emotional manipulation. Neither of my comments were personal attacks - they were clearly directed at the text of your comments, as someone who actually read them could tell.
> Perhaps you need to calm down and realize you're the one who mentioned finances.
This is utterly nonsensical. "There's no viable revenue source for content creators if you neither pay them directly nor run ads" is a true statement of fact that's relevant to the discussion. A sarcastic, pleading, emotionally manipulative comment such as
> Ah yes. Roku, the company with an $8.65B market cap and constant year-on-year revenue growth of at least 11%, is going to go bankrupt unless they show you ads when you pause the screen.
...is neither logical, nor relevant, nor is related in any way whatsoever to my response.
Ironically the fully skippable commercials on cable TV with a DVR are the best deal we can get anymore, anything in the streaming world can take control of the video stream away from you.
I just subscribe to paramount plus again to watch discovery. Seems perfectly reasonable, they give me a program I want (with no product placement from what I can gather - unlike the JJ Abram’s films with their “Budweiser classic”. I don’t think a self sealing stem boot counts), and I give them £8 a month. Everyone is happy.
However you try to double dip and I don’t give you a penny.
Content doesn’t appear effortlessly on all your devices. Some subtitle languages may be missing. Less mainstream content may be of low quality, slow to download or missing too. Plus, you have to plan ahead or wait for the download to finish. At this point I would double check the streaming plan price (as long as there is an ad free tier).
I haven’t used pirate bay for a long time as I can simply buy or rent the material I want
However start putting adverts in that and it’s changes, it’s either “don’t watch at all” or “get from pirate bay (or elsewhere)”, because the product I want isn’t available.
20 years ago I used to get tv from places like irc because it was the only way to get the material. 25 years ago I hd no choice by to wait for the vhs to come out.
It’s a service problem, not a price problem. Sadly it seems companies want to make the service bad, which means they throw the baby out with the bath water.
The core problem is that, as a amorphous class, consumers are more price sensitive than quality sensitive, and those that aren't tend to have very little price sensitivity. So the profit-optimal solution is to charge your minority of price insensitive users through the nose, and extract value from the price sensitive by enshitiffying your service.
This sucks for those of us in the middle ground (having taste but not unlimited budgets), as we get shoved into "eat shit and smile" group.
This enshittification part looks especially interesting to me. For that you need a user base. So I guess any rules promoting fair competition would be relevant and pro consumer in this context. If the users can easily migrate to a non-enshittified provider, then all is well.
If you are watching your Linux ISOs on your self-hosted setup that uses a Roku; presumably they can still inject ads; regardless of where/how you obtained the media.
Roku loses money on making televisions and makes it back on advertising and services. It turns out people don't hate ads enough to spend money to not see them.
Can anyone explain why there doesn’t seem to be a market for high-end dumb TVs? I want speakers, tuner, multiple inputs, HDR, 4K. That’s it. I would absolutely pay a premium price for such a dumb TV. I know others in the same position. Am I just in an echo chamber? Or is there something more going on?
We are in a infinite growth economy. Numbers must go up 20% year over year otherwise your business is failed and you should just file for bankruptcy. Gotta squeeze as much wealth out of the market regardless of everything else. Short term gains over decent nice to use product.
Hmmm… I suppose I’m looking for the wrong solution then. We need to jailbreak the smart TVs and load our own software on them instead- can be as dumb or as smart as you need.
Because it's already nearly free to add 'smart' functionality to a TV? High end boards these days are mostly arm boards at first place, and add a smart tv function to it don't really cost too much cents. (You probably just need some extra storage) Why would they want to sell a dumb TV if you can make it a smart one almost for free?
And if you include the smart tv board, you can then lower the purchase price of the TV and make it up on ads and subscriptions. The resulting price competition on smart TVs is what makes it hard to buy dumb TVs.
How many companies out there make TV-sized LED panels? There's a market for dumb TVs obviously. Feels like you could buy the panels, put them in a case with minimal controls, and ship. If you market it as some sort of "pro videophile grade display" you can charge the true material cost + a healthy markup without relying on the recurring ad revenue from smart TV software.
