[HN Gopher] Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner ...
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Nvidia Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android
TV
Author : gpspake
Score : 361 points
Date : 2021-07-19 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| sergiotapia wrote:
| What's a better device that plays literally everything with
| subtitles and doesn't require a transcode from Emby/Plex?
|
| I've had apple tv, roku ultra, and shield. Shield is the only one
| that plays everything direct streaming.
|
| It sucks that they are butchering this great product.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Maybe Infuse on Apple TV?
| Legion wrote:
| I strongly prefer the Apple TV UI approach over all the rest.
|
| The whole content recommendation view is contained withing the
| Apple TV application, instead of the home screen. The home screen
| gives me an unsullied grid of applications.
|
| If I _want_ to have the content recommendation view be my
| default, the settings gives me the option of defaulting to it
| instead of the home screen.
| post_break wrote:
| Right now AppleTV is the only way to get a somewhat AD free way
| to consume streaming. SmartTVs have ads, now the last hold out
| does too. Roku, ads, firestick, ads. It's gross.
| kelchm wrote:
| I'm really surprised at just how much I like my Apple TV. I
| (wrongly) assumed it was a bit of a joke of a product for many
| years.
|
| The latest 4k model is ridiculously fast (despite using an
| 'old' A12 SoC). Across the board it just works better than any
| Android TV, Fire TV or Roku I've ever used.
| vinay427 wrote:
| The Apple TV is really good, but have you tried the Nvidia
| Shield (Pro)? The launcher leaves something to be desired,
| and just mever felt entirely optimized for the remote and
| device even before this ads issue, but at least in my
| experience applications run extremely quickly even compared
| to my Apple TV which is already fast. On my Shield, that's
| while running a webcam recorder (NVR) with two simultaneous
| network streams 24/7 in the background, which makes it even
| more impressive to me.
| echelon wrote:
| > I strongly prefer the Apple TV UI approach over all the rest.
|
| > unsullied grid
|
| The only thing "unsullied" was the brief period of time you
| could get everything on Netflix without everyone stuffing their
| grubby hands into the cookie jar.
|
| I'd swear Apple is paying for astroturfing everywhere on the
| Internet. I know you're not an ad, but I'd honestly never know
| it with the way the Internet works these days.
|
| A lot of folks have Nvidia Shield because they don't want to be
| beholden to the FAMNGA monopolist giants. And yet, here we are.
|
| I'm tired of being sold to by companies that want a bigger
| market cap and more user lock in. Apple probably wants their
| 40% cut of all ticket sales and streams, and Google wants to
| beam ads into your skull.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| I found this: go to Settings > Apps > See All Apps > Show System
| Apps > Google Play Services and disable the app.
|
| I share your hate to this "feature.
| thiht wrote:
| > However, a number of Shield TV users consider these images to
| be advertisements (especially when they recommend shows on
| services users aren't even subscribed to)
|
| Sums it up. These ARE ads, they suck, and for the paid price
| should not be here. I'm still salty I have fucking ads on my
| 2000EUR Bravia. It's the first and last time I buy an Android TV.
| In fact it was the push for me to migrate from an Android phone
| to an iPhone.
| gpspake wrote:
| I've had the Shield for years and set them up for a few family
| members. I still believe it's the best device of its kind on the
| market and I've recommended it every chance so I have a lot of
| friends with them as well.
|
| In the most recent update, the until-now ad-free homepage was
| defaced with an ad banner that takes up half the screen and can't
| be removed. This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to
| the Android TV Launcher. To add to this, some of the ads have
| been deemed inappropriate or offensive to certain users adding to
| the frustration of ads being introduced to this long-standing ad-
| free experience.
|
| I, like many Shield owners, am considering installing a third
| party launcher. This can be done pretty easily by watching an
| instruction video on Youtube and most users will go this route
| without consideration of security - potentially opening large
| numbers of the devices up to vulnerabilities.
| notyourwork wrote:
| +1 I'm beyond furious about this and it's a small drop in the
| bucket of Googles increased ability to shove ads down your
| throat everywhere. Something needs to change.
| avel wrote:
| It's not the Android TV Launcher per se. If you revert that app
| to the factory-installed one, the "recommendations" banner will
| still show up within an old version of the launcher.
|
| So this comes from Play Services. It appears the launcher has
| an exclusive hook for Play Services to show content in, and is
| being used for this purpose.
|
| I am still reverted to the original Android TV Launcher because
| it takes less clicks to reach some functionality and is
| simpler, but the recommendation banner ruins it somewhat.
| Alacart wrote:
| I'm absolutely pissed about it. I couldn't believe it when I
| saw it and I spent 20 minutes trying to find the setting that I
| thought _must_ be there somewhere. It 's such a seemingly small
| thing but in. lot of ways it's the equivalent of waking up in
| the morning and finding that someone came into your house in
| the night and stuck a flyer to your fridge.
| LoveLeadAcid wrote:
| Just imagine for one second that you bought a product with a
| Google OS thinking there won't be ads and spyware on the thing.
| It's frickin' 2021, just imagine being completely ignorant of
| Google's function in this, our current year.
|
| Everybody has the right to buy an ad and spyware laden black box
| and install it in their home. But is it smart?
| errantspark wrote:
| They're a company which spends billions of dollars hiring the
| people who play the game of manipulating others at the highest
| level. They're doing their absolute best to make sure people
| are ignorant. The average person is completely outmatched.
| mataug wrote:
| Ads were the main reason why I stopped using my FireTV and
| switched to an AppleTV. If I pay for the device, and then I also
| pay for Amazon Prime, I expect atleast the main UI to be Ad-free.
| brewdad wrote:
| At least FireTV devices are subsidized. I sort of expect ads as
| part of the deal in getting a device for about half price
| compared to similar devices.
|
| I paid $150 for my Shield and now get the same crappy
| experience as my $25 FireTV stick.
|
| A completely separate issue: The HBOMax app actually works
| _better_ on my $25 device.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Does prime still have these inbetween episode ads for their
| other shows? I have been considering going back but I don't
| want to pay for a service that does that.
| stalfosknight wrote:
| This is why I stopped using TiVo.
|
| I had been a loyal customer who was very happy to pay a
| subscription and bought several generations of TiVo boxes until
| they started inserting ad banners whenever you paused whatever
| you were watching and then into the UI's menus as if that wasn't
| enough.
|
| I wish I could ban advertising and marketing.
| jdofaz wrote:
| The current version of the software plays a video ad when you
| start playback of a recording.
|
| They try to be sneaky about it, it doesn't play them on
| channels like PBS, nothing indicating it is a streaming ad and
| you can FF through it
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Funny, after the update my teenage son and his friend have a lot
| of fun "watching TV" with the new interface, usually from
| Youtube.
|
| Myself I'm not a fan, but I just watch anime w/ Jellyfin, live TV
| with HDHomeRun (Quantum Leap on Comet!) and run a lot of
| sideloaded apps to control IOT functions.
| jancsika wrote:
| Apropos of avoiding such shenanigans:
|
| Can I use a spare rpi3/4 to watch netflix on a spectre non-smart
| tv I have?
| meowster wrote:
| There's an unofficial Netflix add-on for Kodi. LibreELEC makes
| it simple to run Kodi on a RPi. I just set up a Plex server and
| use Kodi on a RPi with the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Every time I disconnect from technology, I get a little happier.
| I don't own a TV, so I can't get TV ads. I'm disconnecting from
| "streaming services", so I won't get ads in my music, audio
| books, or movies. I'm disconnecting from Google so I won't be
| subjected to annoying product "features" I didn't ask for.
| Eventually I will disable text messaging on my phone, though it
| also means I won't be able to login to half the services on the
| internet (including my bank). I hope one day to have a job where
| I don't need a smartphone or even the internet; technology
| retirement, I call it.
| npteljes wrote:
| I think the key is to be strong enough, and brave enough, to
| voluntarily bring about change. Every time you disconnect, you
| get a little happier. And I bet coming back feels good too. To
| let go of a state of mind is scary, seems risky, and
| undesirable. But a mind, like the body, needs a varied diet of
| states to be healthy. It's make it more flexible, agreeable to
| change, tolerant to adversity, and therefore bring about
| contentedness and happiness.
|
| So I think that your plan to gradually disconnect is something
| good. I wish you best of luck with it.
| true_religion wrote:
| I always find it funny when a newspaper has an article
| complaining about banner ads and the article itself insists on
| automatically playing a video ad per paragraph of text.
| skizm wrote:
| Does pi-hole resolve this?
