I've had the Shield for years and set them up for a few family members. I still believe it's the best device of its kind on the market and I've recommended it every chance so I have a lot of friends with them as well.
In the most recent update, the until-now ad-free homepage was defaced with an ad banner that takes up half the screen and can't be removed. This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher. To add to this, some of the ads have been deemed inappropriate or offensive to certain users adding to the frustration of ads being introduced to this long-standing ad-free experience.
I, like many Shield owners, am considering installing a third party launcher. This can be done pretty easily by watching an instruction video on Youtube and most users will go this route without consideration of security - potentially opening large numbers of the devices up to vulnerabilities.
+1 I’m beyond furious about this and it’s a small drop in the bucket of Googles increased ability to shove ads down your throat everywhere. Something needs to change.
I'm absolutely pissed about it. I couldn't believe it when I saw it and I spent 20 minutes trying to find the setting that I thought must be there somewhere. It's such a seemingly small thing but in. lot of ways it's the equivalent of waking up in the morning and finding that someone came into your house in the night and stuck a flyer to your fridge.
It's not the Android TV Launcher per se. If you revert that app to the factory-installed one, the "recommendations" banner will still show up within an old version of the launcher.
So this comes from Play Services. It appears the launcher has an exclusive hook for Play Services to show content in, and is being used for this purpose.
I am still reverted to the original Android TV Launcher because it takes less clicks to reach some functionality and is simpler, but the recommendation banner ruins it somewhat.
It was fucking absurd how big the ad was and that it was advertising for shit I have never and will never use!
> This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher.
My understanding is that Google big-dicks companies that want to run android on their device and have Play Store. So in this case, my understanding is that if they remove the Android TV Launcher, they must remove all the Google-branded items, including Play Store, which basically cripples Android for normal users.
Just imagine for one second that you bought a product with a Google OS thinking there won’t be ads and spyware on the thing. It’s frickin’ 2021, just imagine being completely ignorant of Google’s function in this, our current year.
Everybody has the right to buy an ad and spyware laden black box and install it in their home. But is it smart?
They're a company which spends billions of dollars hiring the people who play the game of manipulating others at the highest level. They're doing their absolute best to make sure people are ignorant. The average person is completely outmatched.
Funny, after the update my teenage son and his friend have a lot of fun "watching TV" with the new interface, usually from Youtube.
Myself I'm not a fan, but I just watch anime w/ Jellyfin, live TV with HDHomeRun (Quantum Leap on Comet!) and run a lot of sideloaded apps to control IOT functions.
You are always the product, phone carriers you pay monthly contract to collect your location data and sell it, TVs spy on your TV watching, Netflix/Spotify/... record everything you do, you will be monetized even if you already paid.
A lot of ad conscious users have been glad to pay the premium price for the Shield because of the ad-free experience. I've had the device for years and this is the first time I've been subjected to ads that I can't remove.
Nvidia had been opting out of this launcher update for at least a year, so they knew it was there.
They may have been less aware of the timing of Google over riding it, but they should have at least known enough to be working on an alternative (assuming they wanted to).
It's Android-based. Of course there was always spyware, and you just learned that the ads can be shoved into your face at a whim. Unless you're tech-incompetent this isn't a big surprise.
Not sure why downvoted - this is the truth. The only way to maybe stop this is via legislation, because that levels the playing field. Otherwise, the one with the abusive strategy will come out ahead.
My shield updated to this the other day. I'm pretty furious about it, it's not a cheap device, and it's certainly not Google's. To be adding these "features" without asking, irrespective of whatever agreement between me, Nvidia or Google exists, is ridiculous.
I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Fortunately, I know how to use ADB and just installed another launcher, but most other people just have to bend over and take it. No doubt ADB tricks won't be sufficient in future updates and I'll be playing more silly games with a device I own.
Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want. It's certainly worse in that I would have even less control and be unable to remove them.
It's certainly a good thing that I don't live anywhere near a Google office, otherwise I'd be launching this POS through one of their windows if I did.
You don't have to bend over and take it, you can throw the device in the garbage.
This is what I did with my Alexa hardware the instant it suffixed a routine response to a unit conversion or the weather or something with an ad for some unrelated Amazon service.
There's not a comparable device short of plugging a pc in to my tv and I'm not going back to that life. I play retro arch installed from the play store, stream my pc from my office in to RDP, and connect a wireless kb to one of two usb ports in the back. I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration. The device is perfect in every way and I shouldn't have to throw this $300 device that's worked great for years in the trash because Google made a bad decision about the launcher. It's better than roku, firestick, and apple TV and they all have worse problems.
Throw it in the trash can't be the response to everything. Why don't I throw my phone and my car in the trash? Maybe I should throw my fridge and microwave in the trash too?
If my fridge started showing ads one day, suggesting that I shouldn't be pissed because I can just throw it out and get a cooler of ice is not helpful.
Yep, the Shield TV really does seem to have some of the best hardware and sort of "just works"
I'd normally just have a Linux box with Kodi, but once you try to get 4K HDR working, things start getting prickly. GPU and driver combos were a bit of a pain and even Windows had issues.
The recommendation if your fridge starts showing ads one day is indeed that you throw it in the trash and get a fridge that, you know, doesn't do that.
Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply because "that's the modern world".
Consumer choice is an important and powerful tool. Don't buy or use crap that abuses you, and don't shop at vendors that think that abusing their users is ok.
We got into this situation because people tend to throw up their hands and suffer.
> I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration.
Google is an advertising company. Everything they do is in service to this goal, despite whatever side perks it may deliver to you occasionally. Liking the Google stuff while not liking ads is a mistake, because they are inseparable.
If you don't like ads, don't give your money and data to an advertising company. Don't run Android TV.
In some cases you be forced to. Discovering a hidden camera that takes random photos and send them for audience verification might be one reason I would drop a product.
> Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply because "that's the modern world".
So you're saying as soon as you're abused just toss a few hundred/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars of hardware out the window and spend a like amount somewhere else -- hoping that /this/ time is different? Even though when you bought the equipment this wasn't the state of it?
It must be nice to live in that world. Wasteful and expensive, but nice.
My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher. I think a lot of people will jump ship to third party launchers because of this, though, and the damage will be done. Then we just wait for an HN post about thousands of Shield devices being hacked because users installed launchers from who knows where.
Hopefully there's some negotiation going on. If Google insists that the ad-laden launcher MUST be the default, they are killing any possibility of an "upscale Android TV". Seems dumb to purposefully kill that market.
I was thinking the other day about the Hollywood red carpet event backdrops that are plastered with logos and how tacky that makes the photos look. People even pay thousands for designer fashion goods that have “all-over” logo prints (e.g. most LV stuff, Supreme, Gucci, etc). I get that for some it’s desirable for the virtue signaling, but to me it just looks tacky. Let the quality of the leather and design of the handbag speak for themselves. It’s not as if an Eames chair has leather embossed with the Herman Miller logo every few inches, yet it’s still an iconic and recognizable design. Related: https://www.businessinsider.com/discreet-wealth-logos-status...
Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?
>My hope is that Nvidia will just develop a launcher
I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would start picking up Nvidea customers.
The bad review bombing hit both nVidea apps and Google's AndroidTV launcher pretty hard:
They'll just delete the bad reviews after the initial PR storm subsides. Various big apps have been "caught" in the past doing it. Apparently if you have Google's ear then everything is possible under the table.
This also reminds me of the famous BlizzCon where they announced Diablo Immortal -- where the Chinese exec infamously exclaimed (after the audience started booing): "Do you guys not have phones?" -- when the dislikes of the videos reached into dozens of millions and Google has reset the dislikes, several times in a row.
So yeah, these things do happen and will likely happen again.
They won't even wait that long. If they can find anyone on the internet telling other people to go give negative reviews to an app, they claim all negative reviews are due to that call to action. That gives them "justification" to delete all of them as "inauthentic".
This sort of thing is so sad to hear about, because it’s hard evidence that people won’t stop using a platform even when it’s literally exercising censorship to sway their opinions.
We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?
One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App Store are not public speech, they are always subject to censorship rules and always have been, because they are using a private for-profit service under a license agreement. It would be a different thing for the corporations you’re talking about to be able to censor criticism in the newspaper or on other people’s websites, but that’s not what’s happening here.
There’s also a legitimately difficult question here too. It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third party reasons outside the seller’s control (Nvidia shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers. It will always depend on the specifics of each case.
I am beginning to go insane from YouTube ads, but in this case I'll say those reviews should be considered illegitimate.