You could leave OFF common features like motion smoothing, saving you money, and it would honestly be a more "pro" TV.
I had a similar thought, I would assume the patent is meant to be used defensively to discourage something downstream of Roku from injecting ads.
If Roku wants to display ads, they can already do so if the content originated from their system. If Roku is displaying content originated from an external system, that external system can display their own ads to defeat the detection of pause events. (DirecTV already does this).
Reads like this is for Roku TVs. They've gotten wise to the fact that I'm using my Apple TV more (because I can't update the Roku software any higher), but they still want to sell me ads.
Remind me again, why do people connect their TV to the Internet? I used to work in the space more than a decade ago, and even then the privacy invasions most major brands did were inexcusable.
Most people don't want an extra box or dongle? Everyone likes devices you can just plug in, push some remote buttons, and you're done. Even when the set top box works, something inevitably goes awry, such as audio issues non-HDMI sound output, or not seeing video because the soundbar isn't connected to the box or dongle, and so on and so on. Remember those households with the blinking 12 on the VCR? Yeah, folks just want to watch their movies, they don't need to know how this stuff works, even the basics. I know too many people who watch movies on Netflix on an iPad because it's easier to do that than to configure their smart projector every time. We really haven't made technology that much easier to use yet, but it's getting closer, maybe.
Convenience and coercion - they don't want to fiddle with external devices just to watch a movie/show, and streaming services deliver content at a higher quality to these locked-down devices. Had this talk with my parents recently, privacy is infinitely less relevant to them compared to the ease of use.
Also, the screens spying on you and showing ads are often very subtle about it. They don't tell you every time they take a screenshot, they don't make a loud "click" sound, they don't advertise it. They're not even legally obligated to do anything other than tell you about it in buried legalese. LG will say you need to agree to new privacy terms so that you can use the "microphone" button on your remote control, for example. I persist in ignoring that one, but I'm sure others wouldn't and haven't. Amazon lately has been blatant with how much advertising is ruining their services and sticks, to the point where I don't go to Amazon to search for products now, they've just ruined it. Not every spying, advertising-laden service provider is as obvious as Amazon about it, though.
They’re clearly missing an opportunity here. My TV probably spends a whopping 20 hours a day turned off. Why settle for pumping out ads for the few moments it spends paused when there’s all that available screen time going wasted? How long before turning the TV “off” switches it to Billboard Mode?
I understand the conext to be that for a smart TV with Roku built in as the operating system, the idea is that if the TV is set to take input from a HDMI device which is idle the Roku OS might take over and display its own content. Like previews for other shows as a "screensaver" kind of thing.
This seems like patent troll. HDMI-CEC would let you see the pause request if they are using remote not tied to the device. However, to display the ad, it would require you to hijack the input and would be extremely disruptive to the user. Unless they were already using Roku and Roku needs to know Pause command to be helpful to the user. So besides "Show ads" how is this any different from "We handle pause properly!" which is basic function.
Ads should only be on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams.
If I'm getting this right, any ads you'd see on a Roku would be hosted by the apps themselves e.g. Youtube and such. So Roku wants a piece of the ad action and this is the only way to do it without the burden of providing any actual content.
You know Ive been looking for a dumb tv for so long - i just want the size, a bunch of HDMI/USB ports and wifi connectivity that i can stream to... Thats all. How is it that these "dumb" monitors are so much more expensive than smart tvs that dont last more than a year or 2?
I just use a small little PC (no NAS) to stream content from the internet. For local, over the air broadcasts, I use a Hauppague external USB dual tuner that has been rock solid for years.
The PC controls everything using a gyro/air mouse. The only thing the big dumb TV provides is a HDMI display. No mess, no ads, no injected content, no spying. I have full control of what I choose to see --- sports, movies, etc.. You would be hard pressed to name something I can't get.
On this topic, what’s the best hardware and software to connect to a TV (assuming via HDMI) that allows for running apps for all the usual streaming platform suspects?
It doesn’t even have to provide a combined search list. Just something to act as the base OS and launcher for each platform. I know what I want to watch and presumably which one provides it. I just want something to attach to my dumb TV that can play the video.
No suggestions. No promoted content. No ads. No upsell.