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Sadly, not yet.
| fjtktkgnfnr wrote:
| If you don't pay for it, you are the product.
|
| If you pay for it, you are still the product.
|
| You are always the product, phone carriers you pay monthly
| contract to collect your location data and sell it, TVs spy on
| your TV watching, Netflix/Spotify/... record everything you do,
| you will be monetized even if you already paid.
| gpspake wrote:
| A lot of ad conscious users have been glad to pay the premium
| price for the Shield because of the ad-free experience. I've
| had the device for years and this is the first time I've been
| subjected to ads that I can't remove.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I suspect this took nVidia by surprise as well.
|
| I'd be fine if Google just had an opt-out option for these
| "ads". I can't believe it isn't an option.
| beerandt wrote:
| Nvidia had been opting out of this launcher update for at
| least a year, so they knew it was there.
|
| They may have been less aware of the timing of Google over
| riding it, but they should have at least known enough to be
| working on an alternative (assuming they wanted to).
| LoveLeadAcid wrote:
| It's Android-based. Of course there was always spyware, and
| you just learned that the ads can be shoved into your face at
| a whim. Unless you're tech-incompetent this isn't a big
| surprise.
| npteljes wrote:
| Not sure why downvoted - this is the truth. The only way to
| _maybe_ stop this is via legislation, because that levels the
| playing field. Otherwise, the one with the abusive strategy
| will come out ahead.
| cbsks wrote:
| As soon as the ads appeared I voted with my wallet and ditched my
| Shield for an Apple TV. So far I don't have any complaints.
| swiley wrote:
| You didn't vote with your wallet, you already bought the
| shield.
|
| Then you bought another device with closed firmware from
| another company with their own ad service.
| cbsks wrote:
| Sure I did. I stopped using the device that was displaying
| ads for services that I don't subscribe to. Google will no
| longer receive ad revenue from me.
|
| So far on my Apple TV I've only seen promos ("ads") for
| movies/shows on services that I already subscribe to. That is
| within my personal comfort zone.
|
| I wish that I could replace it with a little computer running
| Linux, but it's difficult to find compatible hardware and I
| don't have the time or patience to fuss around with it right
| now.
| [deleted]
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Shut up. You got what you paid for.
| beezischillin wrote:
| There's a very disturbing trend wherein nowadays you own less and
| less of the things you pay for. Hardware and paid software
| shouldn't be stuffed full of ads.
|
| I don't have anything against an ad supported cheaper version
| like Amazon did with the Kindle but trying to sneak in extra
| revenue on top of something you've already paid for is not only
| annoying but full on shady as heck.
|
| Facebook/Oculus started doing similar experiments with paid apps
| and games on their VR platform and people aren't happy there
| either.
|
| Personally, I'm extremely worried about this becoming normal, the
| same way micro transactions did in games.
| lrvick wrote:
| I had a couple of these and dropped them months ago for Kodi
| boxes as I sought to remove user-hostile proprietary products
| from my life.
|
| Extra happy with this choice now.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| My shield updated to this the other day. I'm pretty furious about
| it, it's not a cheap device, and it's certainly not Google's. To
| be adding these "features" without asking, irrespective of
| whatever agreement between me, Nvidia or Google exists, is
| ridiculous.
|
| I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just
| no escaping it in this day and age.
|
| Fortunately, I know how to use ADB and just installed another
| launcher, but most other people just have to bend over and take
| it. No doubt ADB tricks won't be sufficient in future updates and
| I'll be playing more silly games with a device I own.
|
| Apple is seems _almost_ as bad too. There 's recommendations that
| I don't want. It's certainly worse in that I would have even less
| control and be unable to remove them.
|
| It's certainly a good thing that I don't live anywhere near a
| Google office, otherwise I'd be launching this POS through one of
| their windows if I did.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| YOU DON'T OWN "YOUR" DEVICE. go ahead and buy more close source
| crap
| ji0 wrote:
| Capitalists can't allow social discovery of content.
|
| They're using capital to keep themselves in front of you.
| That's what aristocrats do; use their political power to manage
| agency.
|
| Stop enabling aristocracy through politically corrupt
| distribution of fiat currency; effectively making economic
| activity constrained to politically dictated economic "norms"
| (what capitalists fund).
| holoduke wrote:
| Do you know a guide on rooting the device? I also would like to
| put youvanced on it. Cannot really find info about it.
| somebody_amzn wrote:
| https://developer.nvidia.com/shield-developer-os-images
|
| With more resources at: https://developer.nvidia.com/shield-
| open-source
| vlozko wrote:
| I think you're referring to the TV and movie ads banner at the
| top? There's a technical reason for it and a pretty simple fix.
| That banner shows for whatever app you have in the top left
| corner of your apps list. To fix it, all you would have to do
| is to move a different app to be there. I moved the Photos app
| to be the first on mine and all I see now is a color
| wheel/flower whenever I turn on my Apple TV.
| loosescrews wrote:
| One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot of
| software is that they need a steady stream of software updates
| in order to remain useful and functional.
|
| Security updates are essential. Not only is a device full of
| unpatched vulnerabilities dangerous to use, but as we saw with
| the recent Western Digital scandal, is a serious risk to the
| continued functionality of the device.
|
| Because the Shield is a streaming device, interoperability with
| streaming services is required for continued functionality. The
| set of useful streaming services changes over time and existing
| streaming services change their APIs.
|
| Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software
| update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather
| Nvidia/Google abandoned your device? Is funding continued
| updates with ads such a bad thing?
| gmfawcett wrote:
| > Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short
| software update window and then the device is useless. Would
| you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device?
|
| Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false
| dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from
| your vendors.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot
| of software is that they need a steady stream of software
| updates in order to remain useful and functional._
|
| No, they don't _need_ it. They get them, because they _can_.
| This allows the vendors to:
|
| - Sell buggy, half-baked alpha versions to customers as
| finished products;
|
| - Turn a product into a service, to seek subscription rent
| from users, under the guise of "security";
|
| - Justify the need for persistent Internet access, providing
| plausible deniability for data collection (if anyone asks,
| it's to support "security" and "improving the product").
|
| Don't fall for this. The hardware and software we buy doesn't
| need to be like this. The vendors push it, because it's
| locally optimal for them, and it's self-supporting through
| competitive pressure ("because my competitors do it, I have
| to do it too").
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yes, it is a bad thing. I paid fair and square for the
| device. I expect the vendor to have factored in _all_ costs
| beforehand for the expected lifetime of the device. If it
| physically lasts 10 years then bill me all your expenses for
| those 10 years. Don 't bill me for 3-4 years and then go
| "Oops, you still have that device, huh? Take those ads
| because we can't finance support for 6-7 more years out of
| all our billions. No really, we promise that we can't".
|
| Additionally, I expect a corporation like NVIDIA or Google to
| have amortized the costs of supporting several ecosystems by
| the mere virtue of having engineers on them on a constant
| payroll -- those costs are not increasing, they remain the
| same for long periods of time -- plus to finance the support
| by other venues if need be. Brand loyalty and stuff?
|
| This penny pinching by billionaire conglomerates leaves a
| sour taste in my mouth and it makes it all the more likely
| for me to invest in several specialized PCs, a home video /
| streaming player included. They'll never stop being shady, it
| seems, so we have to take things in our own hands,
| apparently.
| 8note wrote:
| You own the device, sure, but you don't own the content
| that's playing on it, nor the servers delivering it.
|
| These are profit oriented institutions. Once they've
| saturated the market, their only way to increase profits is
| to increase their per user profits.
|
| The economy is designed to have your TV start showing ads.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Well, I wish them luck. Practically every family knows
| one "IT person" and when we all collectively get fed up,
| come and watch how quickly do we drain the second-hand
| market of $200 laptops that we will repurpose as complete
| private home content consumption solutions.
|
| I get how the business model of those services works btw
| -- but it's flawed from the beginning because it relies
| on keeping the users hostage.
|
| The corps really underestimate the passive resistance
| they will meet. They think people will go to court and
| challenge their unbeatable lawyers there. No, nobody is
| going to do that. People will just work around those
| corporations (neighborhood private networks with NAS-es,
| old-school sharing of movies on DVDs or USB drives etc.;
| there are many ways).
| zepto wrote:
| > Apple is seems almost as bad too.
|
| This is a frankly ridiculous comparison.
| Eridrus wrote:
| I think people here need to realize that in terms of
| preference, they are massive outliers.
|
| While you can conceptualize recommendations for things you have
| not bought as Ads, there is likely no money changing hands here
| for these to displayed.
|
| And most people actually like these features:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/19/22580720/android-tv-watch...
