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posted by on Saturday January 28 2017, @01:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the they-know-everything-now dept.

Apologies up front; this is playing out in Dutch media and there do not seem to be English sources available. Nevertheless, I thought the following would be of interest to SN:

Philips TVs are manufactured by TP Vision. Recently, TP Vision announced that it would include more ads on its (Philips-branded) smart-tvs. Comment by Paulo Lopez of TP Vision to the media:

"We know very much about viewing behaviour. Which channels are being watched, which apps are being used. Based on that, we can make ads more relevant in the future." (translation mine).

Well that did cause a few ripples, amongst others with the data protection agency in the Netherlands. They already slapped TP Vision on the wrist back in 2013 for doing basically this. Now the data protection agency is starting another investigation. Moreover, tech-heads also noticed and kicked up a bit of a sh*tstorm at popular Dutch tech site Tweakers.net: more ads, warning, with 555 and 133 comments respectively (on a site where 100+ comments is a lot).

Do you know of any other brands that engage in such sleazy behaviour? And: would it be possible to block the ads while retaining the smart functionality (assuming a user who wants that), when the TV would try to detect/prevent that?

[Ed. Note: All I found in English is a press release from Improve Digital, the advertising company. Typical PR language there.]


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  • (Score: 1) by idetuxs on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:25AM

    by idetuxs (2990) on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:25AM (#459805)

    Great find, thanks to the submitter.

    Could the main problem be (putting aside greed and unethical behaviour) software?
    I had a samsung "smart tv" and it has never been useful as a Smart tv. The software is old and no longer manteined. not functional at all. This arised because it has propietary soft and only mantained by samsung, it's scary (who knows what it is doing) so only tried connecting it to the internet once.

    Solution: android tv. It's the best and only solution in the marlet for this kind of problem. How about rooting the tv? I could set up permissions for the apps. I think it is a step forward... oaasr may be an ilusion

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:00PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:00PM (#459894) Homepage Journal

    Yes, my new TV is android. I could install apps from Google Play on it if I was stupid enough to let Sony on my network.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org