Op-ed: TV screensavers shouldn't show immigration ads from the Trump administration.
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Cheap TVs’ incessant advertising reaches troubling new lows
- Thread starter JournalBot
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Personally I think you're stretching a little bit here, but you're certainly entitled to your perspective so fair enough. I will grant that pre-roll trailers that auto play before my selected content on some services (including Apple TV+) is starting to rub me the wrong way though.
I primarily use an Nvidia Shield with a custom dashboard to remove all of Google's googliness. There are no ads of any kind whatsoever.
It's a good thing there are readily available alternatives such as Emby and Jellyfin.
If it's not connected to the internet I fail to see a problem. Sony sets at that kind of price point are generally pretty spectacular displays.
I'm not shocked by this behavior on a tv with an OS who's entire raison d'être is to get you online.
If it bothers you electrical tape is your friend. Alternatively, if that's a little too ghetto for you light dimming/blocking stickers are cheap as chips. I use these on everything from tv's to network port status lights and they work a treat.
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The first TV spot for a campaign was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1952. Reaching people via TV was still a new and exciting idea and the average American probably saw 1/100 the number of ads we see today.
But yeah, you're a little late if you are hoping to ban political commercials on TV.
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So many people want a TV without annoying ads and other features but they don't seem to try just not giving them internet access. I can tell you that my Hisense insisted on connecting to the web and claimed HDMI inputs would not otherwise be available. I refused and continued to look in the menus for a way out until it finally relented and ever since then, it understands that I apparently don't have internet. It's a big computer monitor now and I can use ad blockers to my heart's content on the computer it's connected to.
And do not ever let it get firmware updates because it seems likely that one day internet will be mandatory for the damned things to function.
And do not ever let it get firmware updates because it seems likely that one day internet will be mandatory for the damned things to function.
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To be crystal clear I don't want to see ads of any kind, but if you put the screws to me and said you have to choose here....I would far rather see an ad in the form of a useful PSA rather than the head of Homeland Security attempting to scare the bejesus out of people. All day, every day.
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If I really wanted to watch OTA, I'd add a tuner to my server so I could record/timeshift and stream to any device.
I've thought about doing this multiple times, but I just don't want to watch broadcast TV much. I can't stand the commercials. I picked up an antenna to watch some of the MLB post season last year, and thought that might be the gateway that got me to grab a new tuner (I had one back in the day, don't think it's supported anymore, and I'd want ATSC 3 if those exist) and put a decent antenna in the attic, but as soon as the world series was over, I put the antenna in a drawer and haven't had to urge to pursue that project.
But if I was going to, that's how I'd do it. I did it back in the early 2010s or so. Back when TiVo was the shit, I was using Windows Media Center (yeah, I know) and could stream to an Xbox 360 anywhere in the house, watching live or recorded TV. Now I'd go with Jellyfin.
E: I got curious about it again, and there is an HDHomerun that supports ATSC3.0. I figured as much. What I was surprised to learn is that if you have an Android TV or Google TV device, the HDHomerun app will just add the channels to the built in "channels" thing in Android/Google TV. I knew commercial over-the-top cable services would populate that, but it's pretty slick getting your OTA channels in there.
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What's a good RaspPi media software? Not for techies like us, mind you, for my family who are perfectly happy with the Roku UI and would not like something more complicated
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Not to mention the product placements in everything. The brand name and/or logo on the device. Your username: an ad for your profile. The ArsTechnica logo on this website: also an ad. Your comment here which mentions no less than 7 brand names: all an ad, as well. News articles that mention the name Trump: just ads for Donnie.
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I'm not sure I can accept the premise of this article.
Not because I'm in favor of someone doing deportation-oriented ad buys or adtech companies overtly preening about their political utility; but because framing your disgust around that suggests that the problem is doing what they do in bad taste and, implicitly, that if it were done in better taste it might be OK.
Once they've got their nose in the tent on ad placement and audience monitoring the groundwork has already been laid and any damage not already done can be updated over the network within minutes to hours as soon as the wind shifts; even if right now they are sticking to bland, feel-good, 'brand' oriented advertising that is basically just logos on top of people smiling like you would be if you bought $PRODUCT.
It flies under the radar a bit, vs. the development of state capabilities; but private sector surveillance and propaganda capabilities are similarly...flexible...in their application once developed; and the internal institutional ability to withstand incentives toward abuse is, if anything, probably weaker since there's automatic competitive pressure to up the ante continually; and things like consumer privacy laws tend to be weaker and easier to quietly not enforce than regulations written because you more or less expect the cops and the spooks to get out of hand sooner or later.
Not because I'm in favor of someone doing deportation-oriented ad buys or adtech companies overtly preening about their political utility; but because framing your disgust around that suggests that the problem is doing what they do in bad taste and, implicitly, that if it were done in better taste it might be OK.