You can get a used Wyze which is fast enough for any media consumption, and fanless, for <£50.
However I wouldn't say that the streaming services make the interface suitable for consuming via a TV. Windows lost it's Media Centre interface, and most services are hostile to Linux.
Video is still an area where piracy provides the best experience.
Apple TV is a decent option. It's got default apps for Apple's content platforms, of course, but they're easy to ignore. Default screensaver is tasteful aerial videos (no ads), and the home screen layout can be customized to stash the default apps away in a folder.
You don't need to own other Apple devices to use an Apple TV. If you do, though, there's some convenient integrations, like being able to use an iPhone as a remote, play audio through your AirPods, or stream audio/video from your phone or computer to the TV.
Ooh, I forgot to mention VLC! Their Apple TV app is great -- if you've got a SMB file server, it can browse the server and play videos in basically any format.
I’ll also vote for Apple TV. It also acts as a hub for simple home automation if you just want a few light bulbs or something, or you want to store security camera footage directly to iCloud.
That requires iCloud, which is a privacy nightmare even if you opt in to their sometimes-kinda e2ee option (which nobody does). In the default config it is even worse.
iCloud by default allows Apple to read and see all of your photos, files, and iMessages, as the iMessage sync keys and message history are backed up in non-e2ee fashion. Everything you send and receive via iMessage is visible to Apple and they turn over 70,000+ user accounts of data per year to the USG without a search warrant.
To operate in China, Apple has to run parts of iCloud on CCP-controlled hardware. Presumably this is to preserve the same government surveillance access that Apple explicitly preserved in the USA at the behest of the FBI (as reported by Reuters).
iCloud syncs the list of recently emailed contacts to Apple, so Apple has your social graph and important contacts even if you don’t use Apple email, iCloud contacts, or iMessage/FaceTime. There is no UI to disable this, it must be done via provisioning profile.
As for ADP - Apple stores file and image plaintext hashes non-e2ee, which allows Apple to see which set of people has unique files, and when. If I make an original meme or document and send it to you, even via AirDrop directly, if we both use iCloud and ADP then Apple knows that we have associated, and when. If you share it to a third person, Apple knows that too. Also, if anyone you iMessage with doesn’t have ADP enabled, your full iMessage conversation history with them remains readable to Apple (and USG et al).
> Some metadata and usage information stored in iCloud remains under standard data protection, even when Advanced Data Protection is enabled. For example, dates and times when a file or object was modified are used to sort your information, and checksums of file and photo data are used to help Apple de-duplicate and optimize your iCloud and device storage — all without having access to the files and photos themselves. Representative examples are provided in the table below.
Also, iOS in general is a privacy cesspool. You can’t install apps without identifying yourself to Apple, and doing so sends your IP (coarse location), Apple ID (phone number), and device hardware serials to Apple. You can’t ever change or disable this. Even if you don’t use iCloud, the hardware serials are sent to Apple and it maintains a persistent serial-linked connection to Apple for APNS at all times. This cannot be disabled. Additionally the connections happen early in the boot process so they will bypass any user-installable VPNs (provisioning profiles can use old outdated VPN protocols and I think can load before these connections, but approximately nobody uses VPNs in this fashion).
The moment you install a SIM card in an iPhone, the device serial and SIM card phone number are known to Apple and linked, as it will immediately try to register for iMessage without prompting you. This happens even if you don’t use iCloud, and thus is independent of ADP.
This means that wiping the device and swapping SIM cards is useless from a privacy standpoint, as the subsequent phone numbers will be linked by virtue of the device serial (and will also be linked to your IP, bypassing any UI-configured VPN).
Oh, because Apple has the plaintext file hashes even under ADP, if those files exist anywhere else in any user account in iCloud (that doesn’t have ADP enabled) then Apple has the plaintext file contents too, so it’s effectively non-e2ee for those files.
Gotta trust someone if you want to use things like cloud file storage. Everything you said is true but sensationalized, someone could be accessing my files but I trust that there are controls in place not to allow that. If I cannot trust Apple, then why should I trust Google or even an AWS EC2 configured by myself to host my files? Anything could be backdoored and any service could read your data, either trust no one and live offline or choose to give your trust to the most trustable service. I chose Apple for now.
