After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads

Everything has ads now, I don’t have a fire TV but surprised Amazon is this late to this bs game. The Xbox has ads now like with mw3 when you launch the console. My Visio Tv I spent ~1000 on a few years ago is stuffed with ads when you turn it on.
- pihole
  
  Is this...an ad?
- This is why my 'smart' TV will never, ever be connected to the internet. It's an LG so I would expect it to not be onerous, but it's often nagging me to connect to my router for stuff like AI tools.
  No thanks. You're smart enough already for my use, TV! HDMI only please.
  
  I'm a firm believer that smart should be self contained. If a device needs the internet, it's not that smart since it has to rely on outside sources to work properly.
  
  You can disable the AI in the settings.
- They're not late. I've been using Fire Sticks for years and Amazon has been working hard the whole time to shove more and more ads all over the UI. The main row of apps gets smaller with every update and more and more ads are plastered around and between them to try to sell you more shit you don't want or already have.
  I managed to jailbreak mine before they locked them down and install a custom launcher so they're actually usable, but the stock UI is god-awful. I'll be replacing them once the next round of Apple TVs come out.
  
  I'll be replacing them once the next round of Apple TVs come out.
  The Nvidia Shield Pro is quite capable. Sideload a different launcher and install Aerial Views and you're good to go!
  
  How did they lock them down?
- It's not new, Amazon just changed their policy allowing ads for non-media. The Fire devices have always been primarily vehicles for ads; they take up the entire lockscreen on the Kindle reader and Fire tablets. On Fire TV, the top 40-ish% of the screen is a giant ad, then you get a tiny carousel of recommendations, then another thinner banner ad, then "your" content like queue and watchlist.
- My Apple TV has no ads.
- One of my home monitoring cameras suddenly started placing ad watermarks on my video feed - I shit you not. I feel like obstitricians are going to start slapping ad stickers on newborns bellies as they pull them out soon enough. I hate it. I'm not completely sure what the answer is, but I've always been a proponent of the micropayment idea as a way to navigate digital life with more focus and less dependence on ads but it's not caught on at all because HEY FREE!!
- Thank gosh my PS5 doesn’t yet have ads when I launch a game
- My tcl doesn't have ads. Probably because it already knows I'll ignore them and it's selling that data
  
  TLC was discussed above https://lemmy.world/comment/5181873
  Your comment sounds like you might already be aware, but maybe you were just assuming it's doing the same spying most smart TVs are probably doing.

buying a 'dumb' tv is getting harder and harder to do...
how long until you are forced to hook a new 'smart' one up to the internet, just to "set it up"--even if you have no plans on ever using the 'smart' features or embedded apps?
- Looking forward to the 1 yr free trial of my new TV, before I have to subsribe to Samsung+ for just 15.99 per month to turn it on.
  
  I cannot stand how believable this scenario is.
  
  Unlock additional HDMI ports for only $5.99 a month!
- Roku tvs already do that, you even need to put in a credit card number for it to work.
  
  You can choose not to connect a Roku TV to the Internet during the initial setup, and you just get access to live TV and the HDMI inputs with (obviously) no streaming channels or updates. It works fine as a dumb TV.
  And the credit card thing? That's after you create your account on their website, you can just close the browser window. Or click the button saying "skip" or "later" or whatever it is.
  
  does this link to make an account without a payment method not work anymore?
  https://my.roku.com/signup/nocc
- If you buy a Sony Bravia you can put them into “pro mode” which keeps all the signal processing, but lets you turn off android.
  
  That's good to know!
- Agreed. You can buy the displays that are marketed to businesses and usually come without all of the invasive smart features.
  They definitely cost more on average, but they’re also built to run more often or constantly, and hold up far better. They’re even a lot more customizable.
  You can buy some that come with slots where you put in a raspberry pi or another computer of your choice, instead of whatever OS that comes with smart tvs.
  At this point, I’m starting to regularly check if there are “for business customers” options available when I need something, because the options for regular consumers are getting so bad with all this data hoarding and ad pushing.
- Just don’t connect it to the internet.
  
  That’s the point they are making. Currently that’s possible. But what is stopping the producers to force you to hook it up to the internet?
- I can’t figure out why the cheap TCL I bought 5 years ago isn’t packed with ads. Maybe because it’s Roku-based?
  
  Probably because it's Chinese spyware. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/tcl-smart-tv-security-flaws
- Get a projector and a screen. They're all dumb.
  
  Not always an option. You'd need to dim the lights every time and - most importantly - have a whole spare wall in your home.
  