Once they've got their nose in the tent on ad placement and audience monitoring the groundwork has already been laid and any damage not already done can be updated over the network within minutes to hours as soon as the wind shifts; even if right now they are sticking to bland, feel-good, 'brand' oriented advertising that is basically just logos on top of people smiling like you would be if you bought $PRODUCT.
It flies under the radar a bit, vs. the development of state capabilities; but private sector surveillance and propaganda capabilities are similarly...flexible...in their application once developed; and the internal institutional ability to withstand incentives toward abuse is, if anything, probably weaker since there's automatic competitive pressure to up the ante continually; and things like consumer privacy laws tend to be weaker and easier to quietly not enforce than regulations written because you more or less expect the cops and the spooks to get out of hand sooner or later.
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As of December last year. Vizio has been a brand of varying quality for a lot longer than that. They went public in 2021. Sounds about when they started really going to shit. Imagine that.
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Frankly, none. Buy them a Apple TV or an NV Shield and be done with it.
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I wonder what would happen if you returned a newly purchased TV to the manufacturer and complained of offensive content on the screen saver?
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This comment is just a really really dumb strawman. Especially given that the Trump admin is disappearing people here legally because they protested a different country that the regime happens to favor, and doesn't seem to believe in due process.
Anyhow, that weird shit aside. My recommendation is to never connect the smart TV to the internet. The shit company will only update it for a year or so, and connecting a box will give you a better experience anyway. My recommendation is the Apple TV, it's not jammed full of ads and bullshit. I had an Google TV box at one time, but I felt like every update jammed in more "recommendations".
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If you run into this on future Roku tvs like I did, I finally found that you can choose to set it up in "store mode" and not have to sign in. Worked like a charm, and I will second your "die mad Roku."
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LG does have a 65” OLED monitor (pro level, I believe targeting at editing video). It runs a mere $8200. Disconnecting a TV from the internet does seem the much cheaper and more practical option.
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I'm pretty sure every TV is subsidized by the data they gather and the ads they show now. I'll take the subsidy, and just never connect it to the Internet.
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When I was growing up we didn't have cable and where I lived the two broadcast channels that came in with any reliability were boring as hell for a kid. There was a third channel that would come in occasionally if the stars were right and you hung enough tinfoil on the antennas. It would have weird, low budget, independent shows on it, kinda like the Weird Al UHF movie.
We currently have 3 TVs, one I owned, the other two came with the house when we bought it. All are around 12-15 years old. All are dumb as a scack of hammers. I have told the family that as the TVs die they will not be replaced. We barely use them anyways.
One hasn't been turned on in probably at least 5 years and every before that it rarely got used. Another one gets used on average once or twice a month. The third one gets used for maybe half an hour to an hour most evenings, but it's not anything we couldn't do without.
But I am not going to play these fucking games - don't connect it to the Internet, get nagged to connect it to the Internet, features that "require" it be connected to the Internet, and enjoy being treated like shit if you actually do connect it to the Internet. A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?
Maybe once all the TVs are gone I'll setup a projector in the basement for the occasional movie night, but that's it.
We currently have 3 TVs, one I owned, the other two came with the house when we bought it. All are around 12-15 years old. All are dumb as a scack of hammers. I have told the family that as the TVs die they will not be replaced. We barely use them anyways.
One hasn't been turned on in probably at least 5 years and every before that it rarely got used. Another one gets used on average once or twice a month. The third one gets used for maybe half an hour to an hour most evenings, but it's not anything we couldn't do without.
But I am not going to play these fucking games - don't connect it to the Internet, get nagged to connect it to the Internet, features that "require" it be connected to the Internet, and enjoy being treated like shit if you actually do connect it to the Internet. A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?
Maybe once all the TVs are gone I'll setup a projector in the basement for the occasional movie night, but that's it.
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Oh. I just took my Hisense back to the store and said it didn't work, and bought a different model that didn't play passive aggressive games. If I had known I just needed to dig through the menus...
Nah, I probably still would have taken it back. I'm not a fan of having my entertainment ports blockaded. We get enough of that in the real world.
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While all of this is true and capitalism is awful and all that, there is still a difference in kind between "your TV might attempt to sell you a coke" and "your TV might blast racist fascist propaganda into your living room."
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I have 3 cheap TCL TVs. The only thing that appears on the pause screen is a purple cityscape with small ads in the way of a small billboard, or a Coke truck driving by. They aren't in your face and I'm fine with it.
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Hisense is weird in that they have multiple OSs. At least Google TV and their own in-house thing. I think the US though, they're all Google TV. With Google TV, step one is it asking if you want to use it as a smart TV or a dumb TV. Pick dumb and it says ok, here are your inputs, you're on your own.