It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign, but no one ever participates in a good review campaign. There's no rage in that, that's why.
Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's the fairness in that?
I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a Chinese game that just launched. After successfully bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now calling for everyone to stop (because it's not that bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address the problems.
Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone let go all over the app on Play store, they're not cleaning that up.
All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to the Chinese version.
What is the harm if a company that screws its customers over gets punished out of proportion? It incentivizes companies to be better to their customers.
The funny thing about that page is that the image used to be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has blood splatter in the background (you can still see it if you look closely) and the next ad is for Elmo. If you look, you can see the word Elmo where the next ad was fading in.
Who thought it was a good idea to advertise a bloody crime show on the same screen that you are going to target the Elmo audience and then use that for promotion?
That has long bothered me as well, like we have some of the brightest minds in CS working on…how to collect, analyze, and extract value from telemetry via targeted advertising, yet so much of it is still so awful and irrelevant. The best kind of ads would be like a great salesman IMO - help me solve a real problem that I’m having and teach me something that is actually valuable to me in a non-condescending pressure-free way, then let me conclude that I must have whatever it is. Ads today a lot of times just go off of keywords that I’ve interacted with recently. Example: I recently purchased my second double-edge safety razor. I now own two. I don’t need any more. Now I see tons of ads for other razors that I have an approximately 0% chance of buying. I might be open to trying some new shaving cream, moisturizer, or other skincare products, but all the ad algorithms understand is “user searched for / clicked on an ad for a razor, so show them ads for new razors for the next xx days”. There seems to be zero understanding of potential customer needs in the actual targeting. I supposed it’s better than showing cigarette ads to non-smokers, but it still feels so irrelevant that it’s just super annoying.
Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using it on herself to get people interested) even though I was making fun of it.
TL;DR it’s disappointing both that so much investment goes into ad tech yet it’s still leading to so many irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted which would potentially make them less annoying if they actually helped people find things they’re interested in.
Some of the brightest minds in CS are working on maximizing ad revenue for their employer. That isn't necessarily the same thing as making the most relevant (whatever that means) ads.
Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.
> I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would start picking up Nvidea customers.
They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.
I half suspect adb tricks will alway be available. If you allow a technically difficult escape valve for your most motivated users you can probably push the envelope a lot further for everybody else, as long as it's not easy enough for many people to do.
> Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want.
The main AppleTV UI doesn’t have any recommendations for streaming apps you don’t own - the only thing that’s even close are when you highlight one of the apps in the top bar.
As an iOS user, there's a couple weird ones: Apple prohibits apps from putting ads in notifications, but sends a notification ad for every new Apple TV+ show. "Rules for thee, but not for me"
Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap on the Apple Arcade button to show you a subscription ad.
Spam from Apple that I can't seem to stop receiving, even though I'm unsubscribed from every Apple list. I've gone as far as to contact AppleCare about it. I spent an hour on the phone with someone at AppleCare who couldn't explain why I keep getting Apple Arcade spam in my e-mail.
Good way to get your notification privileges revoked though. I wish Apple would add granular notification categories within apps so that you could approve particular types of notifications while denying others. A quick google says Android 8 did this in 2017.
Apple's policy on this is to require in-app configuration to opt out of marketing messages, rather than a way to configure it through the OS.
Sort of like what I want, but relies of developers to decide what is passive/active/time-sensitive/critical, and instead of being able to fix it the only recourse is to say "no notifications."
I do see what Apple is going for, in that these predefined categories let you automate notification handling with Focus modes, but I have a feeling a lot of apps will have an inflated opinion of how important "new episodes of ____ are available" is to me.
That is certainly better than the Shield, which is giving me recommendations for stuff I don't subscribe to.
As far as I understand though, is that it will show recommendations provided by installed apps. I do have Prime, and I still don't really want recommendations without explicitly asking for it.
This is different from the recommendation "channels" that each app can provide. You can choose whether or not each one shows up on the home screen, re-order them, and so on.
This is a giant banner at the top of the home page that shows ads from random streaming services that you may or may not subscribe to or have installed.
The appleTV app might do that, but I use the AppleTV and just avoid the appleTV app and it doesn't interfere with anything. If I had an ad appear one day I'd throw the whole thing away.
FWIW, I own both a Shield Pro and an Apple TV. I use my Apple TV most of the time. I find it a much nicer interface. The only time I use the Shield is with Plex for watching Blu-rays that I've ripped because it supports pass-through of Dolby TrueHD and the Apple TV does not.
Websites are unregulated. iOS apps have to abide by Apple's terms. This is exactly why developers are mad about any number of things: paying Apple's commission, but also complying with their privacy dictates.
My HP mini is to crappy to play youtube videos on its tiny poor resolution screen even playing them on the lowest resolution (which shouldn't even count) but if I download the videos and attach a huge monitor to it VLC just cruises though GB+ sized HD video files without dropping a frame. Transmission is good enough. Spend another 7 euro on a TB storage device[0] - you deserve it! More movies to watch than your health can take.
The digital prison builders are less offensive than their supporters. Remember to point and laugh when they complaint about their self-funded captivity. Its an important public service to point and laugh as they are paving the way for our imprisonment. We clearly didn't laugh hard enough in the past.
That's right. I couldn't stream very well from my RPi3, but I can easily play local 1080p videos. We've actually got it hooked up to an old tube TV, so I get 480p when I can.
Hm. My immediate counter to your point was “that is because YouTube doesn’t allow anyone to use their api,” but now that I think about it I’m not so sure.
Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?
It does however have a lot of space dedicated to advertising shows in paid apps that you may not own inside of the AppleTV app itself which you use to track your own owned and subscribed content.
The first thing I did when I got my ATV4K was change the TV button to go to the home screen instead of the TV app and have not used the app for anything. A far cry from ads being on the home screen itself.
Just to clarify. The Apple TV (tvOS) interface gives extra functionality to apps on the top row of the launcher. (you have full control over ordering the apps). This functionality allows the apps to show whatever preview content they want per the SDK. Some show continue watching, and then suggestions, others show nothing. But you are in charge of what apps are on the top row.
Also, you can change the setting fore the TV.app so the large banner on the home screen only shows television shows and movies you have added to "Up Next". Go to "Settings" > "Apps" > "TV" and change the "Top Shelf" setting to "Up Next" instead of "What To Watch".
My “Up Next”, which is Apple’s integration to show shows you’ve been watching when the Apple TV app is selected in the top bar, is polluted constantly with MLB games that I’ve not figured out how to disable. Sometimes I have to skip 3 or 4 games in the bar to find a show I watched yesterday.
And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).
FWIW, I have all those things on and have never seen anything sports-related. I have changed the settings for the TV app to only show what's in "Up Next" instead of "What to Watch", though. Maybe that's the difference?
Yeah, I’ve had that set to show “Up Next” for a while. I use it mainly as quick access to series I’m watching. Which is why having MLB games show up in the middle of them is frustrating.
Nope, not sure it’s ever been installed (not 100% sure, but it’s definitely not installed now). Like I said, clicking any of the MLB games in the bar will ask me to install the app.
I moved top row apps that show promos to the right end. This way I'm not exposed to promos unless I'm on those apps (instead of seeing the promos on my way to another app).
I haven't resorted to changing my launcher yet, but I will definitely avoid purchasing a new shield (when my old one no longer suffices) as long as this is the user experience
>but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
>Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
I don't think I understand fully the point you're trying to make. How does free and open source software prevent a software developer from inserting the code necessary for behavior such as we're discussing? Granted, they may be chastised, but the ability remains. We've seen this happen already with software developers inserting ads into the shell during install (or some other operation). A lot more work and effort on our part is necessary to prevent this type of behavior becoming normalized.
My copy of Audacity hasn't auto-updated to include any of that crap and it looks like future updates will come from a fork where it's stripped (if muse group even bothers to continue) so I'd say that's an example of it working.
You saw the recent Audacity situation, right? That's the point; developers may still make hostile decisions. Those decisions may still be merged to the "main" branch. But the community is still left with recourse, whether that takes the form of a fork, or more simply, one user heading into the code and removing the hostile additions just for themselves.
And on the other side, how does not being open-source stop people from patching the bits anyway (maybe not legally, but no one can stop you writing to a storage device you own)? If anything, I think OSS is just a distraction from the real issue, which is companies trying to lock out users from the hardware they own in the name of "security".
It will offer much poorer compatibility with streaming services, because most streaming services do not trust the DRM on a NUC for high quality content.
It works with Edge mostly, but that speaks only against Netflix and Amazon DRM. I don't want to get compatible to that. Subjective, but the content isn't worth it in the first place.