  I've tried getting a way too cheap, really bad projector running Android to work once. From Wish or something, I guess. It was a truly unpleasant experience. Fortunately, it wasn't mine!
  Also, I had a good ol' dumb Epson projector 10-15 years ago, but it had a very noisy fan, meaning you had to always turn up your HiFi to try and camouflage the fan noise in louder sound than you else would've had. Are low-end consumer projectors still that noisy?
- Been awhile but boy I really feel like my LG setup was pretty darn close to this sort of experience.

What a totally expected turn of events!

Stuffing ads on streaming services? How could Amazon do such a thing?
Anyway, for your consideration, Barbie (at last!), now available on streaming services everywhere.
- I have you tagged as 'probably actually her' just because I want it to be true.
  
  And as I've said here before: I just play her on TV.
  
  I completely forgot about tags. My first Lemmy tag is now 'probably actually her.'

And you are surprised?

This needs to become illegal. Ads are part of the price you pay for a device or service. If you didn't agree to them at the time of purchase, they can't be sprung on you after you've paid.
- They agreed, they just didn't read the terms and conditions
  
  Fuck that. That isn't an excuse. The ToS are abused by companies all the time.
  
  They didn't agree at the time of purchase.

Actually kinda surprised that chromecast doesn’t have ads, at least the model we have.
We have a dumb projector with features such as “select source”.
- The original cast-only chromecasts didn’t have ads as far as I know, but they’ve all been discontinued and replaced by the google tv chromecasts which have ads integrated throughout the interface, mostly just for streaming services, movies, etc.
  
  Fuck seriously? I have a Chromecast from like 7 years ago and I was considering getting a newer model just because, you know, improvements and stuff. But definitely not if there are ads. Holy shit no.
- Google TV has ads, though they are for the moment easy to miss or ignore.
  For the moment.
  
  Didn't used to. Stopped using it once adverts showed up

I have a nearly-dumb TV (chosen for that and never connected to the Internet) and a separate little Android TV box I got from AliExpress for 25 bucks were I only use Kodi.
The TV is maybe 4 years old, the little box maybe 1 year (I had a 10 year old similar thing before but it can't handle newer video formats so I switched).
Have yet to see a single Ad.
Mind you my setup is as is because I've long ago learned that you want your fast-changing-cheap-tech bits separate from your expensive-long-life stuff, so in this case I want my digital video file decoding hardware separate from the much more expensive large digital TV screen so that I can switch the former without paying a new of the - much more expensive - latter.
- and a separate little Android TV box I got from AliExpress for 25 bucks were I only use Kodi.
  Yeah, so you may not be seeing ads, but there's a non-zero chance you have a botnet infested device on your network instead.
  
  Is there a way to check if the little Android box you already have is one of these infected devices?
- There's been a lot of articles recently about those cheapo boxes being filled with spyware straight out the factory. Might wanna check that out.
  
  I did.
  It's not on the list.
- deleted
  
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. But you’re correct—some TVs have been found to automatically connect to open wifi networks to phone home.
- Yeah. I have a Vizio smart TV but each time you turn it on it acts 100% like a dumb tv until you press the smart button.
  I have a seperate shitty little HTPC that's used for all the media and my brother uses his xbox.

This is sort of what happened with Google Chromecast with Google TV. I bought that on a technicality for my parents over an Apple TV. My mom (who isn't a native English speaker) was watching another foreign language show on Netflix and whenever she paused on the Apple TV the seek bar would come in and overlay itself on the subtitles. She was frequently pausing just to catch up on the long sentences to read them and then unpausing just as quickly. This wasn't an issue on the Android-based Netflix, where the subtitles remained in view.
Well OF COURSE because it's fucking Google they started shoving more and more ads onto the device, to the extent that my parents actually get pretty confused on how to properly navigate the thing. It makes me so mad.
- I have a similar situation. Have you thought about submitting feedback to Apple regarding the issue so they can take the scroll bar into consideration and subtitle placement? https://www.apple.com/feedback/
  
  No, because I think the problem belongs to Netflix. But maybe it does belong to Apple? I’m not sure who is responsible, really.
- I solved this problem on my Xiaomi Mi Box S 4K by installing FLauncher, and setting it as the default launcher (on my own box as well as my parents').
  LeanbackOnFire is another great option, but FLauncher has better customizability options, and that's what I prefer.
  In this way, I haven't seen a single system UI ad on my Android TV box for years. For ad-free YouTube, I'm using SmartTube. So far, it's been amazing.
  
  I'm visiting my parents this winter so it will be a good chance for me to look into trying something like this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Amazon being greedy and bake ads into their devices? Who could see that coming?!