People here will absolutely hate this because "Google is evil" but I use a Chromecast and I love it and think it's the best option for your use case.
You select whatever video you want to play on your phone or computer and "cast" it to the TV and the video then plays on the TV. There's no suggestions, no promoted content, no upsells, and no ads. Beyond that, a big advantage is you don't have to navigate clunky UIs with a remote, Chromecast barely has a UI at all. When you aren't casting anything it just shows a random picture (usually landscape or cityscape) and the current time.
Another feature I really like and use all the time is the ability to seamlessly switch the TV I'm casting to. Useful for times I start watching something downstairs and then I wanna finish it upstairs.
Apple TV does not fit this perfectly, but it’s still good enough. There is promoted content, but very little and quite tasteful. I.e. the top of the home screen usually shows suggestions for my content, but sometimes there’s a (static, poster-like) suggestion for some Apple TV movie/series/concert. On the other hand, Apple TV does have combined search, the remote is nice and touch sensitive, there are apps like VLC or the Steam app for streaming games from your PC, there are even some games (with controller support!), and obviously if you have other Apple devices, there are some nice integrations.
Apple TV seems to be the closest thing available. No home-screen/screensaver/random ads, but I only really launch Plex (looking into Jellyfin eventually), and streaming apps like Disney+.
I refuse to connect my TV to WiFi. I used to use a Roku for all my streaming needs. But I switched to an AppleTV because the Roku apps started to suck and they got into selling data.
It’s a dang shame that AppleTV is the only streaming box that doesn’t track what I watch to sell. But that seems to be the world we live in. Aside from being expensive it’s a great product and I definitely recommend it.
For those unaware, this is a reference to the real, actual patent Sony was granted that requires the user to stand up, T-Pose, and shout “MacDonalds!” in order to skip an ad.
Not Android: they run their own OS, they've been around since forever (they predate both Chromecasts and Android TV), and according to Wikipedia they are the "leading streaming TV platform in the US in terms of market share. The Roku OS also holds a noticeable 30.5% share of the global TV streaming hours".
For a long, long time they used to be the "neutral" choice: while Amazon and Google were squabbling and removing each other's apps/products, Roku didn't have any beef with anybody and would therefore have the most complete selection of available streaming apps.
Which is why I have 3-4 of them across mine and the ex's house, but now with the changes they've had lately with showing more and more sponsored content in the home screen, issues with HDR10+ (mostly Paramount+), changing my theme for random reasons... I'm switching to Apple TV.
Ah ok, thanks for the information. I had never heard of them. Their website didn't make that really clear, it looks like a random rebranded android based tv box.
Has someone created an enshittification standard scale (ESS) where we can just rate what stage a company is at? It could actually be useful as I would guess that there is probably a good correlation to poor long term financial performance at high ESS.
> How’s the ink jet printer industry doing these days?
There's good competition from cheap laser printers.
> If everyone does it the only fix is a law.
What makes you think so? You could first try opening up the market more. You can lower barriers to market entry. Eg for new upstarts, for established companies in other industries trying to branch out, and for foreign would-be rivals, too.
It doesn't work that way anymore and people need to understand the old rules are gone. We've passed an inflection point where a few companies have dipped their toes into extreme enshittification or excessive price increases and survived, so we're seeing the start of a free for all. Think of Reddit and Twitter doing user hostile shit starting last year, and fast food raising prices beyond the point where it's a discount relative to better food anymore.
A critical mass of consumers is now so passive and docile that they don't change behavior as they're boiled alive.
> fast food raising prices beyond the point where it’s a discount relative to better food anymore.
Fast food has usually been more expensive than (not just “not at a discount to”) better food, ceteris paribus, because you are paying for “fast” in both money and quality.
It is less expensive than better food that also has higher grades of service when the demand for service at the level at issue is sufficiently great compared to the demand for speed.
I don't think you pay for fast. You may need fast so you settle for worse, cheaper food. But you sacrifice a better, slower dining experience. I'd consider that its own qualitative tradeoff separate from pricing.