(Correctly, tbh) - It is still a service problem.
I think at least Amazon fixed it in the meantime, I can play 4k without problems.
It's delusional to think you have an absolute choice in this matter. Of course at any one point in time you can always chose to pick options that make a slightly different trade-off between convenience and freedom than the mainstream. But a few years into a strong persistent trend in society at large, even a tin-foil hat, self-flagellating setup will be offering you far less freedom than experienced some years back by someone who always chose convenience over freedom.
It could be that you haven't added the domain they're served from onto your blacklist.
A weird side story: I had a situation where an app on my Roku TV would crash if it failed to serve an add from a blocked domain (there were several but they mostly pointed to google ad domains). I actually _had_ to allow ads from the domains they called.
https://getintra.org/ is the only DNS client I know of that doesn't leak DNS connections over TCP, most other DNS apps (including the 3 mentioned here) do. Blokada is marked with anti-features tag by f-droid for telemetry: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/8536 (Note: Intra, though open-source, has telemetry in it too).
AFAIK personalDNSfilter lets your route the DNS however you want. Not that it matters too much to me. I'm not trying to have airtight privacy, I just don't want to be buggered by trash. I'm interested to see your fork, though.
One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot of software is that they need a steady stream of software updates in order to remain useful and functional.
Security updates are essential. Not only is a device full of unpatched vulnerabilities dangerous to use, but as we saw with the recent Western Digital scandal, is a serious risk to the continued functionality of the device.
Because the Shield is a streaming device, interoperability with streaming services is required for continued functionality. The set of useful streaming services changes over time and existing streaming services change their APIs.
Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device? Is funding continued updates with ads such a bad thing?
> Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device?
Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from your vendors.
Yes, it is a bad thing. I paid fair and square for the device. I expect the vendor to have factored in all costs beforehand for the expected lifetime of the device. If it physically lasts 10 years then bill me all your expenses for those 10 years. Don't bill me for 3-4 years and then go "Oops, you still have that device, huh? Take those ads because we can't finance support for 6-7 more years out of all our billions. No really, we promise that we can't".
Additionally, I expect a corporation like NVIDIA or Google to have amortized the costs of supporting several ecosystems by the mere virtue of having engineers on them on a constant payroll -- those costs are not increasing, they remain the same for long periods of time -- plus to finance the support by other venues if need be. Brand loyalty and stuff?
This penny pinching by billionaire conglomerates leaves a sour taste in my mouth and it makes it all the more likely for me to invest in several specialized PCs, a home video / streaming player included. They'll never stop being shady, it seems, so we have to take things in our own hands, apparently.
Well, I wish them luck. Practically every family knows one "IT person" and when we all collectively get fed up, come and watch how quickly do we drain the second-hand market of $200 laptops that we will repurpose as complete private home content consumption solutions.
I get how the business model of those services works btw -- but it's flawed from the beginning because it relies on keeping the users hostage.
The corps really underestimate the passive resistance they will meet. They think people will go to court and challenge their unbeatable lawyers there. No, nobody is going to do that. People will just work around those corporations (neighborhood private networks with NAS-es, old-school sharing of movies on DVDs or USB drives etc.; there are many ways).
> One aspect of modern hardware products which contain a lot of software is that they need a steady stream of software updates in order to remain useful and functional.
No, they don't need it. They get them, because they can. This allows the vendors to:
- Sell buggy, half-baked alpha versions to customers as finished products;
- Turn a product into a service, to seek subscription rent from users, under the guise of "security";
- Justify the need for persistent Internet access, providing plausible deniability for data collection (if anyone asks, it's to support "security" and "improving the product").
Don't fall for this. The hardware and software we buy doesn't need to be like this. The vendors push it, because it's locally optimal for them, and it's self-supporting through competitive pressure ("because my competitors do it, I have to do it too").
I'm a Apple TV+ subscriber, so I think I already seem to have access to most of the content. But I also have Prime / Netflix up there, and I can preview that stuff too (neither may wife or I mind this).
I did notice once I could turn things off, but we use the Apple TV App (confusing naming) for Up Next pretty frequently (new remote has a quick button for that) and up next nicely seems to pull most of our content in (not sure how) so when we are trying to decide what to watch (we watch about 1 hr every other week) it's handy to remind ourselves of what we were watching from before. Apple obviously does something so that netflix / prime / etc all flow into Up Next. My only annoyance is it feels like there are two "Home" screens, the app icon grid and the apple TV App.
Can you use it without accepting the terms of service? If not, it should be required you accept the terms at purchase, otherwise it's just a trojan horse (assuming you're somebody that actually reads the tos).
Capitalists can’t allow social discovery of content.
They’re using capital to keep themselves in front of you. That’s what aristocrats do; use their political power to manage agency.
Stop enabling aristocracy through politically corrupt distribution of fiat currency; effectively making economic activity constrained to politically dictated economic “norms” (what capitalists fund).
I think you’re referring to the TV and movie ads banner at the top? There’s a technical reason for it and a pretty simple fix. That banner shows for whatever app you have in the top left corner of your apps list. To fix it, all you would have to do is to move a different app to be there. I moved the Photos app to be the first on mine and all I see now is a color wheel/flower whenever I turn on my Apple TV.
> I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Courts and legislative bodies can totally overrule and invalidate any clause in a private contract, if you feel this is a social problem then keep speaking up about it and ignore the people playing devil's advocate.
People are in the habit of giving counterpoint's for conversation's sake and have no strong opinions on their counterpoint.
The path is the following: ethical problem becomes a social problem becomes a legal problem. Specifically, obscure ethical problems become recurring and common social problems which become legal problems that can more easily get patched.
No need to sideload anything. Just remove all updates of the Android TV launcher in the settings and disable auto updates. You'll get the good ol' launcher.
No unfortunately that may not work. Even if you revert all updates, the old launcher now has the ad. It appears they are doing this from their service side somehow. I removed all updates and disabled updates, but it didn't work. Mine required side-loading a launcher.
I'd be curious if it depends on when you purchased the shield. I just tried this on my older shield reverting/disabling worked, but my newer one does not.
I think people here need to realize that in terms of preference, they are massive outliers.
While you can conceptualize recommendations for things you have not bought as Ads, there is likely no money changing hands here for these to displayed.
Source on it not creating money? Where I've worked, they had recommendations (for shows and movies) and we definitely were paid for showing them. Companies would pay us for priority, direct buy of a slot or to get certain keywords/demographics. They were really no different from ad slots at the end of the day. Only difference was that there was a small, but unlikely chance, someone that didn't pay could have been promoted.
Given this is Google's business, I'd find it hard to believe that they would market other products without a financial incentive (whether through a cut of the sale through the play store or direct payment for displaying the recommendation).
Honestly, why do people buy shit like this when you can just hook a raspberry pi to your tv and stream through that? I'm asking a real question here, I simply can't understand what makes this a desirable thing for anyone.
I think this is unlikely, but should it become the case, you can easily install an alternative launcher, something presumably impossible on the sheild.
Also, the default launcher happens to be something heavily customized by each OEM (likely extending the AOSP launcher which will never have ads or more typically extending a shared base launcher[0]), and I think routing ads through OEMs would be both a technical and logistical impossibility.
The phone space is such a competitive market, and the cost of switching (launchers/to a different Android phone/to iOS) is so low, and the risk to future sales so high, I really doubt you'll see ads on the launcher.
> I think this is unlikely, but should it become the case, you can easily install an alternative launcher, something presumably impossible on the sheild.
It's really incredible how the average American home spends some $116/mo for television[1], and is still subjected to 16 minutes of advertisements per hour of entertainment.
I haven't had cable for about 15 years now, and commercials are a big reason. But it's not even just the commercials, I just wasn't interested in the six hundreth special on Nostradamus or aliens on the history channel, or shows purportedly about space exploration that are 50% CGI and 49% speculation masquerading as observations or any kind of "reality shows".
Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars, pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and stupidest people in the business.
Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.
Yep; either show me ads and give me the content for free, or (ideally give me the option) let me pay and don’t show ads. If product people / The MBAs at a company think that there should still be ads on the paid version, consider what those are worth. I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads. Basically, I always want an option to pay whatever a company thinks it’s worth to remove all ads. If there’s really good content on offer, people will pay. Ads make any content look sleazy. Even the best YouTube channels shilling for random products gets lame and old real quick.
Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost of the content to remove all ads.
> I haven’t seen anyone try it, but consider a model of three options: 1. Free with lots of ads, 2. Paid but cheap with less ads, 3. Most costly but no ads.