Remember that "deal" always has depth behind it. They are waiting to reach critical mass so they can "throw the switch". Streaming services, "smart" devices, subscription services... You should only engage with these "deals" if you understand the bigger picture and have a plan to disengage quickly as soon as they pull their bullshit.
Your black Friday TV is NOT the same as the TV that brand typically sells. It's a different sku, all the parts are deliberately sourced lesser quality versions and it's literally designed to break/fail earlier than the "normal" version. You're not getting a deal on the TV you wanted, you're buying a lesser TV - Not necessarily a bad thing if you know what you're buying, but you need to know what you're buying.
- There is a big lack of consumer education in the U.S. I don't know how to solve it in our oligarchical society. The corporations don't want consumers educated.
  
  There should be regulation of the private sector. There has to be some accountability for these corporations. The onus can't be on the consumer one hundred percent of the time. It really shouldn't be at all. Buyers should only be responsible for deciding which products would be best for them and their budget, not for having to predict which corporation will utterly fuck them over the least out of the only three corporations they have to choose from when they're all trying to scam them out of their money.
  I'm so sick of being scammed every single time I buy something. The government needs to step in and do their job instead of just handing out a few fines here and there.

Anyone that didn't know that was the end game was not paying attention.
- People said "Aw, they won't do that" when streaming eclipsed cable television. Yet, here we are.
  Anybody who ever says "they won't do that" clearly doesn't have a clue how nothing is off the table for capitalism.

Am I the only one who sticks to old school solutions like a dedicated HTPC running Linux and Kodi instead of ad-infested Android TV sticks/boxes?
- Most people are not that technically savvy.
  
  Even a Windows computer, like a laptop. An HDMI cable isn't hard to plug in.
  
  If thats the price of freedom then I think one should definitely become tech savvy.
  Besides, isn't saying that you're not tech savvy in today's tech world kind of admitting that you're willfully ignorant and only buy tech stuff for show?
- I find a dedicated HTPC is just overkill in terms of hardware these days. I just use Kodi sideloaded onto a Fire stick and point it to my file server for all my media. There are methods to get Kodi to launch on startup or to remap one of the stupid service-related buttons on the newer remotes to launch it instead.
  Ads on the home screen? I don't give a shit, I'm just there for a second to launch an app. Ads while searching? Cool, I don't think I've ever used the device's built in search.
  
  I have a NanoPC-T4 that I use as a server, the thing would in principle make a good set top box -- it's what Rockchip designed the RK3399 for, after all, it can decode 4k h.264 and h.265, and it's from 2016 (I got it for its pcie lanes, a rarity with arm boards).
  None of those SmartTVs run expensive hardware, any reasonably fresh potato can do what they do.
- I did that, but at the end of the day, I find the experience of the Shield TV better.
  
  The Shield TV is one of the better TV boxes. In fact, the Apple TV and the Shield TV are the only TV boxes I would ever use, if I had to use one. I'm very happy with my custom HTPC though.
- If you bought a Vizio TV 4 years ago it now has a "feature" where it switches inputs to the ad-ridden integrated android system if it detects that whatever input you are on doesn't have a signal for more than 5 seconds. Even if you pull it from the network it still tries to load it anyway. It's becoming unavoidable even for those of us who roll our own solutions.
  
  vizio also moved the tv tuner bits over to it's 'smart' bullshit, too.
  
  Why would you even connect your TV to the network in the first place? I use an LG Smart TV but I never connect it to the internet.
- Yup. Small Intel NUC, Linux, and one of those Air mouse remotes are all I need.
  It's hard not to be that guy and mention how neat such a setup is every time I have to watch someone else fumbling around with the horribly designed and ad-ridden UI of their "smart" TV.
- I'm really shocked that this is the Technology community and it's full of people complaining about ads. We're supposed to be the geeks who are laughing at the normies for watching those ads while we watch content on our techy solution which is immune to such garbage.
  
  We're supposed to be the geeks who are laughing at the normies for watching those ads while we watch content on our techy solution which is immune to such garbage
  Many of us are, but some aren't. We can teach them about it.
  
  We are talking for the normies here. And it is becoming more and more difficult to block ads and trackers even for moderately savvy person.
- I have a Nokia android TV with no ads as far as I can tell 🤷

I do wonder what makes some people despise ads.
I myself do, but I’ve never been told to or even been echo chambered (well maybe now, but not always). Going back over tens years and detested them.
But at work some people think ad-blockers shouldn’t be a thing as it’s stealing as the internet runs on ads and I just can’t see that point of view. However valid it could be.
I don’t want to see them all my digital life as they are on the real world. Christ I’ve seen them on the pissing motorway ffs.
- Ads can be a reasonable price to pass for free or discounted content.
  The issue is that every day, every year, they are finding new ways to shove even more ads. The more they're shoved, the less reasonable it becomes. Where the line between reasonable and unacceptable is will vary per person. However, there is a point where enough becomes enough and you just become done with them.
- In theory, I'm fine with some ads. Useful ads in places where it makes sense (like shopping). Small, unobtrusive ads that fill up otherwise empty space. But ads are like capitalism and cancer. They just continue to grow and grow and get worse and worse until they've utterly destroyed the thing they were meant to support. If you let them in, it's only a matter of time until they completely take over. No one has managed to do 'reasonable ads' for any great length of time.
  It's just one of those things where in theory it sounds workable, but in practice it's highly destructive and corrosive towards everything.
  