But even if my framing is wrong, the fact remains that fast food has traditionally been cheaper than better (restaurant) food and only recently has that discount started to go away.
> Fast food raising prices beyond the point where it's a discount relative to better food anymore. A critical mass of consumers is now so passive and docile that they don't change behavior as they're boiled alive.
Sad and self-correcting by self-eliminating consumers. But that will take time and smaller markets are a net negative for the survivors.
Edit: I'm a big fan of the Cooler Master GP27Q and GP27U. They both have eye-bleedingly gorgeous HDR and won't break the bank. You can get the Q for about $550 and the U for under $900; the difference is that the Q is 1440p and the U is 4K.
The only criticism I have at all with them is that the firmware is kinda fucky (you will be spending your first few days with it constantly messing with settings, I guarantee) and doing computer stuff can be aggravating with FALD active; for example, I can scroll through a reddit post and watch the background color change between white and various shades of gray as I scroll, depending on the density of the text. But this is a complete non-issue if you're buying it as a TV replacement, and even if you are using it as a regular computer monitor, you get used to it real fast (and you can always turn off FALD when you're not watching something).
But a 27" screen does not really cut it in a large or even medium living room. Moving closer is not that easy if you also want to have a couch. Even if you cut down on your viewing amenities, watching something with more than two people isn't going to be fun.
"Smart" computer monitors are starting to arrive, and soon will probably be the only mainstream option. It is just too easy to tell investors "we are not a commodity display manufacturer; we are an ad platform with X% YoY growth, our customers have desirable demographics, and our impressions are available in unique business, academic, and gaming contexts".
I’m a liberal, I live in North America, my cheap flights have ads, my cheap TVs has ads, my cheap coffee has ads. My cheap inkjet printer is too expensive.
I want everything for free or cheap, I’m surprised it sucks, I have no choice. I have no money because I pay too much taxes and my cheap house is too expensive.
There’s a whole world of non shitty products out there that you could buy if you weren’t cheap. Most of them are less expensive than the products you DO buy.
My barista trained in Italy, and doesn’t have a liberal arts degree. I pay less for cappuccino than a drip coffee in Starbucks it doesn’t have any ads on the cup.
Google, Tizen, and WebOS are the major TV players, with Roku also somewhere in the mix.
All three of these companies do some level of surveillance, and yet they, or another proprietary device, are often required to watch streaming services.
You can argue that streaming services are unnecessary, but that means both spending a lot of time and money on physical media, or simply missing out, as many shows are now only showing on streaming, and not broadcast anymore.
b) most annoyingly, some android TV devices (e.g., nvidia shield, ccwgtv) use renegotiation instead of VRR for framerate matching. The FO48U supports VRR from 48 to 120Hz, which is more than enough to do framerate matching even with blackframe insertion for all desired framerates, but many android TV devices renegotiate instead. That means pressing play on Netflix takes 7 seconds until it starts. Quite annoying.
Still, it's preferable over TVs with shitty built-in OSes.
What's made this a bit more tolerable for me is to set the source's (Apple TV, but it does the same thing) frame rate, HDR mode etc. to the one most likely to be used by the majority of the content you're planning to watch.
But I'd take a few seconds of renegotiation over frame rate juddering any day, at least for film content (maybe not so much for shorter Youtube clips).
Personally I'm hoping nvidia will release a new nvidia shield androidtv box soon with support for VRR, as my AV receiver and the FO48U support VRR without any issues. That'd allow perfectly smooth watching experience for all content, which would be awesome.
Apparently 55" monitors do exist, a quick search yields Dell and Samsung for $2~3K. I don't know about TVs, but similarly sized ones seem available for half or even quarter of that price.
I own a Bravia, it has all the usual bells and whistles but was made in Japan for the Japanese market. We've had it connected to the internet for the year since we bought it and haven't had any trouble with ads.
Hilarious. I love how all the streaming companies are hijacking the pause control now. Why do you think I hit pause? Pick one or more of the following:
1. I need to go to the bathroom.
2. I want to inspect the current frame more carefully.
3. I want to see an ad for psoriasis medication.
Hint: One of the above answers is wrong. Think about it and get back to me. I'll wait. (I did hit pause after all.)