This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of the same hardware.
I would guess that there's a vicious cycle at play here. The more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the deeper their pockets are, the more valuable they are as a consumer, the more money a company is willing to pay to advertise to them.
I must be in the minority here, but Ancient Aliens is one of my favorite tv shows. It has some of the funniest, most outlandish, content I’ve ever seen.
It used to be a uniquely American thing. The Discovery and Nat Geo channels in my home country used to be truly educational. (I don't know/think it's the case anymore, sadly.)
I can definitely believe that. I spend about $100 in the PNW just for gigabit Internet in my apartment (which is really only about 400mbps, thanks Wave!)
And at least for Comcast and Fios, the marginal cost to add a basic cable package is more like 30-40 bucks. I.e., if you went from just internet to internet and TV it only adds 30-40 bucks.
That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the TV aspect.
It really feels like more than 16.. you know, just the other day I realized my Roku TV was analyzing the video stream of what I was watching, and adding its own ads on top of the output of my Shield. Wonder if it would be possible to jailbreak the Roku, patch the firmware so that it recognized and blocked ads instead..
Possible? Certainly. Worth the time? Likely not. Just get a different device that respects your privacy or one that is more open to letting you control it how you see fit.
I suppose it's the price of convenience? For my part, I pay a lot less for just Internet, borrow DVDs from the public library, and occasionally pay a la carte to stream specific shows I particularly want to watch. It's definitely less expensive in the long run, but my real motivation is that I really hate ads, enough so that I'm willing to put up with lower definition (the library doesn't do as much in the way of blu-ray), waitlists for popular shows, and having to actually plan ahead when deciding what to watch. I'm very, very aware, though, that choosing to do it this way makes me an unusual case. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I've discovered some lifehack that nobody else is clever enough to know about. No, it's because I'm grumpy and easy to irritate, and because, as someone with objectively poor taste in entertainment, I genuinely don't give a damn about keeping up with Star Wars or Game of Thrones or whatever. I'm perfectly satisfied with ancient crusty stuff like Murder, She Wrote.
Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem, in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any of the alternatives.
I don't know if it's fair to describe cable TV as convenience. Netflix costs about a tenth as much as cable TV (though it does require Internet so if you'd otherwise not have Internet maybe bump it up to half the cost) and provides a generally better service.
The thing about Netflix is that it's become very homogenous. If you don't like the kind algorithmically-optimized stuff that the people who produce Netflix Original Series are doing, then it's good for about as much time as it takes to finish binging the first couple Star Trek series and The Great British Baking Show, and then you're just sort of done with it.
Netflix is worth 10 times less. Netflix thinks a season is 10 episodes or less.
Popular shows get cancelled a few get kept but seasons take years to come out. The availability of content goes down every year. I'm not sure it's worth what they are charging for compared to Prime, etc
With cable you get to pick a channel and let them broadcast
to you. You don't select the next episode you select a channel. The benefit of selecting a channel over an episode or series is you don't have to think what should I watch next. Weekdays at this time they will play a show you expect.. it's freeing to just put a channel on and you get a certain background rhythm.
When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
Plus you get tons of on demand content channels offer cable subscribers. News, Sports, Live Content, Local channels all exist in cable but not streaming.
Local channels can be had for free with a decent antenna usually. And you can get TV tuners that record to external HDDs for about $30. Live content for free!
Netflix also now has a "play something" mode that's basically shuffle but takes into account what you've already been watching/watched.
I think that the opinion of what streaming or cable service is the best is very much a personal preference. You've got Netflix, Hulu (still around I think?), CBC Gem and Acorn as the ones I hear about most often - the price to access any one of those services is a fraction of cable's cost - either half (if you assume you'd otherwise be without internet) or a tenth (if you're part of the vast majority of people that will pay for internet either way). So I think it's more fair to assume that somewhere out there there's a streaming service for you and it's going to be somewhere between 10-15 USD/mo.
> When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
No.
I have ADHD and ads absolutely destroy me. For some people ads might be a nice time to meditate, for me they absolutely destroy the enjoyability of any program because in those few minutes I'm going to start playing a game or reading an article or cleaning something.
Even beside my ADHD - ads don't give you "peaceful time". If you want a snippet of peaceful time then pause the stream every once in a while and go outside and be at true peace - don't come up with excuses to justify advertisements being shoved down your throat. The act of spamming adverts like that disrespects you as a person and your time, it borders on offensive.
You have plenty of choices: Netflix, prime, apple, crave, cbcgem, Paramount, acorn, mlb, nhl all access.
Add them together and it cost more than cable and cable offers more shows.
I have cable. I subscribe to a number of streaming services. I get more out of a weekly show where you wait vs having all shows available.
If you compare the circle vs big brother. Both are similiar shows equally good or bad depending on your preference. Binging all of circle at once is enjoyable but having a new big brother show to look forward to tonight offers something else.
I often tape shows and fast forward commericials if I feel ADHDish or leave them if I'm feeling lazy.
Having to watch ads isn't convenient at all. This is certainly a factor why people left TV for streams in the first place, even if they get introduced here more and more.
I am subbed to some streaming services and the moment they introduce ads I will leave. TV-like ads won't be able to compete here.
I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to the same.
Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised, the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are much more expensive.
I bought a PC from a local computer refurbishing shop, FreeGeek. It was $80 and has more than enough hardware to run Linux and a web browser. Works great!
It is not an ad, no. I was just giving a shout-out to my local charity that refurbishes computers and provides them to low-income individuals.
Additionally, I was pointing out I have a full-featured desktop PC running an open source operating system, so I just sidestep the problem a lot of these dongles and gadgets introduce.
Stallman saw everything that was going to happen to our industry 30 years ago and warned us about it daily.
He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.
Stallman actually helped bring this about. The ad companies all run their massive data farms on open source software.
Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions.
For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.
Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free open source software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.
I feel like this post elides the functionally single-source nature of plenty of free and open-source software. "But you can fork it" means nothing when you, singularly or collectively, don't have the will or, far more frequently, the resources (time, money, knowledge, etc.) to do so in a sustainable and secure manner. It's the "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread--the rich as well as the poor" of tech.
There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-released application is a lot more concrete.)
>For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.
What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff.
And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.
I have disabled the Google Play service to disable the ads on my Shield devices (I thinks this prevents YouTube from working, but I only use YouTube on a PC where UBO can block the advertisements.
BUT, I rarely ever see the launcher/home screen anyway.
While within whatever app you are using if you click on the 'options/hamburger' button on the remote, you can scroll down to 'Apps' select the next app you want to launch, and select 'Open'.
2-4 mouse clicks becomes 4-6 and you bypass the home screen.
I strongly prefer the Apple TV UI approach over all the rest.
The whole content recommendation view is contained withing the Apple TV application, instead of the home screen. The home screen gives me an unsullied grid of applications.
If I want to have the content recommendation view be my default, the settings gives me the option of defaulting to it instead of the home screen.
> I strongly prefer the Apple TV UI approach over all the rest.
> unsullied grid
The only thing "unsullied" was the brief period of time you could get everything on Netflix without everyone stuffing their grubby hands into the cookie jar.
I'd swear Apple is paying for astroturfing everywhere on the Internet. I know you're not an ad, but I'd honestly never know it with the way the Internet works these days.
A lot of folks have Nvidia Shield because they don't want to be beholden to the FAMNGA monopolist giants. And yet, here we are.
I'm tired of being sold to by companies that want a bigger market cap and more user lock in. Apple probably wants their 40% cut of all ticket sales and streams, and Google wants to beam ads into your skull.
Right now AppleTV is the only way to get a somewhat AD free way to consume streaming. SmartTVs have ads, now the last hold out does too. Roku, ads, firestick, ads. It's gross.
I'm really surprised at just how much I like my Apple TV. I (wrongly) assumed it was a bit of a joke of a product for many years.
The latest 4k model is ridiculously fast (despite using an 'old' A12 SoC). Across the board it just works better than any Android TV, Fire TV or Roku I've ever used.
The Apple TV is really good, but have you tried the Nvidia Shield (Pro)? The launcher leaves something to be desired, and just mever felt entirely optimized for the remote and device even before this ads issue, but at least in my experience applications run extremely quickly even compared to my Apple TV which is already fast. On my Shield, that's while running a webcam recorder (NVR) with two simultaneous network streams 24/7 in the background, which makes it even more impressive to me.
You can't even compare an Apple TV With the Shield Pro, in software, in hardware and in features.