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| Source on it not creating money? Where I've worked, they had
| recommendations (for shows and movies) and we definitely were
| paid for showing them. Companies would pay us for priority,
| direct buy of a slot or to get certain keywords/demographics.
| They were really no different from ad slots at the end of the
| day. Only difference was that there was a small, but unlikely
| chance, someone that didn't pay could have been promoted.
|
| Given this is Google's business, I'd find it hard to believe
| that they would market other products without a financial
| incentive (whether through a cut of the sale through the play
| store or direct payment for displaying the recommendation).
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| What launcher did you switch to?
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Wolf Launcher, seems to do everything I need from a
| homescreen. Lets you hide apps and has some basic
| customisation. Not amazing, but it has no ads.
| jahlove wrote:
| Supposedly Wolf Launcher stole its code from some
| abandonware launcher, and is not open source. I'm wary of
| using it, personally.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Hmm, so it seems. Well, I've been looking around and
| there seems to be only one open-source launcher I could
| find. I'll give it a try.
|
| https://gitlab.com/etienn01/flauncher
| j45 wrote:
| I'd love a link on how to replace the launcher. I have enjoyed
| my shields and it is now gaudy like ads results on search.
|
| Apple TV is less intrusive with ads in the interface and during
| the viewing experience.
| sneak wrote:
| You don't have to bend over and take it, you can throw the
| device in the garbage.
|
| This is what I did with my Alexa hardware the instant it
| suffixed a routine response to a unit conversion or the weather
| or something with an ad for some unrelated Amazon service.
| [deleted]
| gpspake wrote:
| There's not a comparable device short of plugging a pc in to
| my tv and I'm not going back to that life. I play retro arch
| installed from the play store, stream my pc from my office in
| to RDP, and connect a wireless kb to one of two usb ports in
| the back. I also generally like the Google stuff including
| the assistant integration. The device is perfect in every way
| and I shouldn't have to throw this $300 device that's worked
| great for years in the trash because Google made a bad
| decision about the launcher. It's better than roku,
| firestick, and apple TV and they all have worse problems.
|
| Throw it in the trash can't be the response to everything.
| Why don't I throw my phone and my car in the trash? Maybe I
| should throw my fridge and microwave in the trash too?
|
| If my fridge started showing ads one day, suggesting that I
| shouldn't be pissed because I can just throw it out and get a
| cooler of ice is not helpful.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Yep, the Shield TV really does seem to have some of the
| best hardware and sort of "just works"
|
| I'd normally just have a Linux box with Kodi, but once you
| try to get 4K HDR working, things start getting prickly.
| GPU and driver combos were a bit of a pain and even Windows
| had issues.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I had the exact same problems. Especially when you're
| trying to get Netflix out PrimeVideo in 4K, you're pretty
| much out of open source options.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| The recommendation if your fridge starts showing ads one
| day is indeed that you throw it in the trash and get a
| fridge that, you know, doesn't do that.
|
| Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that
| abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply
| because "that's the modern world".
|
| Consumer choice is an important and powerful tool. Don't
| buy or use crap that abuses you, and don't shop at vendors
| that think that abusing their users is ok.
|
| We got into this situation because people tend to throw up
| their hands and suffer.
|
| > _I also generally like the Google stuff including the
| assistant integration._
|
| Google is an advertising company. Everything they do is in
| service to this goal, despite whatever side perks it may
| deliver to you occasionally. Liking the Google stuff while
| not liking ads is a mistake, because they are inseparable.
|
| If you don't like ads, don't give your money and data to an
| advertising company. Don't run Android TV.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Wasting thousands of dollars tossing working hardware
| doesn't seem like it's really sticking it to
| manufacturers at all.
| ipaddr wrote:
| In some cases you be forced to. Discovering a hidden
| camera that takes random photos and send them for
| audience verification might be one reason I would drop a
| product.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well, maybe, but that's a different claim.
| sneak wrote:
| Google, the vendor in question here, has been previously
| busted putting hidden microphones in their hardware.
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a264
| 489...
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that
| abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply
| because "that's the modern world".
|
| So you're saying as soon as you're abused just toss a few
| hundred/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars of
| hardware out the window and spend a like amount somewhere
| else -- hoping that /this/ time is different? Even though
| when you bought the equipment this wasn't the state of
| it?
|
| It must be nice to live in that world. Wasteful and
| expensive, but nice.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Have you considered alternative ROMs? https://www.reddit.com/
| r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/h7ihw3/shi...
| gpspake wrote:
| My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher. I think a
| lot of people will jump ship to third party launchers because
| of this, though, and the damage will be done. Then we just wait
| for an HN post about thousands of Shield devices being hacked
| because users installed launchers from who knows where.
| tyingq wrote:
| >My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher
|
| I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay
| for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has
| ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would
| start picking up Nvidea customers.
|
| The bad review bombing hit both nVidea apps and Google's
| AndroidTV launcher pretty hard:
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.teg.
| ..
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and.
| ..
| criddell wrote:
| > Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves
| ads in your face.
|
| I have a Sony Bravia TV and it uses Android TV as well.
| It's had the homescreen ads for a while now and I really
| dislike it.
|
| https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587
|
| The funny thing about that page is that the image used to
| be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has
| blood splatter in the background (you can still see it if
| you look closely) and the next ad is for Elmo. If you look,
| you can see the word Elmo where the next ad was fading in.
|
| Who thought it was a good idea to advertise a bloody crime
| show on the same screen that you are going to target the
| Elmo audience and then use that for promotion?
| bserge wrote:
| You actually think they care? I get ads for apps I
| already have installed. YouTube says "time to revisit
| this app".
|
| Google _knows_ I have it, yet they still take the
| advertiser 's money and make me watch the ad. Over and
| over again.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| That has long bothered me as well, like we have some of
| the brightest minds in CS working on...how to collect,
| analyze, and extract value from telemetry via targeted
| advertising, yet so much of it is still so awful and
| irrelevant. The best kind of ads would be like a great
| salesman IMO - help me solve a real problem that I'm
| having and teach me something that is actually valuable
| to me in a non-condescending pressure-free way, then let
| me conclude that I must have whatever it is. Ads today a
| lot of times just go off of keywords that I've interacted
| with recently. Example: I recently purchased my second
| double-edge safety razor. I now own two. I don't need any
| more. Now I see tons of ads for other razors that I have
| an approximately 0% chance of buying. I might be open to
| trying some new shaving cream, moisturizer, or other
| skincare products, but all the ad algorithms understand
| is "user searched for / clicked on an ad for a razor, so
| show them ads for new razors for the next xx days". There
| seems to be zero understanding of potential customer
| needs in the actual targeting. I supposed it's better
| than showing cigarette ads to non-smokers, but it still
| feels so irrelevant that it's just super annoying.
|
| Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun
| of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not
| understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment
| as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for
| that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they
| use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using
| it on herself to get people interested) even though I was
| making fun of it.
|
| TL;DR it's disappointing both that so much investment
| goes into ad tech yet it's still leading to so many
| irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance
| of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted
| which would potentially make them less annoying if they
| actually helped people find things they're interested in.
| Teledhil wrote:
| The Android TV Launcher is this one app, with an even worse
| score: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.go
| ogle.and...
| pdimitar wrote:
| They'll just delete the bad reviews after the initial PR
| storm subsides. Various big apps have been "caught" in the
| past doing it. Apparently if you have Google's ear then
| everything is possible under the table.
|
| This also reminds me of the famous BlizzCon where they
| announced Diablo Immortal -- where the Chinese exec
| infamously exclaimed (after the audience started booing):
| "Do you guys not have phones?" -- when the dislikes of the
| videos reached into dozens of millions and Google has reset
| the dislikes, _several_ times in a row.
|
| So yeah, these things do happen and will likely happen
| again.