  I concur. The problem isn’t the ads themselves, but ads in a capitalist society, where profit has no ceiling and neither do the amount of ads.
- Advertising is intended to manipulate preferences and choices. Why would I willingly subject myself to such manipulation?
  
  Because we pride ourselves as being uncontrollable unique individuals? Where as others just want to get through the day and focus on their one thing?
- Well, I'm okay with old concept of ads. But it was them that decided that ads must double dip with customer information and it was them that decided that ads viewed by people who are engaged to the ads doesn't count as ads that was 'seen'.
  Continuous race to the bottom since then.

Glad I use Apple TVs on LG devices.
- I have the same setup. Apple TV's have ads too, they just aren't intrusive.
  
  What ads does AppleTV have?
  
  The Apple TV is expensive for a reason. It's a good product with good hardware, which means it has a smooth interface. When something is extremely cheap, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.
  
  I must miss them — perhaps because Pi-hole?

How is this surprising?

PSA: It is incredibly easy to get an alternative launcher for android TVs. Zero ads. Literally none.
- Which do you use?
  
  FLauncher. It's even on the Google play store.
  Then you have to side load an app that changes the default launcher. But that is also very easy.
- What android TV would you recommend? Even with an alt launcher, can you still control OS/apps well with just a remote controller as input?
  
  I've had a good experience with my Sony. Very easy to change things and sideload stuff.
  
  Sony is the easiest to change all the settings. Samsung is the worst.
  I have no idea what a reddit controller is.
  
  I like my Philips, it's got the cool ambilight and runs android TV. I think they lag slightly behind LG in performance but these don't have either of those things.

An Apple TV box doesn’t have ads.
- My HTPC doesn't either.
- deleted
- That's only because they don't have the market share. If Apple ever becomes dominant in this arena they would absolutely take the opportunity.
- That's debatable. Unless you have the TV button open the home screen and not the Apple TV app, Apple TV+ content when not subscribed can be seen ads.
- My Shield TV doesn't either.

In my humble opinion until the producers of such appliances learn honesty through pain, it's much better to have a pirate streambox (with something like torrentflix or Popcorn Time or whatever, I just download torrents and watch on my laptop, so don't use these things).
- A pc or android running Plex and or Kodi on the front end.

Who didn’t see this coming?

When you're served ads, you're not the customer, but the product. The customers would be the advertisers. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, mind you, until it stops you from consuming the context you intended on consuming. Then it becomes a problem.
- And when I'm paying for the privilege of getting ads.
  
  Yes 100% this too

Oh no! Whoever could have foreseen this awful turn of events! Amazon would never (checks notes) stuff ads down our throats.

Put your network behind NextDNS or a self-hosted solution like Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home.
- Vote with your wallet. Don't make them keep profiting on this BS.
  
  Sure, that's the best thing to do. But if you already have one of these pieces of trash, these are some ways to improve the experience of using them.

This is literally the oldest trick in the book, haha.

Have you seen the TV that has a second screen that just plays ads
- And apparently has cameras and sensors that detect if you cover up the 2nd screen. Truly dystopian, but also they weren't exactly hiding these features if people bought the TVs...

I'll keep buying dumb TVs for as long as they're around to thrift for. There's going to be plenty of flat screen dumb TVs for a lifetime.

I'm pretty sure everybody saw this coming. Well, everybody with any brains in their head.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a StreamTV Insider report from November 1, Amazon said the new ads will allow advertisers to reach an average of 155 million unique monthly viewers.
For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs.
This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue.
Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media.
Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year.
The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see.
The original article contains 608 words, the summary contains 133 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Whatever it is, I imagine it's a horrible product that doesn't work well and consistently disappoints its users.

At recs on a comparable alternative? I don't mind spending more to not have ads
- I just do everything via Chromecast, so I never see ads.

Had a firestick for 4 years, switched to Roku a couple weeks ago and I wish I did years ago
I can boot up the Roku, open Plex, and start a video stream without ever seeing an ad
- I have a TCL Roku TV, and it has ads. I always thought that would be the same on any Roku device, but I guess not?
  
  I do have ad blocking at the DNS level setup on my router
  But, the Firestick showed ads regardless of that, so...
- Doing something similar on the Chromecast, turn on, open stremio and play away

No shit.

- Kind of hard to watch streaming services that way, which is generally why people buy such TVs.