Can you run a Plex server on the Apple TV? HW SD upscaling? Game streaming from a PC with an Nvidia card? Access the filesystem, access USB attached storage?
At least game streaming works just as well with Moonlight.
Everything else you mentioned are very nieche usecases for most users. (I say that as somebody running a Plex server myself).
Is this coming to all Shield models? My 2015 doesn't have any ads (yet).
I also own an ATV 4K for streaming HDR in DV (Netflix, Disney, etc) but for Plex the Shield is still king. It can direct stream HDR10 and can do HDMI passthrough of any audio format (eg: TrueHD). The ATV decodes surround sound to PCM and while the quality is good, it causes audio sync issues and I think it loses Atmos information (I only have 5.1 setup).
Ads were the main reason why I stopped using my FireTV and switched to an AppleTV. If I pay for the device, and then I also pay for Amazon Prime, I expect atleast the main UI to be Ad-free.
Does prime still have these inbetween episode ads for their other shows? I have been considering going back but I don't want to pay for a service that does that.
Every time I disconnect from technology, I get a little happier. I don't own a TV, so I can't get TV ads. I'm disconnecting from "streaming services", so I won't get ads in my music, audio books, or movies. I'm disconnecting from Google so I won't be subjected to annoying product "features" I didn't ask for. Eventually I will disable text messaging on my phone, though it also means I won't be able to login to half the services on the internet (including my bank). I hope one day to have a job where I don't need a smartphone or even the internet; technology retirement, I call it.
I think the key is to be strong enough, and brave enough, to voluntarily bring about change. Every time you disconnect, you get a little happier. And I bet coming back feels good too. To let go of a state of mind is scary, seems risky, and undesirable. But a mind, like the body, needs a varied diet of states to be healthy. It's make it more flexible, agreeable to change, tolerant to adversity, and therefore bring about contentedness and happiness.
So I think that your plan to gradually disconnect is something good. I wish you best of luck with it.
I always find it funny when a newspaper has an article complaining about banner ads and the article itself insists on automatically playing a video ad per paragraph of text.
Sure I did. I stopped using the device that was displaying ads for services that I don’t subscribe to. Google will no longer receive ad revenue from me.
So far on my Apple TV I’ve only seen promos (“ads”) for movies/shows on services that I already subscribe to. That is within my personal comfort zone.
I wish that I could replace it with a little computer running Linux, but it’s difficult to find compatible hardware and I don’t have the time or patience to fuss around with it right now.
I switched to FLauncher. It's very basic but I think that's what most of us are looking for. It's built with Flutter and it's open source: https://gitlab.com/etienn01/flauncher
I wonder if a Pi-hole with a good adlist could stop those ads from appearing - sadly/luckily i don't own a NVidia Shield.
Maybe someone else can weigh in if that approach does work (maybe with additionally setting up your router to redirect everything DNS back to the Pi-hole)?
I can answer this, I have a piHole and Chromecast with Google TV The article is mixing up the types of banners seen here. The recommendation hero row is full of recommendations tailored to you based on watch history. Google however can fill the first slot with a targeted content ad (notably lately, Black Widow on Disney+).
My piHole absolutely blocks the first slot and leaves it with an unsightly blank space, the rest of the content remains.
I have a pihole and it stops them from appearing but leaves blank/black spaces. Not just on the launcher but in the app as well. For example, IMDBtv will have 15-30s of blank air where nothing happens. The first time this happened I thought the app crashed because FF/Pause/Play didn't do anything. And then the movie resumed and did it again 30 minutes later.
Speaking of this, YouTube changed recently for me and now unskippable ads are 15 seconds and if you watch them on a chromecast you can’t skip them from your phone anymore. You have to go into “remote control mode” and navigate the on-screen UI.
Nothing grinds my gears worse than stuff you buy and integrate into your life unnecessarily degrading in performance/behaviour.
I might actually be about done with YouTube, which was. Shocking realization.
The correct thing to do for YouTube is to pay for the ad-free Premium version ( which also supports "content creators" more).
A lot of people say they'd pay if they were given the option to remove ads, yet surprisingly few people opt to do it for YouTube ( which you can even share with friends and family up to 5 accounts, so it can be a decent deal). Why?
Because Youtube's kafka-esque content moderation policies frequently penalize the creators I care about, so I feel like paying them for ad free solidifies their monopoly. I hope a competitor starts taking marketshare from them soon.
Yes and no. Paying for Premium and being subscribed for specific content creators gives them money, and isn't impacted by them being demonetised for whatever reason.
Indeed you fuel the whole machine and enable their monopoly though. Content creators don't have much choice anyhow.
That's why personally i pay for Premium ( split between multiple people), have Nebula and force myself to use it for creators on it, and support some on Patreon directly. YouTube is a monopoly and are deeply entrenched - i highly doubt any competitor could dislodge them, but i try to help them nonetheless.
This is actually what made me cancel my Youtube Premium. I hate ads and make every effort to eliminate them from my entertainment, but I found myself mindlessly watching hours of youtube without them. Back on the free tier I find I can't watch more than one or two short videos before I get so frustrated and move on to something more productive. Very useful.
I refuse to because in this case removing the ads doesn't solve the other half of the problem, which is tracking you to show you ads in other services that you can't pay for. I don't want ads anywhere, but if I pay for YouTube, Google will absolutely use the information I give them about videos to show me ads when I use search or maps, or any other of their products. I'm not interested in any of their ads anywhere and I'm not interested in having my activities tracked. I get no value from it. (And as such, I've stopped using their services entirely except when someone sends me a link to something they want me to see. When that happens, I use a quarantined browser with ad blocking.)
I pay for youtube. Its nice to not have ads. Its not cheap, but it does come with Youtube Music (which is more like spotify.. eg its not music videos, though it does have those.)
Premium does not remove in-stream ads which are getting worse at the same rate as YouTube ads. I'm not paying for premium just to continue to see ads / use SponsorBlock.
I use an ad blocker. On mobile (Safati) this means that I get a blank screen for a while where the af would have been playing. Much better than the ad.
I can also just reload and the video starts.
Ironically this is why I got a Nvidia shield instead of an Apple TV; so I could sideload an alternative YouTube player that has ad blocking. Luckily the same process can be used to get a new launcher too, but the whole thing is turning into such a faff
I switched over kodi+torrents over an RPI because of this, I would have been an happy with android tv and whatever streaming service. Companies spend their times screwing their customers, so if you screw me I screw you! and I have my conscience for me.
I did this with odroids instead of RPI and got sick of dealing with issues. Shield TV has been great as a kodi-and-netflix-and-nothing-else box up until now.
The problems were never with kodi, it was always the platform or the hardware. I've been running the same Kodi setup (basically just setting up SMB access to a shared network drive) since XBMC on my modded Xbox. Odroid on both their Ubuntu distro and Odrobian (Debian fork) was the absolute worst experience. 2D would be super slow but 3D would be fine, or the opposite, or it just wouldn't start after sitting unused for a few months. `apt-get upgrade` breaking stuff. Such a PITA...
I guess I should try again on a newer RPi, if the driver support is 100% and the hardware somewhat reliable then I might be interested. Last time I checked 4K and USB 3.0 weren't available on RPi so I was turned off from the platform.
This is the first comment in the thread that makes sense. The customers' and the content providers' relationship is simply abusive. The providers' constant struggle for control over viewership, and the creep of anti-features, dark patterns and questionable EULAs and other terms are simply disgusting.
I might be the dumbest observer on these trends around here but does it seem to somebody else that this is a normal part of the end-of-life lifecycle of many devices and that it usually goes like this...
- "Sir, sales are falling... we actually haven't had new sales in months".
- "How much does it cost to support the infrastructure for these devices?"
- "X million a month".
- "Feck it. Cram ads into them, we're not supporting those things for free!"
I don't think NVidea is getting any of the revenue for these ads. If I understand it right, Google is getting the revenue...the launcher is Google's app.
Yes, that's the essence of the problem. Android TV devices have to use Google's launcher as the default, or they have to go fully on their own, without Google services, like a FireTV device.
Well, it seems that Google (and various other corporations) are finally entering their endgame and are showing their true colors. I am eager to find out if the world can fight back meaningfully.
Why do you think that breaking Google apart would make the portions that don't directly receive money from advertisements less likely to sell ad space?
I remember when Apple used to charge for MacOS and iOS updates. In many ways this aligned incentives much better. Many of the MacOS and iOS updates in the past few years have mostly existed to drive subscription revenue for their new services. I'd love them to actually have to deliver real value with software updates and be paid for it.