| toxik wrote:
| This sort of thing is so sad to hear about, because it's
| hard evidence that people won't stop using a platform
| even when it's literally exercising censorship to sway
| their opinions.
|
| We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet
| we let these corporations do these things?
| dahart wrote:
| Do we have a free press? ;)
|
| One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App
| Store are not public speech, they are _always_ subject to
| censorship rules and always have been, because they are
| using a private for-profit service under a license
| agreement. It would be a different thing for the
| corporations you're talking about to be able to censor
| criticism in the newspaper or on other people's websites,
| but that's not what's happening here.
|
| There's also a legitimately difficult question here too.
| It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly
| review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third
| party reasons outside the seller's control (Nvidia
| shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty
| (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of
| nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even
| say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace
| to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers.
| It will _always_ depend on the specifics of each case.
| bserge wrote:
| I am beginning to go insane from YouTube ads, but in this
| case I'll say those reviews should be considered
| illegitimate.
|
| It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign,
| but no one ever participates in a good review campaign.
| There's no rage in that, that's why.
|
| Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs
| into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's
| the fairness in that?
|
| I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a
| Chinese game that just launched. After successfully
| bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now
| calling for everyone to stop (because it's not _that_
| bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address
| the problems.
|
| Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone
| let go all over the app on Play store, they're not
| cleaning that up.
|
| All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to
| the Chinese version.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| They won't even wait that long. If they can find anyone
| on the internet telling other people to go give negative
| reviews to an app, they claim all negative reviews are
| due to that call to action. That gives them
| "justification" to delete all of them as "inauthentic".
| Aissen wrote:
| What makes you think NVIDIA did not opt into those ads, and
| is getting a cut of the revenue?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Supposedly part of the Android TV certification requirements
| include only using their launcher.
| TingPing wrote:
| Is that required for the play store, or just branding as
| "Android TV"?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| The entire GMS suite, including Play Store and YouTube.
| tyingq wrote:
| Hopefully there's some negotiation going on. If Google
| insists that the ad-laden launcher MUST be the default,
| they are killing any possibility of an "upscale Android
| TV". Seems dumb to purposefully kill that market.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I was thinking the other day about the Hollywood red
| carpet event backdrops that are plastered with logos and
| how tacky that makes the photos look. People even pay
| thousands for designer fashion goods that have "all-over"
| logo prints (e.g. most LV stuff, Supreme, Gucci, etc). I
| get that for some it's desirable for the virtue
| signaling, but to me it just looks tacky. Let the quality
| of the leather and design of the handbag speak for
| themselves. It's not as if an Eames chair has leather
| embossed with the Herman Miller logo every few inches,
| yet it's still an iconic and recognizable design.
| Related: https://www.businessinsider.com/discreet-wealth-
| logos-status...
|
| Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of
| tacky logo walls?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I half suspect adb tricks will alway be available. If you allow
| a technically difficult escape valve for your most motivated
| users you can probably push the envelope a lot further for
| everybody else, as long as it's not easy enough for many people
| to do.
| bashinator wrote:
| Like enabling the 30-second skip forward on Comcast DVR
| remotes.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations
| that I don't want.
|
| The main AppleTV UI doesn't have _any_ recommendations for
| streaming apps you don't own - the only thing that's even close
| are when you highlight one of the apps in the top bar.
| bound008 wrote:
| Just to clarify. The Apple TV (tvOS) interface gives extra
| functionality to apps on the top row of the launcher. (you
| have full control over ordering the apps). This functionality
| allows the apps to show whatever preview content they want
| per the SDK. Some show continue watching, and then
| suggestions, others show nothing. But you are in charge of
| what apps are on the top row.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Also, you can change the setting fore the TV.app so the
| large banner on the home screen only shows television shows
| and movies you have added to "Up Next". Go to "Settings" >
| "Apps" > "TV" and change the "Top Shelf" setting to "Up
| Next" instead of "What To Watch".
| srswtf123 wrote:
| This tip is very much appreciated, thank you
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Thanks. I didn't know why I was somehow immune to the Apple
| TV+ advertising and why I just saw Spotify recommendations.
| true_religion wrote:
| It does however have a lot of space dedicated to advertising
| shows in paid apps that you may not own inside of the AppleTV
| app itself which you use to track your own owned and
| subscribed content.
| metasaval wrote:
| The first thing I did when I got my ATV4K was change the TV
| button to go to the home screen instead of the TV app and
| have not used the app for anything. A far cry from ads
| being on the home screen itself.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| As an iOS user, there's a couple weird ones: Apple prohibits
| apps from putting ads in notifications, but sends a
| notification ad for every new Apple TV+ show. "Rules for
| thee, but not for me"
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| The good ol' "do as I say & not as I do" routine.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| To be honest, Apple never enforces that rule on third
| parties anyway.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Apple no longer prohibits ads in notifications as of March
| last year
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/04/apple-now-allows-push-
| notific...
|
| Good way to get your notification privileges revoked
| though. I wish Apple would add granular notification
| categories within apps so that you could approve particular
| types of notifications while denying others. A quick google
| says Android 8 did this in 2017.
|
| Apple's policy on this is to require in-app configuration
| to opt out of marketing messages, rather than a way to
| configure it through the OS.
| radley wrote:
| Essentially, Apple blocked it until they needed it to
| promote their services in more channels.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Apple is adding something like what you want in iOS 15.
| https://openback.com/blog/wwdc-2021-ios-15-push-
| notification...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Sort of like what I want, but relies of developers to
| decide what is passive/active/time-sensitive/critical,
| and instead of being able to fix it the only recourse is
| to say "no notifications."
|
| I do see what Apple is going for, in that these
| predefined categories let you automate notification
| handling with Focus modes, but I have a feeling a lot of
| apps will have an inflated opinion of how important "new
| episodes of ____ are available" is to me.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Many apps send marketing notifications anyway. And there
| seems to be no way to report it.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by "send marketing notifications
| anyway," since they are allowed to do that now.
|
| Are you saying they do it after you opt-out of the
| marketing notifications in-app?
| kart23 wrote:
| Those are so annoying. Thankfully you can turn the
| notifications off.
| reaperducer wrote:
| For those of you not on iOS, here's what one of those
| notification spams from Apple looks like:
|
| https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1393380938642563072
|
| See also:
|
| Ads for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple's fitness
| thing _at the top of the Settings app._
|
| https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955
|
| Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap
| on the Apple Arcade button to show you a subscription ad.
|
| Spam from Apple that I can't seem to stop receiving, even
| though I'm unsubscribed from every Apple list. I've gone as
| far as to contact AppleCare about it. I spent an hour on
| the phone with someone at AppleCare who couldn't explain
| why I keep getting Apple Arcade spam in my e-mail.
|
| https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1394843930932523015
| abacadaba wrote:
| !$#!#@
|
| just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and
| switch to iOS you tell me this..
|
| save us pinephone
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| That is certainly better than the Shield, which is giving me
| recommendations for stuff I don't subscribe to.
|
| As far as I understand though, is that it will show
| recommendations provided by installed apps. I do have Prime,
| and I still don't really want recommendations without
| explicitly asking for it.
| js2 wrote:
| FWIW, I own both a Shield Pro and an Apple TV. I use my
| Apple TV most of the time. I find it a much nicer
| interface. The only time I use the Shield is with Plex for
| watching Blu-rays that I've ripped because it supports
| pass-through of Dolby TrueHD and the Apple TV does not.
| nyjah wrote:
| The appleTV app might do that, but I use the AppleTV and
| just avoid the appleTV app and it doesn't interfere with
| anything. If I had an ad appear one day I'd throw the whole
| thing away.
| afavour wrote:
| If I recall you can disable this on a per-app basis.
| siegecraft wrote:
| This is different from the recommendation "channels" that
| each app can provide. You can choose whether or not each
| one shows up on the home screen, re-order them, and so
| on.
|
| This is a giant banner at the top of the home page that
| shows ads from random streaming services that you may or
| may not subscribe to or have installed.
| jader201 wrote:
| My "Up Next", which is Apple's integration to show shows
| you've been watching when the Apple TV app is selected in the
| top bar, is polluted constantly with MLB games that I've not
| figured out how to disable. Sometimes I have to skip 3 or 4
| games in the bar to find a show I watched yesterday.
|
| And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed
| (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).
| radley wrote:
| I moved top row apps that show promos to the right end.
| This way I'm not exposed to promos unless I'm on those apps
| (instead of seeing the promos on my way to another app).
| crooked-v wrote:
| Settings -> Apps -> TV, turn off the sports recommendations
| in there. Those are off by default, so you must have turned
| them on at some point.