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Just rewatched Starship Troopers this weekend- almost too on the nose with the "would you like to know more?" propaganda clip starring a psychic Doogie Howser standing in front of a dead alien (after having demonstrated how to kill one) behind jail bars.
https://i.imgflip.com/52v77w.jpg
https://i.imgflip.com/52v77w.jpg
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Don’t undercut yourself like that. You’re allowed to have your own standards and preferences without apologizing for them.
People who spend all their time watching TV never feel the need to explain or defend it, so why should you have to preemptively defend yourself for choosing something different?
If people think it is snobbish to want read instead of watch TV it says a lot more about them than it does about you.
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How is there this much money available to buy personal data? It must be staggering but who's paying it and how are they making a profit? The literal hundreds of vendors attached to each and every cookie for each and every website tells me there's plenty of money to be made so where is it in the economy? I've never bought anything because of a TV ad and unless I'm an extreme outlier I don't see how it works.
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I hardly watch my TV because of the normal intrusive ads but I am really keeping fingers crossed it lasts for a good while yet because the I do not want a "smart" TV and the options are vanishing for those if not entirely vanished already.
This though, is a whole world more awful than where 'smart' equates to "we'll sell your data". Forget the politics of it, but having your TV sold from beneath you to advertisers when its passively not displaying the content you want to consume? Wild.
This though, is a whole world more awful than where 'smart' equates to "we'll sell your data". Forget the politics of it, but having your TV sold from beneath you to advertisers when its passively not displaying the content you want to consume? Wild.
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cheap tv new low? how about google forcing video autoplay in youtube mobile bringing recommended contain to a whole new annoying brainwashing agenda...
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We moved from "The Simpsons predicted it" to "Back to the future 2 predicted it" way too fast
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The fact that paid political propaganda is legal is the key problem here. Considering for some people Money is not a concern, how is that any different from forced propaganda?
Capitalism is supposed to exist to drive growth, not to allow hoarders to do mass manipulation.
Capitalism is supposed to exist to drive growth, not to allow hoarders to do mass manipulation.
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i believe projectors would fulfill (some of) your requirements. they have drawbacks vs flatscreen tvs (eg you need additional speakers) but on the other hand you might end up enjoying cinema-at-home experience.
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In a consumerist economy, every single dollar that isnt' tied up in investments? Access to, influence over, and feedback from consumers is practically the entire game- ironically the "personalized" advertisments you wind up seeing are almost incidental to the abstracted fungible data point you become.
A lot of the money that now goes to that stuff is what used to go to TV, radio, newspapers, magazines at local, regional and national levels (many many billions of dollars).
Tech corps undercut that model by consolidating all those diverse markets onto their advertising platforms- capturing every node in that ecosystem (i.e. individual viewer, the specific program, the local station, the network, the local and national advertisers, the market investors and researchers etc...), turning each into both a buyer of services and an asset they can sell to the other nodes.
I have no idea how much Visio makes per connected TV,- but you can imagine, if every large metropolitan area in the US can or used to be able to sustain like 3 local OTA TV stations, it can be quite lucrative.
Just to get some idea of the kind of money that might be involved, here's how much revenue facebook makes per user, per quarter- for US and Canada in Q4 of 2023 it was ~$68 : https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/
$272 a year is probably a lot more than what you'd get by just selling people subscriptions to use facebook, or suspiciously cheap flatscreens, for that matter.
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this is only one step from 1984. just wait until they add sony's infamous "say mcdonalds to end commercial" functionality to make sure you are being brainwashed.
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The Geeman
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I had to buy a new TV when my old 3d one gave up. I have a Hisense qled (sic) which I have not connected to WiFi, just my laptop and Blu-ray and surround amp. Works fine.
They're only not dumb when connected.
I suppose soon you won't be able to even fire one up without it being connected. Windows 11 anybody?
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After an auto-playing video ad for Moana 2 blocked me from selecting an app/channel/input on my Sharp Roku TV, I unplugged the Ethernet cable and blacklisted the WiFi MAC address. It still mostly works as a monitor, but there are some quirks.
I bought an HDMI switch since I’m using an Apple TV box instead of the TV’s built-in stuff, and now the three inputs were no longer sufficient. I wanted to change the labels/images associated with the three ports, but that requires a network connection. Also, the red power indicator LED blinks every couple seconds. Aside from that, it works fine.
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I presume something like Pi-hole or AdGuard or NextDNS could block the ads and other tracking. I don't have an ad TV, but I still block them from all internet activity via firewall rules. But one shouldn't have to go through this just to watch TV.
It saddens me that so much of the great tech we have is driven primarily by advertising and corporate surveillance.
It saddens me that so much of the great tech we have is driven primarily by advertising and corporate surveillance.
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OK, but what do you put on your monitors? Pretty much any streaming media is gonna have ads nowadays. Are you limiting yourself to ripped/arrr media?
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