The whole iCloud “omg almost out of space!!” nag screens really irked me on iOS, and doubly so because of their usage of private APIs to both show those nag screens and how the iCloud service works in a way that no other service can, again due to the private APIs they use. I pay for it now begrudgingly because it does “just work”, but I also hate them for it as I’d rather have a choice of cloud storage providers that could automatically back my photos up in the same reliable and integrated way that iCloud does.
I used to use the One Drive app to backup my photos on my iDevices. The biggest pain was the first upload taking forever and it was not automatic. My use case was a secondary back up so it didn’t bother me.
I think there's some of that, but this wasn't done by the people who made and sold the hardware, nVidia. This was done by Google.
Another post said that Google's certifications require that the device manufacturer keep the stock launcher, which would mean that nVidia couldn't and can't do anything about this directly.
nVidia is still selling plenty of these boxes and it would absolutely ruin their business if they started cramming ads into paid products.
It feels that way with the Smart TVs. Once you've purchased it the manufacturer no longer has a way to make additional money from it. Yet these things are connected to the internet and wildly insecure. So the only way to justify future updates is to shoehorn in some adtech along with the security patches.
> So the only way to justify future updates is to shoehorn in some adtech along with the security patches.
I'd say it's the exact opposite: the way to justify adtech, i.e. the thing they actually wanted from the start, is by playing up the importance of automated updates to security. Note how devices tend to stop being updated the moment their market share is projected to dwindle.
Is there even any type of smart TV without Google and or other companies? I don’t even know who makes an open source tv or something with Android as a part of it.
301 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadIn the most recent update, the until-now ad-free homepage was defaced with an ad banner that takes up half the screen and can't be removed. This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher. To add to this, some of the ads have been deemed inappropriate or offensive to certain users adding to the frustration of ads being introduced to this long-standing ad-free experience.
I, like many Shield owners, am considering installing a third party launcher. This can be done pretty easily by watching an instruction video on Youtube and most users will go this route without consideration of security - potentially opening large numbers of the devices up to vulnerabilities.
So this comes from Play Services. It appears the launcher has an exclusive hook for Play Services to show content in, and is being used for this purpose.
I am still reverted to the original Android TV Launcher because it takes less clicks to reach some functionality and is simpler, but the recommendation banner ruins it somewhat.
> This wasn't a change made by Nvidia but by Google to the Android TV Launcher.
My understanding is that Google big-dicks companies that want to run android on their device and have Play Store. So in this case, my understanding is that if they remove the Android TV Launcher, they must remove all the Google-branded items, including Play Store, which basically cripples Android for normal users.
Everybody has the right to buy an ad and spyware laden black box and install it in their home. But is it smart?
Myself I'm not a fan, but I just watch anime w/ Jellyfin, live TV with HDHomeRun (Quantum Leap on Comet!) and run a lot of sideloaded apps to control IOT functions.
If you pay for it, you are still the product.
You are always the product, phone carriers you pay monthly contract to collect your location data and sell it, TVs spy on your TV watching, Netflix/Spotify/... record everything you do, you will be monetized even if you already paid.
I'd be fine if Google just had an opt-out option for these "ads". I can't believe it isn't an option.
They may have been less aware of the timing of Google over riding it, but they should have at least known enough to be working on an alternative (assuming they wanted to).
I know it's in whatever terms I, uh, "accepted", but there's just no escaping it in this day and age.
Fortunately, I know how to use ADB and just installed another launcher, but most other people just have to bend over and take it. No doubt ADB tricks won't be sufficient in future updates and I'll be playing more silly games with a device I own.
Apple is seems almost as bad too. There's recommendations that I don't want. It's certainly worse in that I would have even less control and be unable to remove them.
It's certainly a good thing that I don't live anywhere near a Google office, otherwise I'd be launching this POS through one of their windows if I did.
https://gitlab.com/etienn01/flauncher
This is what I did with my Alexa hardware the instant it suffixed a routine response to a unit conversion or the weather or something with an ad for some unrelated Amazon service.
Throw it in the trash can't be the response to everything. Why don't I throw my phone and my car in the trash? Maybe I should throw my fridge and microwave in the trash too?
If my fridge started showing ads one day, suggesting that I shouldn't be pissed because I can just throw it out and get a cooler of ice is not helpful.
I'd normally just have a Linux box with Kodi, but once you try to get 4K HDR working, things start getting prickly. GPU and driver combos were a bit of a pain and even Windows had issues.
Same goes for an STB, or car, or any other thing that abuses you. You don't have to sit and take it simply because "that's the modern world".
Consumer choice is an important and powerful tool. Don't buy or use crap that abuses you, and don't shop at vendors that think that abusing their users is ok.
We got into this situation because people tend to throw up their hands and suffer.
> I also generally like the Google stuff including the assistant integration.
Google is an advertising company. Everything they do is in service to this goal, despite whatever side perks it may deliver to you occasionally. Liking the Google stuff while not liking ads is a mistake, because they are inseparable.
If you don't like ads, don't give your money and data to an advertising company. Don't run Android TV.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a264489...
So you're saying as soon as you're abused just toss a few hundred/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars of hardware out the window and spend a like amount somewhere else -- hoping that /this/ time is different? Even though when you bought the equipment this wasn't the state of it?
It must be nice to live in that world. Wasteful and expensive, but nice.
Why not just use great-looking photo backdrops instead of tacky logo walls?
I don't see that they have a choice. Nobody is going to pay for a premium device that shoves ads in your face. Roku has ads, but they are less aggressive, so I imagine they would start picking up Nvidea customers.
The bad review bombing hit both nVidea apps and Google's AndroidTV launcher pretty hard:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.teg...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
This also reminds me of the famous BlizzCon where they announced Diablo Immortal -- where the Chinese exec infamously exclaimed (after the audience started booing): "Do you guys not have phones?" -- when the dislikes of the videos reached into dozens of millions and Google has reset the dislikes, several times in a row.
So yeah, these things do happen and will likely happen again.
We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?
One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App Store are not public speech, they are always subject to censorship rules and always have been, because they are using a private for-profit service under a license agreement. It would be a different thing for the corporations you’re talking about to be able to censor criticism in the newspaper or on other people’s websites, but that’s not what’s happening here.
There’s also a legitimately difficult question here too. It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third party reasons outside the seller’s control (Nvidia shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers. It will always depend on the specifics of each case.
It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign, but no one ever participates in a good review campaign. There's no rage in that, that's why.
Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's the fairness in that?
I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a Chinese game that just launched. After successfully bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now calling for everyone to stop (because it's not that bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address the problems.
Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone let go all over the app on Play store, they're not cleaning that up.
All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to the Chinese version.
I have a Sony Bravia TV and it uses Android TV as well. It's had the homescreen ads for a while now and I really dislike it.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587
The funny thing about that page is that the image used to be animated. The first ad is for some crime show and has blood splatter in the background (you can still see it if you look closely) and the next ad is for Elmo. If you look, you can see the word Elmo where the next ad was fading in.
Who thought it was a good idea to advertise a bloody crime show on the same screen that you are going to target the Elmo audience and then use that for promotion?
Google knows I have it, yet they still take the advertiser's money and make me watch the ad. Over and over again.
Another example: I regularly comment on FB ads making fun of the product or the ad. The algorithm does not understand humor or sarcasm, so it registers my comment as a positive interaction. I then get a ton more ads for that same category of thing (e.g. a massager where they use a static preview frame of a woman in yoga pants using it on herself to get people interested) even though I was making fun of it.
TL;DR it’s disappointing both that so much investment goes into ad tech yet it’s still leading to so many irrelevant impressions that people have a very low chance of interacting with. Ads could be much better targeted which would potentially make them less annoying if they actually helped people find things they’re interested in.
Your interaction mocking the ad is engagement which may generate another penny of revenue for Facebook.
They don't have a choice in that the contract they signed with Google for their OS prohibits them from doing so.
The main AppleTV UI doesn’t have any recommendations for streaming apps you don’t own - the only thing that’s even close are when you highlight one of the apps in the top bar.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1393380938642563072
See also:
Ads for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple's fitness thing at the top of the Settings app.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1390696646854397955
Fake notification alerts in the App Store to get you to tap on the Apple Arcade button to show you a subscription ad.
Spam from Apple that I can't seem to stop receiving, even though I'm unsubscribed from every Apple list. I've gone as far as to contact AppleCare about it. I spent an hour on the phone with someone at AppleCare who couldn't explain why I keep getting Apple Arcade spam in my e-mail.
https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1394843930932523015
just when i'm just about ready to pull the trigger and switch to iOS you tell me this..
save us pinephone
https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/04/apple-now-allows-push-notific...