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, I've done that plus one other remotely related
| setting. Doesn't help.
|
| E.g. "Show sports scores" is off, "Games in Up Next" is
| off, and "Exciting Games" is off.
| thewebcount wrote:
| FWIW, I have all those things on and have never seen
| anything sports-related. I have changed the settings for
| the TV app to only show what's in "Up Next" instead of
| "What to Watch", though. Maybe that's the difference?
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, I've had that set to show "Up Next" for a while. I
| use it mainly as quick access to series I'm watching.
| Which is why having MLB games show up in the middle of
| them is frustrating.
| mh- wrote:
| Is the MLB app installed? Is it in the top row?
| jader201 wrote:
| Nope, not sure it's ever been installed (not 100% sure,
| but it's definitely not installed now). Like I said,
| clicking any of the MLB games in the bar will ask me to
| install the app.
| ssimpson wrote:
| Youtube app update and now has a huge banner ad at the top
| when you start it up. Very annoying!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| This is Apple's fault how?
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Not that it's Apple's fault that YouTube has ads. But
| Apple don't seem to allow any alternative YouTube clients
| on the store.
| revscat wrote:
| Hm. My immediate counter to your point was "that is
| because YouTube doesn't allow anyone to use their api,"
| but now that I think about it I'm not so sure.
|
| Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients
| off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?
| Jcowell wrote:
| Apple have policy that apps cannot be on the store that
| use a unauthorized API's
| [deleted]
| swiley wrote:
| Pushing people to use "apps" instead of the web where
| poor behavior just makes your own product crappier.
| Despegar wrote:
| Websites are unregulated. iOS apps have to abide by
| Apple's terms. This is exactly why developers are mad
| about any number of things: paying Apple's commission,
| but also complying with their privacy dictates.
| swiley wrote:
| Apparently Apple's terms aren't that great for some
| users.
| babypuncher wrote:
| How so?
| howinteresting wrote:
| As a really simple example, the App Store does not have a
| torrent remote app while the Play Store and F-Droid have
| them.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I've noticed, for example, that they seem to be
| particularly upsetting to Android users.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| If you want a computer connected to your TV instead of a
| streaming box, you know where to find it.
| everdrive wrote:
| That's right. I couldn't stream very well from my RPi3,
| but I can easily play local 1080p videos. We've actually
| got it hooked up to an old tube TV, so I get 480p when I
| can.
| swiley wrote:
| This is what I do. Many streaming services artificially
| degrade the quality and sometimes refuse to work at all
| when I do this.
| 6510 wrote:
| My HP mini is to crappy to play youtube videos on its
| tiny poor resolution screen even playing them on the
| lowest resolution (which shouldn't even count) but if I
| download the videos and attach a huge monitor to it VLC
| just cruises though GB+ sized HD video files without
| dropping a frame. Transmission is good enough. Spend
| another 7 euro on a TB storage device[0] - you deserve
| it! More movies to watch than your health can take.
|
| The digital prison builders are less offensive than their
| supporters. Remember to point and laugh when they
| complaint about their self-funded captivity. Its an
| important public service to point and laugh as they are
| paving the way for our imprisonment. We clearly didn't
| laugh hard enough in the past.
|
| edit:
|
| [0] - for the pun ill add a promotional link:
| https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/311843/bestmedia-
| platinum-my...
| slownews45 wrote:
| I use apple TV all the time and I've yet to see an ad.
| Meanwhile both the TV itself (gone) and other devices seem to
| push ads all the time.
|
| When we say Apple is as bad - what are we talking about?
|
| Inside the individual apps obviously developers do push things.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Apple defaults to playing big trailers on the home screen,
| but it's easy to turn off and IMO not nearly as bad as what
| Google has done here
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/19/how-to-remove-home-screen-
| tra...
| slownews45 wrote:
| Very helpful.
|
| I'm a Apple TV+ subscriber, so I think I already seem to
| have access to most of the content. But I also have Prime /
| Netflix up there, and I can preview that stuff too (neither
| may wife or I mind this).
|
| I did notice once I could turn things off, but we use the
| Apple TV App (confusing naming) for Up Next pretty
| frequently (new remote has a quick button for that) and up
| next nicely seems to pull most of our content in (not sure
| how) so when we are trying to decide what to watch (we
| watch about 1 hr every other week) it's handy to remind
| ourselves of what we were watching from before. Apple
| obviously does something so that netflix / prime / etc all
| flow into Up Next. My only annoyance is it feels like there
| are two "Home" screens, the app icon grid and the apple TV
| App.
| fffrantz wrote:
| No need to sideload anything. Just remove all updates of the
| Android TV launcher in the settings and disable auto updates.
| You'll get the good ol' launcher.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| No unfortunately that may not work. Even if you revert all
| updates, the old launcher now has the ad. It appears they are
| doing this from their service side somehow. I removed all
| updates and disabled updates, but it didn't work. Mine
| required side-loading a launcher.
| beerandt wrote:
| You have to also revert the play services app and then
| disable it, in addition to reverting the launcher app.
|
| I've got some other apks disabled as well, but I think
| these two are the critical ones.
|
| I haven't had the ads pop up again in over 2 weeks.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| I'd be curious if it depends on when you purchased the
| shield. I just tried this on my older shield
| reverting/disabling worked, but my newer one does not.
| craftinator wrote:
| Honestly, why do people buy shit like this when you can just
| hook a raspberry pi to your tv and stream through that? I'm
| asking a real question here, I simply can't understand what
| makes this a desirable thing for anyone.
| Bayart wrote:
| Wouldn't a hosts file or a local DNS[1] or VPN[2][3] with hosts
| file support solve that without having to switch software ?
|
| I'm using Netguard on Android devices I don't want to root and
| it's been good. Plus it does per-app firewalling as well.
|
| [1]: https://www.zenz-solutions.de
|
| [2]: https://netguard.me
|
| [3]: https://blokada.org
| Teledhil wrote:
| I'm using pihole and blocking Google DNS and yet my tv was
| showing that awful banner. I think google serves the ads
| using some not-only-ads domain.
| Spare_account wrote:
| Presumably Google devices will just resolve DNS queries
| through a tunnel, if you block 8.8.8.8
| murph-almighty wrote:
| It could be that you haven't added the domain they're
| served from onto your blacklist.
|
| A weird side story: I had a situation where an app on my
| Roku TV would crash if it failed to serve an add from a
| blocked domain (there were several but they mostly pointed
| to google ad domains). I actually _had_ to allow ads from
| the domains they called.
| GOONIMMUNE wrote:
| I haven't resorted to changing my launcher yet, but I will
| definitely avoid purchasing a new shield (when my old one no
| longer suffices) as long as this is the user experience
| vmception wrote:
| > I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's
| just no escaping it in this day and age.
|
| Courts and legislative bodies can totally overrule and
| invalidate any clause in a private contract, if you feel this
| is a social problem then keep speaking up about it and ignore
| the people playing devil's advocate.
|
| People are in the habit of giving counterpoint's for
| conversation's sake and have no strong opinions on their
| counterpoint.
|
| The path is the following: ethical problem becomes a social
| problem becomes a legal problem. Specifically, obscure ethical
| problems become recurring and common social problems which
| become legal problems that can more easily get patched.
| swiley wrote:
| >but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
|
| Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the
| rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is
| running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for
| convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the
| rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on
| is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for
| convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
|
| I don't think I understand fully the point you're trying to
| make. How does free and open source software prevent a
| software developer from inserting the code necessary for
| behavior such as we're discussing? Granted, they may be
| chastised, but the ability remains. We've seen this happen
| already with software developers inserting ads into the shell
| during install (or some other operation). A lot more work and
| effort on our part is necessary to prevent this type of
| behavior becoming normalized.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Take a look at what just happened with Audacity. Open
| Source is no protection, unless you were aware of the
| situation and downloaded a fork.
| swiley wrote:
| My copy of Audacity hasn't auto-updated to include any of
| that crap and it looks like future updates will come from
| a fork where it's stripped (if muse group even bothers to
| continue) so I'd say that's an example of it working.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Unless you were unaware of what was happening with
| Audacity. If you didn't hear about the news, you'll
| update and have no idea.
