The home page of my $1700 smart TV has a full page ad about watching ads

[shepherdpie@midwest.social]

If you think that's bad, my Denon receiver had to update itself which for some reason fails 100% of the time when using wifi so I had to find the longest ethernet cable I have to connect into the back (or disconnect 20+ wires from the back to move it closer to the network switch) so that it could finish downloading the firmware and complete the update before it would start working again.

[goosefinger@sh.itjust.works]

Hisense. Name and shame baby

[goosefinger@sh.itjust.works]

Oh, and if anyone knows why pfBlockerNG might fail to update some DNSBL AND IPv4 feeds during cron events, I'd be forever grateful. I'm getting tired of my router crashing every hour.

[goosefinger@sh.itjust.works]

I figure the ads are just cached from earlier. I took this picture a few hours after I finished setting up my pfBlockerNG feeds and changing my DNS to AdGuard's public one.

If nothing else, this ad certainly reaffirmed my decision to update our network.

[alk@sh.itjust.works]

Shield pro is the best, end of story

[alk@sh.itjust.works]

I've found the shield pro is better, especially for customizability.

[dickarus@lemmy.world]

A cheap computer. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.

Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it's just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it's back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don't sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.

[some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org]

People who don't have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you'd see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are "dumb" displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren't expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.

They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn't have ads. Also, fuck ads.

[chairmanmeow@programming.dev]

I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don't get any ads anywhere anymore.

[notfromhere@lemmy.ml]

What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?

[_stranger_@lemmy.world]

I have a very old 4K Toshiba TV with a built in "smart browser" that, due to me never plugging into the Internet, has a home page with news about how well Obama's doing in the polls for being a relatively unknown junior senator.

[yerbayerba@lemm.ee]

Razor blade to specific pcb traces?

[notfromhere@lemmy.ml]

Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.

[maccentric@sh.itjust.works]

Are they still making those or are they all 5+ years old (2019 was latest I could find on eBay)?

[asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev]

Which one?

[wazoobi@lemm.ee]

I'm trying to understand why this is marked as NSFW... I must be missing something?

The intrusion of ads is annoying AF, I agree. I'll have to look into that link for DNS ad-blocking, thanks!

[refalo@programming.dev]

hah, there's nowhere near enough infrastructure to handle that.

[yerbayerba@lemm.ee]

I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.

[hobovision@lemm.ee]

Google TV is the easiest to get rid of ads on. I have a Sony and a Hisense both no ads.

Look up and use the Projectivy Launcher.

You'll also want to sideload an app that forces the default launcher to Projectivy (can't recall the name) because they don't allow changing it through the stock OS. Projectivy tries to use accessibility settings to take over on its own, but it breaks some other features so I don't use them.

[captpretentious@lemmy.world]

Which only works for now. They've already gotten you to be ok with the upcharge price for the "smart" hardware. Soon they're going to require online activation for "reasons". So choosing to not connect it won't work. And they'll do regular ad connection checks and if it fails to update ads after so much time the TV will prompt an error to please correct the network.

Hate it all you want, it's going to happen.