Good way to get your notification privileges revoked though. I wish Apple would add granular notification categories within apps so that you could approve particular types of notifications while denying others. A quick google says Android 8 did this in 2017.
Apple's policy on this is to require in-app configuration to opt out of marketing messages, rather than a way to configure it through the OS.
I do see what Apple is going for, in that these predefined categories let you automate notification handling with Focus modes, but I have a feeling a lot of apps will have an inflated opinion of how important "new episodes of ____ are available" is to me.
Are you saying they do it after you opt-out of the marketing notifications in-app?
As far as I understand though, is that it will show recommendations provided by installed apps. I do have Prime, and I still don't really want recommendations without explicitly asking for it.
This is a giant banner at the top of the home page that shows ads from random streaming services that you may or may not subscribe to or have installed.
The digital prison builders are less offensive than their supporters. Remember to point and laugh when they complaint about their self-funded captivity. Its an important public service to point and laugh as they are paving the way for our imprisonment. We clearly didn't laugh hard enough in the past.
edit:
[0] - for the pun ill add a promotional link: https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/311843/bestmedia-platinum-my...
Is it Apple keeping non-Google-produced YouTube clients off the App Store, or is it Apple? Maybe both?
And I never watch MLB games nor do I have the app installed (clicking the games brings me to install the MLB app).
E.g. “Show sports scores” is off, “Games in Up Next” is off, and “Exciting Games” is off.
Yes there is. Absolutely no closed software ever. That's the rule you use. Even the modem on the phone I'm typing this on is running FOSS firmware. Don't compromise your freedom for convenience, you always end up with neither when you do.
I don't think I understand fully the point you're trying to make. How does free and open source software prevent a software developer from inserting the code necessary for behavior such as we're discussing? Granted, they may be chastised, but the ability remains. We've seen this happen already with software developers inserting ads into the shell during install (or some other operation). A lot more work and effort on our part is necessary to prevent this type of behavior becoming normalized.
TV streaming, Games streaming from local network at least, music...
A closed environment doesn't allow for competition, so they will monetize it to the greatest degree. That would include ads.
Android TV is really bad spyware for that matter... surprised it can even exist with Google TV having flopped that hard.
(Correctly, tbh).
(Correctly, tbh) - It is still a service problem.
I think at least Amazon fixed it in the meantime, I can play 4k without problems.
I'm using Netguard on Android devices I don't want to root and it's been good. Plus it does per-app firewalling as well.
[1]: https://www.zenz-solutions.de
[2]: https://netguard.me
[3]: https://blokada.org
A weird side story: I had a situation where an app on my Roku TV would crash if it failed to serve an add from a blocked domain (there were several but they mostly pointed to google ad domains). I actually _had_ to allow ads from the domains they called.
Disclaimer: I co-develop a Intra fork.
Security updates are essential. Not only is a device full of unpatched vulnerabilities dangerous to use, but as we saw with the recent Western Digital scandal, is a serious risk to the continued functionality of the device.
Because the Shield is a streaming device, interoperability with streaming services is required for continued functionality. The set of useful streaming services changes over time and existing streaming services change their APIs.
Most hardware devices these days get a fairly short software update window and then the device is useless. Would you rather Nvidia/Google abandoned your device? Is funding continued updates with ads such a bad thing?
Personally, I'd rather that consumers didn't buy into false dichotomies such as this one. You should expect more from your vendors.
Additionally, I expect a corporation like NVIDIA or Google to have amortized the costs of supporting several ecosystems by the mere virtue of having engineers on them on a constant payroll -- those costs are not increasing, they remain the same for long periods of time -- plus to finance the support by other venues if need be. Brand loyalty and stuff?
This penny pinching by billionaire conglomerates leaves a sour taste in my mouth and it makes it all the more likely for me to invest in several specialized PCs, a home video / streaming player included. They'll never stop being shady, it seems, so we have to take things in our own hands, apparently.
These are profit oriented institutions. Once they've saturated the market, their only way to increase profits is to increase their per user profits.
The economy is designed to have your TV start showing ads.
I get how the business model of those services works btw -- but it's flawed from the beginning because it relies on keeping the users hostage.
The corps really underestimate the passive resistance they will meet. They think people will go to court and challenge their unbeatable lawyers there. No, nobody is going to do that. People will just work around those corporations (neighborhood private networks with NAS-es, old-school sharing of movies on DVDs or USB drives etc.; there are many ways).
No, they don't need it. They get them, because they can. This allows the vendors to:
- Sell buggy, half-baked alpha versions to customers as finished products;
- Turn a product into a service, to seek subscription rent from users, under the guise of "security";
- Justify the need for persistent Internet access, providing plausible deniability for data collection (if anyone asks, it's to support "security" and "improving the product").
Don't fall for this. The hardware and software we buy doesn't need to be like this. The vendors push it, because it's locally optimal for them, and it's self-supporting through competitive pressure ("because my competitors do it, I have to do it too").
Apple TV is less intrusive with ads in the interface and during the viewing experience.
When we say Apple is as bad - what are we talking about?
Inside the individual apps obviously developers do push things.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/19/how-to-remove-home-screen-tra...
I'm a Apple TV+ subscriber, so I think I already seem to have access to most of the content. But I also have Prime / Netflix up there, and I can preview that stuff too (neither may wife or I mind this).
I did notice once I could turn things off, but we use the Apple TV App (confusing naming) for Up Next pretty frequently (new remote has a quick button for that) and up next nicely seems to pull most of our content in (not sure how) so when we are trying to decide what to watch (we watch about 1 hr every other week) it's handy to remind ourselves of what we were watching from before. Apple obviously does something so that netflix / prime / etc all flow into Up Next. My only annoyance is it feels like there are two "Home" screens, the app icon grid and the apple TV App.
They’re using capital to keep themselves in front of you. That’s what aristocrats do; use their political power to manage agency.
Stop enabling aristocracy through politically corrupt distribution of fiat currency; effectively making economic activity constrained to politically dictated economic “norms” (what capitalists fund).
With more resources at: https://developer.nvidia.com/shield-open-source
Courts and legislative bodies can totally overrule and invalidate any clause in a private contract, if you feel this is a social problem then keep speaking up about it and ignore the people playing devil's advocate.
People are in the habit of giving counterpoint's for conversation's sake and have no strong opinions on their counterpoint.
The path is the following: ethical problem becomes a social problem becomes a legal problem. Specifically, obscure ethical problems become recurring and common social problems which become legal problems that can more easily get patched.
I've got some other apks disabled as well, but I think these two are the critical ones.
I haven't had the ads pop up again in over 2 weeks.
While you can conceptualize recommendations for things you have not bought as Ads, there is likely no money changing hands here for these to displayed.
And most people actually like these features: https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/19/22580720/android-tv-watch...
Given this is Google's business, I'd find it hard to believe that they would market other products without a financial incentive (whether through a cut of the sale through the play store or direct payment for displaying the recommendation).
(I agree broadly users do not care, but some of these are definitely paid, placed advertisements by Google.)
This is a frankly ridiculous comparison.
Also, the default launcher happens to be something heavily customized by each OEM (likely extending the AOSP launcher which will never have ads or more typically extending a shared base launcher[0]), and I think routing ads through OEMs would be both a technical and logistical impossibility.
The phone space is such a competitive market, and the cost of switching (launchers/to a different Android phone/to iOS) is so low, and the risk to future sales so high, I really doubt you'll see ads on the launcher.
[0] https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...
Pretty simple to do on the Shield too.
[1] https://www.doxo.com/insights/united-states-of-bill-pay-doxo...
Yes and nothing makes me feel like my brain cells are committing suicide faster than watching commercials for cars, pills or insurance made by some of the least funny and stupidest people in the business.
Then there are the travel or cooking shows which basically take 5 minutes of interesting content and smash it with a proverbial hammer into a 30 or 60 minute show.
Please let people who are willing to do so pay the true cost of the content to remove all ads.
This is essentially what Amazon does (did?) with their Fire tablets, excluding the completely free tier. There is an ad subsidized version and a more expensive ad free version of the same hardware.
The link you posted says that's cable and internet, not television.
That's a better reflect of what you are really paying for the TV aspect.
Ads seem to do a good job of riding a very fine line. There's no need to care about what people will gripe about; people who gripe on the Internet are just a vocal minority, and realistically, as paying customers, they aren't even a problem, in and of themselves. All they've really got to do is be ever so slightly less annoying, to the majority of people, than any of the alternatives.