| swiley wrote:
| I installed it from guix, the package maintainers are
| aware of the issue and will not distribute updates
| containing telemetry.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| On Debian, updating won't add unwanted internet
| connectivity.
| 015a wrote:
| You saw the recent Audacity situation, right? That's the
| point; developers may still make hostile decisions. Those
| decisions may still be merged to the "main" branch. But the
| community is still left with recourse, whether that takes
| the form of a fork, or more simply, one user heading into
| the code and removing the hostile additions just for
| themselves.
| userbinator wrote:
| And on the other side, how does not being open-source stop
| people from patching the bits anyway (maybe not _legally_ ,
| but no one can stop you writing to a storage device you
| own)? If anything, I think OSS is just a distraction from
| the real issue, which is companies trying to lock out users
| from the hardware they own in the name of "security".
| xwolfi wrote:
| But you're making a mistake: you never owned this device, you
| obtained a perpetual license to use it :D
| hanniabu wrote:
| Can you use it without accepting the terms of service? If not,
| it should be required you accept the terms at purchase,
| otherwise it's just a trojan horse (assuming you're somebody
| that actually reads the tos).
| treve wrote:
| My Sony Bravia tv has started the same, and I've found no way to
| disable it. I don't really want a large Disney Plus ad, and I
| thought that I was buying a premium product.
| myohmy wrote:
| We're heading back to the 2000s. I fully expect YouTube to put
| ads into premium eventually. You are too valuable a commodity to
| them to do otherwise. (If you think you are a customer then lol,
| the advertisers are the customers)
| eplanit wrote:
| I'm guessing the Android Launcher is next to have banner ads.
| johnasmith wrote:
| I think this is unlikely, but should it become the case, you
| can easily install an alternative launcher, something
| presumably impossible on the sheild.
|
| Also, the default launcher happens to be something heavily
| customized by each OEM (likely extending the AOSP launcher
| which will never have ads or more typically extending a shared
| base launcher[0]), and I think routing ads through OEMs would
| be both a technical and logistical impossibility.
|
| The phone space is such a competitive market, and the cost of
| switching (launchers/to a different Android phone/to iOS) is so
| low, and the risk to future sales so high, I really doubt
| you'll see ads on the launcher.
|
| [0]
| https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...
| Animats wrote:
| You're not the customer. You're the product.
|
| You can still turn the screen off. For now.
| [deleted]
| pizza wrote:
| What's the best alternative launcher?
| hitchhikerr wrote:
| I switched to FLauncher. It's very basic but I think that's
| what most of us are looking for. It's built with Flutter and
| it's open source: https://gitlab.com/etienn01/flauncher
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Speaking of this, YouTube changed recently for me and now
| unskippable ads are 15 seconds and if you watch them on a
| chromecast you can't skip them from your phone anymore. You have
| to go into "remote control mode" and navigate the on-screen UI.
|
| Nothing grinds my gears worse than stuff you buy and integrate
| into your life unnecessarily degrading in performance/behaviour.
|
| I might actually be about done with YouTube, which was. Shocking
| realization.
| sofixa wrote:
| The correct thing to do for YouTube is to pay for the ad-free
| Premium version ( which also supports "content creators" more).
|
| A lot of people say they'd pay if they were given the option to
| remove ads, yet surprisingly few people opt to do it for
| YouTube ( which you can even share with friends and family up
| to 5 accounts, so it can be a decent deal). Why?
| acomjean wrote:
| I pay for youtube. Its nice to not have ads. Its not cheap,
| but it does come with Youtube Music (which is more like
| spotify.. eg its not music videos, though it does have
| those.)
| thewebcount wrote:
| I refuse to because in this case removing the ads doesn't
| solve the other half of the problem, which is tracking you to
| show you ads in other services that you can't pay for. I
| don't want ads anywhere, but if I pay for YouTube, Google
| will absolutely use the information I give them about videos
| to show me ads when I use search or maps, or any other of
| their products. I'm not interested in any of their ads
| anywhere and I'm not interested in having my activities
| tracked. I get no value from it. (And as such, I've stopped
| using their services entirely except when someone sends me a
| link to something they want me to see. When that happens, I
| use a quarantined browser with ad blocking.)
| cwkoss wrote:
| Because Youtube's kafka-esque content moderation policies
| frequently penalize the creators I care about, so I feel like
| paying them for ad free solidifies their monopoly. I hope a
| competitor starts taking marketshare from them soon.
|
| Ads serve as a reminder to watch less youtube.
| sofixa wrote:
| Yes and no. Paying for Premium and being subscribed for
| specific content creators gives them money, and isn't
| impacted by them being demonetised for whatever reason.
|
| Indeed you fuel the whole machine and enable their monopoly
| though. Content creators don't have much choice anyhow.
|
| That's why personally i pay for Premium ( split between
| multiple people), have Nebula and force myself to use it
| for creators on it, and support some on Patreon directly.
| YouTube is a monopoly and are deeply entrenched - i highly
| doubt any competitor could dislodge them, but i try to help
| them nonetheless.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Ironically this is why I got a Nvidia shield instead of an
| Apple TV; so I could sideload an alternative YouTube player
| that has ad blocking. Luckily the same process can be used to
| get a new launcher too, but the whole thing is turning into
| such a faff
| casperc wrote:
| I use an ad blocker. On mobile (Safati) this means that I get a
| blank screen for a while where the af would have been playing.
| Much better than the ad. I can also just reload and the video
| starts.
| Omniusaspirer wrote:
| Ublock Origin + Newpipe + SmartTubeNext
|
| These three programs are the only thing keeping YouTube
| tolerable. When Google eventually Widevine L1's everything I'll
| bail entirely.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Arg, I have a different Android TV and like the older design, I
| guess this one will be coming and it looks like a strict
| downgrade.
| duxup wrote:
| > a recent update to Android TV, Shield TV
|
| So did Nvidia just decide to do this? Switch it to Android TV?
|
| How did this play out exactly?
| vetinari wrote:
| Nvidia Shield TV (the hardware) runs Android TV (the OS). As a
| part of the Android TV OS, there's the Android TV Home (the
| launcher). Which Google (the OS and launch app vendor) updated,
| and screwed Nvidia (hw vendor) in the process.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| It's really incredible how the average American home spends some
| $116/mo for television[1], and is still subjected to 16 minutes
| of advertisements per hour of entertainment.
|
| [1] https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-
| doxo...
| oliwarner wrote:
| > 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment
|
| It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes
| entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.
| pizza wrote:
| It really feels like more than 16.. you know, just the other
| day I realized my Roku TV was analyzing the video stream of
| what I was watching, and adding its own ads on top of the
| output of my Shield. Wonder if it would be possible to
| jailbreak the Roku, patch the firmware so that it recognized
| and _blocked_ ads instead..
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Possible? Certainly. Worth the time? Likely not. Just get a
| different device that respects your privacy or one that is
| more open to letting you control it how you see fit.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It isn't just spending the money.
|
| I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and
| sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything
| becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video
| is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I
| normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to
| the same.
|
| Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads
| aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised,
| the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it
| destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are
| much more expensive.
| Covzire wrote:
| I haven't had cable for about 15 years now, and commercials are
| a big reason. But it's not even just the commercials, I just
| wasn't interested in the six hundreth special on Nostradamus or
| aliens on the history channel, or shows purportedly about space
| exploration that are 50% CGI and 49% speculation masquerading
| as observations or any kind of "reality shows".
|
| Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are
| committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars,
| pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and
| stupidest people in the business.
|
| Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take
| 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial
| hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Yep; either show me ads and give me the content for free, or
| (ideally give me the option) let me pay and don't show ads.
| If product people / The MBAs at a company think that there
| should still be ads on the paid version, consider what those
| are worth. I haven't seen anyone try it, but consider a model
| of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap
| with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. Basically, I always
| want an option to pay whatever a company thinks it's worth to
| remove all ads. If there's really good content on offer,
| people will pay. Ads make any content look sleazy. Even the
| best YouTube channels shilling for random products gets lame
| and old real quick.
|
| Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost
| of the content to remove all ads.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I would guess that there's a vicious cycle at play here.
| The more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the deeper
| their pockets are, the more valuable they are as a
| consumer, the more money a company is willing to pay to
| advertise to them.
| seneca wrote:
| > I haven't seen anyone try it, but consider a model of
| three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap
| with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads.
|
| This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire
| tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad
| subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of
| the same hardware.
| likeabbas wrote:
| I must be in the minority here, but Ancient Aliens is one of
| my favorite tv shows. It has some of the funniest, most
| outlandish, content I've ever seen.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| It used to be a uniquely American thing. The Discovery and
| Nat Geo channels in my home country used to be truly
| educational. (I don't know/think it's the case anymore,
| sadly.)
| harpersealtako wrote:
| >$116/mo for television
|
| The link you posted says that's cable and internet, not
| television.
| fermentation wrote:
| I can definitely believe that. I spend about $100 in the PNW
| just for gigabit Internet in my apartment (which is really
| only about 400mbps, thanks Wave!)
