LG's TV business is heightening focus on selling ads and tracking.
The move embodies how ads are a growing and virtually inescapable part of the TV-viewing experience—even when you're not watching anything.
As you might have expected, LG didn’t make a big, splashy announcement to consumers or LG TV owners about this new ad format. Instead, and ostensibly strategically, the September 5 announcement was made to advertisers. LG appears to know that screensaver ads aren't a feature that excites users. Still, it and many other TV makers are happy to shove ads into the software of already-purchased devices.
LG TV owners may have already spotted the ads or learned about them via FlatpanelsHD, which today reported seeing a full-screen ad on the screensaver for LG's latest flagship TV, the G4. “The ad appeared before the conventional screensaver kicks in," per the website, “and was localized to the region the TV was set to.”
LG has put these ads on by default, according to FlatpanelsHD, but you can disable them in the TVs' settings. Still, the introduction of ads during a screensaver, shown during a pause in TV viewing that some TVs use as an opportunity to show art or personal photos that amplify the space, illustrates the high priority that ad dollars and tracking have among today’s TVs—even new top-of-the-line ones.
The addition of screensaver ads that users can disable may sound like a comparatively smaller disruption as far as TV operating system (OS) ads go. But the incorporation of new ad formats into TV OSes' various nooks and crannies is a slippery slope. Some TV brands are even centered more on ads than selling hardware. Unfortunately, it’s up to OS operators and TV OEMs to decide where the line is, including for already-purchased TVs. User and advertiser interests don’t always align, making TV streaming platforms without third-party ads, such as Apple TV, increasingly scarce gems.
Every day I turn on my LG TV, it wants an update. It's been doing this for like 3 years now. Given the article, it won't be getting that update any time soon!
My TV is probably going to kick the bucket in a year or two at most. Filtering "non smart TVs" on a site like BestBuy shows only commercial display options at this point.
Are there any well maintained projects out there that are able to replace the firmware on newer smart TVs to get rid of these features? I really just want a dumb display with an input for a Chromecast with CEC support (or similar device if Google decides to enshittify that platform with screensaver ads too).
I think the best way forward would be a single board computer that can do an open source equivalent to chromecasting. Plug that in and leave your TV unconnected to the network.
You can't do chromecast directly, because Google holds encryption keys for it. Unfortunately, this means casting apps need to be modified to support it.
Okay, I have to wonder... what is the point of shoving ads down user's throats all the time? Ads make me NOT want to purchase something. If I see ads for a product it just makes me hate that product. If a product pushes ads I hate that too.
We are in the minority, its pushed so much because it works.
There are some people who are outright influenced, but other times even shoving visuals at the user is enough to subliminally influence to a degree, advertising is all psychology.
That's why when I remember this when considering compromising and using something with ads. Its never worth the sacrifice, starting to apply the same philosophy to services who subsidize their cost of operating using data. Sure it costs me more but realistically that's how it should be, there's no free lunch.
The primary goal is to simply get the information inside your mind. Whether you like or dislike it doesn't really matter. That preexisting brand/product familiarity is often all that is needed to tip the scales months or years down the road, once you've "forgotten" all about the annoying ad, while you find yourself deciding between competing products on a shelf or on a store page.
As if android tv isn’t also loaded to hell with ads and reliant on streaming networks that basically all have increasingly obtrusive ads
Either only buy physical or pirate all of your media, set up a jellyfin server, set up a dns server that blocks ads (adguard, pihole) and point any device that can connect to the internet at it. Cancel all of your streaming subscriptions and use a coreelec box to watch your media from your jellyfin server. There are literally no other ways to not get obtrusive advertising.
If you have an lg webos tv like me you can keep it connected to the internet but root it, block updates in homebrew channel, install YouTube with adblocking and sponsor block, and then again make sure it’s getting dns from your ad block server. Add in custom rules for
These block ads and the last three block the update servers. The update blocking isn’t strictly necessary if you have rooted and blocked updates in homebrew channel but it will get rid of the annoying “new version” nag that pops up when you turn on the tv. You may have to clear caches on the tv
I hope I can continue to make the smart TV dumb by never giving it network access. When that fails I'll have to hope the pihole handles some of it. The other fun option might be to put it on a VPN in the EU and hope that it enables some gdpr options.
We're 5 years from someone proposing "smartwall displays" where the entire wall is your display. No more messy cables or creaky mounting brackets. They'll, of course also have removed the on/off button and you won't get to control the volume, but just think of the stimulation!
Fahrenheit 451's technology just around the corner of the next shitty planned community coming soon near you.
It wasn't that long ago that "smart mirrors" were en vogue, which was just a display with a reflective coating.
Although I think that they generally fell out of fashion because people don't want a contraption for their mirror that they have to plug in and set up.
A year or two ago my LG B8 automatically bricked itself unless I agreed to the new terms and conditions. Literally something like "to continue using your tv please agree to the new terms", and if I didn't it was just bricked. They could have put anything in there and it was just "click agree or never use this device again".
The fact that shrink-wrapped agreements aren't automatically void worldwide is a fucking abomination. No you shouldn't get to push a legally binding contract on me after I paid for the product. It's my property now and if you want to require a license agreement after the sale then I should be able to decline it for a full refund fuck you.
Where are all the hackers out there that have the skills to crack a TV to load something open source? They're computers. There has to be a way to jailbreak/root then.
Sure, it's being done. Xiaomi TVs have custom ROMs available, and I'm sure a bunch of others. Thing is, state of the art TVs are are not exactly cheap, and you need one to hack it in the first place. Most hackers do it for free, so they can't exactly go on a spending spree.
You guys are going about this all wrong. All you gotta do is connect your smart tv to the internet. Don't use pihole. Let your tv communicate exactly how it wants to. Then buy some DVDs of local indy pro wrestling. The kind where women staple each other with staple guns, and smash light tubes over each others heads and bleed profusely.
Now......why would you do this? Because advertisers HATE advertising with pro wrestling. They also have nothing TO advertise for women with bloody faces, and broken noses.
Let THAT data get back to them. Who's going to advertise to the guy who watches pro-wrestling from a high school gym where women leave pools of blood on the ground??? If everyone did this, for 10 hours a day, advertisers would deem the American market not worth the money to advertise to.
This plays with the idea of data poisoning for the advertisers. Maybe there are some actual practical options for this regarding TVs. The idea was already implemented on PCs for example in the form of browser extension - Ad Nauseam by some professor lady. Maybe it could be expanded upon in the context of TVs.
I pirated for a long time, and even though I had(have) large media libraries and the home server capacity to manage everything just fine, I stopped.
Not sure when, or why, I'm guessing a service broke and I just said fuck it, I already have Prime+Netflix, and that was years ago at this point.
Netflix's password policy and Amazon showing adds had me spin them up again, and even migrate over to Jellyfin because Plex is just another enshitified privacy nightmare.
Which was a pleasant surprise, because the last I tried Jellyfin years ago, it was not worth the hassle. Also, Plex wasn't nearly as bad as it is now.
To swing this back around to this article, I'm betting eventually they'll force their TVs online by disabling features, capabilities, or even the device itself, if it's not phoning home.
Well that sucks, ironically I connected my C2 to the net for the NFL gamepass sub I'm actually paying for. Guess it's back to illegal streams on the desktop PC