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  • Amazon is adding full-screen video ads that will play when you start your Fire TV unless you quickly perform an action on it. […] “Our focus is on delivering an immersive experience so customers can enjoy their favorite TV shows and movies, as well as browse and discover more content they’ll want to watch. We’re always working to make the Fire TV experience better for customers and have updated one of the prominent placements in the UI to play a short content preview if no other action is taken by a customer upon turning on their Fire TV.” Amazon said in a statement to Cord Cutters News.

    Sure, that’s definitely a feature for customers. Especially the fact that you can only click it away in the first few seconds. I also love to have my ads be immersive. Biggest pile of bullshit I’ve heard this week.

    • Sure, that’s definitely a feature for customers.

      You misunderstand: the advertisers are the customers.

  • I've noticed they have added this trick to my FireCube. When it's first powered on it looks for the remote and often doesn't find it. Then as you press a button on it, it clicks the first show or movie being advertised.

    I didn't pay top dollar for a cube to deal with this crap.

    I'm finding I'm using my laptop more than my cube these days. I'm also cancelling services as I go. Arrrhh time to go!

  • I picked up a 4K Fire Stick a few years back, connected it to my Wi-Fi and then watched the network activity from the router with little surprise. Tech companies sell ad-delivery devices with a nominal end-user benefit.

    Once NUCs became powerful and affordable enough to use as a dedicated HTPC/server, anything with a proprietary OS made no sense, even taking portability into consideration. This is just the latest example of why.

70 comments