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Some sports packages are >$50/month on their own, and lots of
| people love their sports.
| rhino369 wrote:
| And at least for Comcast and Fios, the marginal cost to add a
| basic cable package is more like 30-40 bucks. I.e., if you
| went from just internet to internet and TV it only adds 30-40
| bucks.
|
| That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the
| TV aspect.
| treesknees wrote:
| Do you just watch DVDs and use an OTA antenna?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I suppose it's the price of convenience? For my part, I pay a
| lot less for just Internet, borrow DVDs from the public
| library, and occasionally pay a la carte to stream specific
| shows I particularly want to watch. It's definitely less
| expensive in the long run, but my real motivation is that I
| _really_ hate ads, enough so that I 'm willing to put up with
| lower definition (the library doesn't do as much in the way of
| blu-ray), waitlists for popular shows, and having to actually
| plan ahead when deciding what to watch. I'm very, _very_ aware,
| though, that choosing to do it this way makes me an unusual
| case. And I 'm pretty sure it's not because I've discovered
| some lifehack that nobody else is clever enough to know about.
| No, it's because I'm grumpy and easy to irritate, and because,
| as someone with objectively poor taste in entertainment, I
| genuinely don't give a damn about keeping up with Star Wars or
| Game of Thrones or whatever. I'm perfectly satisfied with
| ancient crusty stuff like Murder, She Wrote.
|
| Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's
| no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who
| gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and
| realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem,
| in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever
| so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any
| of the alternatives.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know if it's fair to describe cable TV as
| convenience. Netflix costs about a tenth as much as cable TV
| (though it does require Internet so if you'd otherwise not
| have Internet maybe bump it up to half the cost) and provides
| a generally better service.
|
| People are paying out of laziness.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Netflix is worth 10 times less. Netflix thinks a season is
| 10 episodes or less. Popular shows get cancelled a few get
| kept but seasons take years to come out. The availability
| of content goes down every year. I'm not sure it's worth
| what they are charging for compared to Prime, etc
|
| With cable you get to pick a channel and let them broadcast
| to you. You don't select the next episode you select a
| channel. The benefit of selecting a channel over an episode
| or series is you don't have to think what should I watch
| next. Weekdays at this time they will play a show you
| expect.. it's freeing to just put a channel on and you get
| a certain background rhythm.
|
| When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental
| breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last
| 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That
| causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the
| binge you can hardly remember the details.
|
| Plus you get tons of on demand content channels offer cable
| subscribers. News, Sports, Live Content, Local channels all
| exist in cable but not streaming.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Local channels can be had for free with a decent antenna
| usually. And you can get TV tuners that record to
| external HDDs for about $30. Live content for free!
|
| Netflix also now has a "play something" mode that's
| basically shuffle but takes into account what you've
| already been watching/watched.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that the opinion of what streaming or cable
| service is the best is very much a personal preference.
| You've got Netflix, Hulu (still around I think?), CBC Gem
| and Acorn as the ones I hear about most often - the price
| to access any one of those services is a fraction of
| cable's cost - either half (if you assume you'd otherwise
| be without internet) or a tenth (if you're part of the
| vast majority of people that will pay for internet either
| way). So I think it's more fair to assume that somewhere
| out there there's a streaming service for you and it's
| going to be somewhere between 10-15 USD/mo.
|
| > When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of
| mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in
| the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads.
| That causes one show to blend into another and at the end
| of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
|
| _No._
|
| I have ADHD and ads absolutely destroy me. For some
| people ads might be a nice time to meditate, for me they
| absolutely destroy the enjoyability of any program
| because in those few minutes I'm going to start playing a
| game or reading an article or cleaning something.
|
| Even beside my ADHD - ads don't give you "peaceful time".
| If you want a snippet of peaceful time then pause the
| stream every once in a while and go outside and be at
| true peace - don't come up with excuses to justify
| advertisements being shoved down your throat. The act of
| spamming adverts like that disrespects you as a person
| and your time, it borders on offensive.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Live sports are still an enormous draw to cable tv and
| (legal) ways to get them otherwise are convoluted and still
| pricey anyways.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The thing about Netflix is that it's become very
| homogenous. If you don't like the kind algorithmically-
| optimized stuff that the people who produce Netflix
| Original Series are doing, then it's good for about as much
| time as it takes to finish binging the first couple Star
| Trek series and The Great British Baking Show, and then
| you're just sort of done with it.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I switched over kodi+torrents over an RPI because of this, I
| would have been an happy with android tv and whatever streaming
| service. Companies spend their times screwing their customers, so
| if you screw me I screw you! and I have my conscience for me.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is the first comment in the thread that makes sense. The
| customers' and the content providers' relationship is simply
| abusive. The providers' constant struggle for control over
| viewership, and the creep of anti-features, dark patterns and
| questionable EULAs and other terms are simply disgusting.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I did this with odroids instead of RPI and got sick of dealing
| with issues. Shield TV has been great as a kodi-and-netflix-
| and-nothing-else box up until now.
| meowster wrote:
| I recently set up a Plex server and use Kodi on a RPi with
| the PlexKodiConnect (PKC) add-on. Very easy to set up, and no
| issues so far.
| tristor wrote:
| I have the highest-end version of the nVidia Shield on my bedroom
| TV and I bought one for my parent's RV and their apartment,
| because it was a simple and straightforward device to use
| streaming services which was more privacy respecting than a smart
| TV. With this change, I've had my parents return the one I just
| recently got for their apartment and I've bought them an Apple TV
| instead.
|
| There is no excuse for this, and the fact nVidia allowed this
| Google-originating change to be pushed without any concept of
| Product ownership or focus on the experience tells me that nVidia
| doesn't care about the Shield brand and it's not even worth
| trying to keep these around. They'll be slowly phased out in
| every use case I've recommended them to numerous people by Apple
| TVs or other devices which respect their users.
|
| Good UX is not a choice, it is mandatory when you design and
| curate a product, and users will walk away if you screw it up.
| Showing ads to me on something I paid for with a silent update is
| atrocious and unethical.
| honkycat wrote:
| I bought a PC from a local computer refurbishing shop, FreeGeek.
| It was $80 and has more than enough hardware to run Linux and a
| web browser. Works great!
| pdimitar wrote:
| I might be the dumbest observer on these trends around here but
| does it seem to somebody else that this is a normal part of the
| end-of-life lifecycle of many devices and that it usually goes
| like this...
|
| - "Sir, sales are falling... we actually haven't had new sales in
| months".
|
| - "How much does it cost to support the infrastructure for these
| devices?"
|
| - "X million a month".
|
| - "Feck it. Cram ads into them, we're not supporting those things
| for free!"
|
| ...or is it just me?
| yardie wrote:
| It feels that way with the Smart TVs. Once you've purchased it
| the manufacturer no longer has a way to make additional money
| from it. Yet these things are connected to the internet and
| wildly insecure. So the only way to justify future updates is
| to shoehorn in some adtech along with the security patches.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _So the only way to justify future updates is to shoehorn
| in some adtech along with the security patches._
|
| I'd say it's the exact opposite: the way to justify adtech,
| i.e. the thing they actually wanted from the start, is by
| playing up the importance of automated updates to security.
| Note how devices tend to stop being updated the moment their
| market share is projected to dwindle.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I remember when Apple used to charge for MacOS and iOS updates.
| In many ways this aligned incentives much better. Many of the
| MacOS and iOS updates in the past few years have mostly existed
| to drive subscription revenue for their new services. I'd love
| them to actually have to deliver real value with software
| updates and be paid for it.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| The whole iCloud "omg almost out of space!!" nag screens
| really irked me on iOS, and doubly so because of their usage
| of private APIs to both show those nag screens and how the
| iCloud service works in a way that no other service can,
| again due to the private APIs they use. I pay for it now
| begrudgingly because it does "just work", but I also hate
| them for it as I'd rather have a choice of cloud storage
| providers that could automatically back my photos up in the
| same reliable and integrated way that iCloud does.
| wil421 wrote:
| I used to use the One Drive app to backup my photos on my
| iDevices. The biggest pain was the first upload taking
| forever and it was not automatic. My use case was a
| secondary back up so it didn't bother me.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I think there's some of that, but this wasn't done by the
| people who made and sold the hardware, nVidia. This was done by
| Google.
|
| Another post said that Google's certifications require that the
| device manufacturer keep the stock launcher, which would mean
| that nVidia couldn't and can't do anything about this directly.
|
| nVidia is still selling plenty of these boxes and it would
| absolutely ruin their business if they started cramming ads
| into paid products.