People are paying out of laziness.
With cable you get to pick a channel and let them broadcast to you. You don't select the next episode you select a channel. The benefit of selecting a channel over an episode or series is you don't have to think what should I watch next. Weekdays at this time they will play a show you expect.. it's freeing to just put a channel on and you get a certain background rhythm.
When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
Plus you get tons of on demand content channels offer cable subscribers. News, Sports, Live Content, Local channels all exist in cable but not streaming.
Netflix also now has a "play something" mode that's basically shuffle but takes into account what you've already been watching/watched.
> When you stream the lack of ads means the lack of mental breaks. The watcher doesn't have time to take in the last 8-12 minutes and think a.out it without the ads. That causes one show to blend into another and at the end of the binge you can hardly remember the details.
No.
I have ADHD and ads absolutely destroy me. For some people ads might be a nice time to meditate, for me they absolutely destroy the enjoyability of any program because in those few minutes I'm going to start playing a game or reading an article or cleaning something.
Even beside my ADHD - ads don't give you "peaceful time". If you want a snippet of peaceful time then pause the stream every once in a while and go outside and be at true peace - don't come up with excuses to justify advertisements being shoved down your throat. The act of spamming adverts like that disrespects you as a person and your time, it borders on offensive.
Add them together and it cost more than cable and cable offers more shows.
I have cable. I subscribe to a number of streaming services. I get more out of a weekly show where you wait vs having all shows available.
If you compare the circle vs big brother. Both are similiar shows equally good or bad depending on your preference. Binging all of circle at once is enjoyable but having a new big brother show to look forward to tonight offers something else.
I often tape shows and fast forward commericials if I feel ADHDish or leave them if I'm feeling lazy.
I am subbed to some streaming services and the moment they introduce ads I will leave. TV-like ads won't be able to compete here.
I installed a adblocker that stops commercials on youtube and sponsorblock, which skips the sponsored segments and everything becomes so much calmer. Like I can focus on whatever the video is about, but there is also just less stress - and yes I normally skip over both segments but even that isn't close to the same.
Of course we should remember that things sponsored by ads aren't free, we are expected to pay for the product advertised, the cost of the marketing campaign on both sides and it destroys the quality of the product. So in reality the ads are much more expensive.
It's worse than that. It's 16 minutes per 44 minutes entertainment. And much of that is full of embedded marketing.
Additionally, I was pointing out I have a full-featured desktop PC running an open source operating system, so I just sidestep the problem a lot of these dongles and gadgets introduce.
He has a ton of flaws, but we shouldn't ever forget his warnings nor his contributions to free software. The future he was telling us about is here, and it's going to get worse.
Stallman and open source helped drive a lot of paid software out of the market because they could not compete with free versions.
For the most part, the paid consumer software market is dead.
Companies will always want to make money, so they “gave away” free software funded by ads and then used free open source software to run their servers serving and targeting ads.
>they “gave away” free software funded by ads
Proprietary software isn't free software. Free doesn't just mean free as in no cost to use.
There is an argument, and I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have legs, that a software developer who I just hand money to is more likely to be aligned with my interests than an advertiser's. (And yeah you can say "well bankroll free software!"--then you have to find somebody and be capable of evaluating the results and you've just hit the resource scarcity problem from the other side. A commercially-released application is a lot more concrete.)
What do you mean? Was it anytime alive? Also, don't people buy, for example, games more than ever? And I don't mean the micro-transaction stuff, I mean the more traditional, paying upfront stuff. And back then there were lot of demos, shareware, freeware and shitty DRMs that were easy to crack. I'm not seeing a healthy consumer software market - at any point of time.
The user can go change the launcher.
BUT, I rarely ever see the launcher/home screen anyway.
While within whatever app you are using if you click on the 'options/hamburger' button on the remote, you can scroll down to 'Apps' select the next app you want to launch, and select 'Open'.
2-4 mouse clicks becomes 4-6 and you bypass the home screen.
The whole content recommendation view is contained withing the Apple TV application, instead of the home screen. The home screen gives me an unsullied grid of applications.
If I want to have the content recommendation view be my default, the settings gives me the option of defaulting to it instead of the home screen.
> unsullied grid
The only thing "unsullied" was the brief period of time you could get everything on Netflix without everyone stuffing their grubby hands into the cookie jar.
I'd swear Apple is paying for astroturfing everywhere on the Internet. I know you're not an ad, but I'd honestly never know it with the way the Internet works these days.
A lot of folks have Nvidia Shield because they don't want to be beholden to the FAMNGA monopolist giants. And yet, here we are.
I'm tired of being sold to by companies that want a bigger market cap and more user lock in. Apple probably wants their 40% cut of all ticket sales and streams, and Google wants to beam ads into your skull.
The latest 4k model is ridiculously fast (despite using an 'old' A12 SoC). Across the board it just works better than any Android TV, Fire TV or Roku I've ever used.
Can you run a Plex server on the Apple TV? HW SD upscaling? Game streaming from a PC with an Nvidia card? Access the filesystem, access USB attached storage?
I also own an ATV 4K for streaming HDR in DV (Netflix, Disney, etc) but for Plex the Shield is still king. It can direct stream HDR10 and can do HDMI passthrough of any audio format (eg: TrueHD). The ATV decodes surround sound to PCM and while the quality is good, it causes audio sync issues and I think it loses Atmos information (I only have 5.1 setup).
I paid $150 for my Shield and now get the same crappy experience as my $25 FireTV stick.
A completely separate issue: The HBOMax app actually works better on my $25 device.
So I think that your plan to gradually disconnect is something good. I wish you best of luck with it.
Then you bought another device with closed firmware from another company with their own ad service.
So far on my Apple TV I’ve only seen promos (“ads”) for movies/shows on services that I already subscribe to. That is within my personal comfort zone.
I wish that I could replace it with a little computer running Linux, but it’s difficult to find compatible hardware and I don’t have the time or patience to fuss around with it right now.
That's gone, discontinued in 2016...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
Maybe someone else can weigh in if that approach does work (maybe with additionally setting up your router to redirect everything DNS back to the Pi-hole)?
I've had apple tv, roku ultra, and shield. Shield is the only one that plays everything direct streaming.
It sucks that they are butchering this great product.
Nothing grinds my gears worse than stuff you buy and integrate into your life unnecessarily degrading in performance/behaviour.
I might actually be about done with YouTube, which was. Shocking realization.
A lot of people say they'd pay if they were given the option to remove ads, yet surprisingly few people opt to do it for YouTube ( which you can even share with friends and family up to 5 accounts, so it can be a decent deal). Why?
Ads serve as a reminder to watch less youtube.
Indeed you fuel the whole machine and enable their monopoly though. Content creators don't have much choice anyhow.
That's why personally i pay for Premium ( split between multiple people), have Nebula and force myself to use it for creators on it, and support some on Patreon directly. YouTube is a monopoly and are deeply entrenched - i highly doubt any competitor could dislodge them, but i try to help them nonetheless.
This is actually what made me cancel my Youtube Premium. I hate ads and make every effort to eliminate them from my entertainment, but I found myself mindlessly watching hours of youtube without them. Back on the free tier I find I can't watch more than one or two short videos before I get so frustrated and move on to something more productive. Very useful.
Because it's not entirely clear on their premium page.
These three programs are the only thing keeping YouTube tolerable. When Google eventually Widevine L1's everything I'll bail entirely.
I guess I should try again on a newer RPi, if the driver support is 100% and the hardware somewhat reliable then I might be interested. Last time I checked 4K and USB 3.0 weren't available on RPi so I was turned off from the platform.
But up until now Shield has been the sweet spot.
- "Sir, sales are falling... we actually haven't had new sales in months".
- "How much does it cost to support the infrastructure for these devices?"
- "X million a month".
- "Feck it. Cram ads into them, we're not supporting those things for free!"
...or is it just me?
Here's hoping. {raises glass}
Another post said that Google's certifications require that the device manufacturer keep the stock launcher, which would mean that nVidia couldn't and can't do anything about this directly.
nVidia is still selling plenty of these boxes and it would absolutely ruin their business if they started cramming ads into paid products.
I'd say it's the exact opposite: the way to justify adtech, i.e. the thing they actually wanted from the start, is by playing up the importance of automated updates to security. Note how devices tend to stop being updated the moment their market share is projected to dwindle.
But I'll be honest and admit that plenty of the content is the same content that is being advertised to me.
Even if I'm not going to buy it I still benefit from learning it exists.