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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.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:25AM
TVs are fucking dead. I don't know about anyone else around here, but I've been using "TVs" as monitors for the last 10 years. DVI can be converted to HDMI, and the last several years have seen HDMI outputs become standard on both video cards and small form factor devices like the Intel NUC which are HDMI only. Lately, even monitors have been shipping with HDMI connectors WITH HDCP. Got a 27" ACER in front of me that was real cheap and came with HDMI/DVI/VGA connectors.
Maybe I had a DVD player hooked up, but that made less and less sense once I could hook up a media center. Smart TVs have the most suck ass "media centers" and software I've ever seen. Couldn't stay updated enough, or even powerful enough (Samsung you fucking suck) on big ticket smart TVs to even run Netflix, much less be stable at it. Every single Smart TV I've ever played with could not run its own apps, or run Netflix natively. Everything chokes, and I tell my relatives to forget it; It was defective by design. Just connect up your entire iPad/Android/FireStick/ChromeCast and leave the Smart TV bullshit behind.
For the Smart TVs I've had........ zero connections to the Internet, or even a local lan. For any reason.
They're dumb fuckers that keep trying to add value to these things when most of us only want a monitor. Give us a dumb monitor, with zero networking or need for the Internet, and perhaps a USB port to update firmware and that's it. All of the "Smart" components will be the ones we hook up via HDMI or Display Port. They compete with all the devices that perform the same activities you want the Smart TV software to do, only much much much much much better with plenty of side benefits like having a full PS4/XBOX hooked up. Or a full desktop computer. Or using your iPad to push 1080p video wirelessly to the TV to watch Netflix. The sky is the limit once you give up on the Smart TV software limitations.
TVs are as dead as set-top cable boxes and cable distribution networks.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.