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't think NVidea is getting any of the revenue for these
| ads. If I understand it right, Google is getting the
| revenue...the launcher is Google's app.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Gods, that's even worse then! So NVIDIA will have to deal
| with Google just randomly deciding to monetize a launcher...?
| tyingq wrote:
| Yes, that's the essence of the problem. Android TV devices
| have to use Google's launcher as the default, or they have
| to go fully on their own, without Google services, like a
| FireTV device.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Well, it seems that Google (and various other
| corporations) are finally entering their endgame and are
| showing their true colors. I am eager to find out if the
| world can fight back meaningfully.
|
| Here's hoping. {raises glass}
| foepys wrote:
| The only way to solve this is to break up Google (or
| rather Alphabet) but I don't see this happening. Anti-
| trust got way too soft.
| Navarr wrote:
| Why do you think that breaking Google apart would make
| the portions that don't directly receive money from
| advertisements less likely to sell ad space?
| compsciphd wrote:
| the ads don't seem to be global. I get ads when I VPN into the US
| on my shield and sony tv, but ads disappear soon after I stop
| using the vpn.
| ww520 wrote:
| This is why people find pirated media to be a much better
| experience.
| pier25 wrote:
| Is this coming to all Shield models? My 2015 doesn't have any ads
| (yet).
|
| I also own an ATV 4K for streaming HDR in DV (Netflix, Disney,
| etc) but for Plex the Shield is still king. It can direct stream
| HDR10 and can do HDMI passthrough of any audio format (eg:
| TrueHD). The ATV decodes surround sound to PCM and while the
| quality is good, it causes audio sync issues and I think it loses
| Atmos information (I only have 5.1 setup).
| lucioperca wrote:
| Stallman told you so.
| echelon wrote:
| Stallman saw everything that was going to happen to our
| industry 30 years ago and warned us about it daily.
|
| He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his
| warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he
| was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Would any of his advice prevented this?
|
| The user _can_ go change the launcher.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Stallman actually helped bring this about. The ad companies all
| run their massive data farms on open source software.
|
| Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software
| out of the market because they could not compete with free
| versions.
|
| For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.
|
| Companies will always want to make money, so they "gave away"
| free software funded by ads and then used free open source
| software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.
| xenihn wrote:
| >Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software
| out of the market because they could not compete with free
| versions.
|
| >they "gave away" free software funded by ads
|
| Proprietary software isn't free software. Free doesn't just
| mean free as in no cost to use.
| eropple wrote:
| I feel like this post elides the functionally single-source
| nature of plenty of free and open-source software. "But you
| can fork it" means nothing when you, singularly or
| collectively, don't have the will or, far more frequently,
| the resources (time, money, knowledge, etc.) to do so in a
| sustainable and secure manner. It's the _" the law, in its
| majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges,
| to beg in the streets and to steal bread--the rich as well
| as the poor"_ of tech.
|
| There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't
| have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money
| to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an
| advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free
| software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable
| of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource
| scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-
| released application is a lot more concrete.)
| npteljes wrote:
| >For the most part, the paid consumer software market is
| dead.
|
| What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people
| buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the
| micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying
| upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos,
| shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack.
| I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any
| point of time.
| kodt wrote:
| I have one, the banner ad is somewhat annoying, but doesn't
| really impact my use of the device.
| drakenot wrote:
| I followed some instructions online to install a Launcher Manager
| and then installed the Wolf Launcher. I now just have rows of
| icons which I can customize.
|
| I would have tolerated some minimal amount of ads in a few tile
| locations but the new Android TV launcher's ads were taking up a
| huge amount of screen space.
| minikites wrote:
| Google is fundamentally an advertising company. I don't
| understand why people are surprised that an operating system made
| by an advertising company shows ads. It's the same reason
| Chrome's address bar makes you search instead of bringing up your
| history. It's the same reason Gmail even exists. Everything
| Google does has the ultimate purpose of showing advertising to
| you.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Is there even any type of smart TV without Google and or other
| companies? I don't even know who makes an open source tv or
| something with Android as a part of it.
| hitchhikerr wrote:
| You can get a NUC or some kind of mini PC and install Kodi on
| it
| likeclockwork wrote:
| And where does the content you will play with Kodi come from?
| meowster wrote:
| There's an unofficial Netflix add-on, but I just set up a
| Plex server and use PlexKodiConnect (PKC) Kodi add-on.
| makecheck wrote:
| Not just ads but distractions in general. Who are these people
| who constantly want their TVs blasting random things while
| looking at a menu? And who decided that these things need to be
| playing more loudly than the TV show itself!?
|
| When I am trying to select a show or an episode I _DO NOT_ want
| it auto-playing even a clip of a show (much less an ad). Just be
| quiet!
| thewebcount wrote:
| This drives me so crazy. Glad to see I'm not the only one. When
| Netflix finally gave the option to turn it off, I did it within
| minutes of learning of the feature. I understand droves of
| others did the same.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I don't understand people who use these launchers. But I suppose
| it's just a difference it how I consume content?
| npteljes wrote:
| What is it that you don't understand?
| phreack wrote:
| This was actually the reason I didn't buy a Shield last month.
| Saw the news and noped right out. I've been having some sort of
| success with Emby and web browsers instead, it's not the
| prettiest UX but it works and I see no ads, which is great for my
| mental health.
| jsnell wrote:
| Discussed 3 weeks ago (500 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I have disabled the Google Play service to disable the ads on my
| Shield devices (I thinks this prevents YouTube from working, but
| I only use YouTube on a PC where UBO can block the
| advertisements.
|
| BUT, I rarely ever see the launcher/home screen anyway.
|
| While within whatever app you are using if you click on the
| 'options/hamburger' button on the remote, you can scroll down to
| 'Apps' select the next app you want to launch, and select 'Open'.
|
| 2-4 mouse clicks becomes 4-6 and you bypass the home screen.
| moepstar wrote:
| I wonder if a Pi-hole with a good adlist could stop those ads
| from appearing - sadly/luckily i don't own a NVidia Shield.
|
| Maybe someone else can weigh in if that approach does work (maybe
| with additionally setting up your router to redirect everything
| DNS back to the Pi-hole)?
| yardie wrote:
| I have a pihole and it stops them from appearing but leaves
| blank/black spaces. Not just on the launcher but in the app as
| well. For example, IMDBtv will have 15-30s of blank air where
| nothing happens. The first time this happened I thought the app
| crashed because FF/Pause/Play didn't do anything. And then the
| movie resumed and did it again 30 minutes later.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| I can answer this, I have a piHole and Chromecast with Google
| TV The article is mixing up the types of banners seen here. The
| recommendation hero row is full of recommendations tailored to
| you based on watch history. Google however can fill the first
| slot with a targeted content ad (notably lately, Black Widow on
| Disney+). My piHole absolutely blocks the first slot and leaves
| it with an unsightly blank space, the rest of the content
| remains.
| npteljes wrote:
| It could work, until they push a DNS over HTTPS update, or
| something similar.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I'd be pissed too.
|
| However, I looked into streaming devices a year or so ago, and
| passed on getting a Shield TV because there was no assurance that
| it would remain ad-free, and absent that assurance, it seemed
| like an inevitability given Google's position.
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