"Jump Ads represent yet another step in VIZIO’s ongoing mission to unify the smart TV experience with features that benefit viewers, content providers and advertisers," said Adam Bergman, VP of sales, Vizio Ads."
Wow at that.
For one thing, getting prime time coverage of ads, w/o having to pay networks is pretty amazing but how it's done (Just the spin of it all) is just pure evil and that spin - I don't think any ads benefit viewers though.
Ads benefit the customer by reducing the price of a 55" 4K TV down to 300 bucks, which is absolutely below the true cost of the device (parts, R&D, support etc).
They are selling you a below-cost TV and making it up in ads, same as Microsoft selling you a below-cost Xbox and making it up in accessory sales.
I don't think it's correct to say there's not benefit. The benefit of YouTube ads is that you have unlimited 4K content available for free (below cost of bandwidth).
While you may say you'll pay 600 bucks for that 55" TV with no ads, most consumers will disagree with you and they show it through behavior.
I do wonder if they were to offer exactly that - a version with and another without ads, what would happen. This is not without precedent after all. I paid more for my Kindle so as not to have to be advertised to when I want to read.
Free users of YouTube outnumber YouTube Premium subscribers by an overwhelming number. If no ads isn't worth $10/month, you can bet no ads isn't worth several hundred dollars on each TV purchase.
If most YouTube users were Premium subscribers, it would more than double revenue. Premium subscribers are worth more to Google than free ones are in ads revenue, by a lot. Monetized channels receive orders of magnitude more revenue per view from Premium subscribers than free ones.
I cannot fathom who would be an early adopter of this Vizio TV, but I sure hope it will be someone willing to get a dump of the network traffic to see what might be done to blockade it.
It's the same with smart phones and laptops too. The first feature that seems to have 'worse' specs too is the screen (terrible color gamut and accuracy, only 1080, IPS instead of one of the OLED varieties).
Probably, but there's a caveat they reset the settings anytime. Here, it's been discussed that they'll eagerly connect to unsecure wifi: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350
I think that statement needs the caveat that that thread discussed with the conclusion that it's a myth (which as far as I can tell originated on HN), and that there was one single post on Samsung support about a TV connecting to a neighbour's WiFi, which unless someone can reproduce I think we have to assume was their kids or guests doing at this point.
Just don't connect it to an internet connection. Although, I might add don't buy one that requires you to connect it on first use (I returned a roku a couple years ago because of this BS, since at the time I just wanted to use it to add netflix to my older TV, and it insisted I add a credit card before allowing anything else).
If you've already gone down this path, just block it on your wifi hotspot/etc. I've got a pile of ways I block things, from wifi blocking, nameserver blocking, to full blown firewall rules blocking IP ranges.
Solves untold grief too, no longer do my windows machines update on their schedule, they don't report usage metrics to MS/etc. Same with my LG tv, it doesn't get to talk to LG services except when I allow it (which is rarely). It just has some generic LG backsplash on the left hand side where it has in the past wanted to display ad's (although they backed off it at one point, but by then it was too late and lost its privileges.
All it takes is money. Tradespeople all over the world know how to build a room like this because it’s a construction technique used in hospitals for imaging rooms.
I’ve stood in one before the interior surfaces went up - such an insane amount of copper. They had a guard observing it 24/7.
You have to consider this in the context of an active construction site where material handling equipment is strewn about everywhere. 30 pounds is nothing to a pallet jack or a forklift that can go to a telehandler that can put the load in a pickup truck. A wide variety of power equipment is just sitting around, keyed-alike. Thousands of pounds of copper can be gone in a moment to a clever gang of thieves.
Still not a great ROI for the criminal risk being taken, but the people taking this stuff live in very different circumstances than myself and presumably yourself.
5GHz wavelength = 5.99584916 cm. The spacing of a Faraday cage has to be < 1/10th the wavelength you want to block. So for 5GHz that's 0.599584916 cm or 5.99584916 mm or less.
The cage material has to be made of a conductor like copper or silver. And it would probably have to be grounded too.
A 3m x 3m x 3m room is 54 sq m. You'd need about 791 sheets of the copper 0.63mm mesh + staples to nail is to the walls. Minus the area of the door. Cost about $6,328 + tax.
At 5GHz the skin depth is pretty shallow; in units(1), sqrt(2 / copperconductivity 2 pi 5 GHz mu0) says 0.93 microns. I think you could probably get by with 3 microns of copper vacuum-deposited on Mylar or on fiberglass window screen.
Steel window screen coated in copper might work even better and could be made by electroplating first a nickel flash and then the copper layer, avoiding the expense of vacuum coating. I'm not clear enough on the physics to be sure, and maybe it would be worse, but the skin depth in even ordinary steel is about an order of magnitude smaller because of its magnetic permeability.
"Booster bags" for shoplifting use (ungrounded!) aluminum foil. I think the reason they have to be several layers thick is that anti-shoplifting RFID tags operate at a much lower frequency, and aluminum foil is typically only 10 microns thick.
They don't need much traffic to send tracking data, so they can get a cheap data plan for the planned life time of the device.
They can even add the costs to the price of the device.
They’ll use a mesh network to find a cheap path out. Amazon and Apple already have their own and it’s not going to be long before one starts leasing time.
Tesla cars report their state back to Tesla HQ and have done so for years, this is one of the things they were banking on for their self driving work - the ability to train their systems on millions of miles of actual driving data. I don't know who pays for that connection, but they made it work.
Around 2010 the Amazon Kindle 3G with keyboard had a cellular connection for buying books, and it also had an experimentat web browser with worldwide free internet access.
I don't know who pays but it already happens, it's not new to 5G.
It would be much easier to open up a TV and disconnect the wifi antenna. People don't like this idea, but modern TVs are actually pretty simple and modular.
I used to like Visio as they were a pretty straightforward company selling TVs at better prices than Samsung and Sony. They were simple and cheap and disrupted established players.
This is ridiculous and is so anti-user. I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs.
Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders. Without some Announcement like “we’re going to be making privacy friendly TVs, but customers will be paying more to make up for the lost ad revenue”, it would be pretty bad mismanagement for a company to not show ads somewhere in their consumer TVs when every one of their competitors is doing just that.
It’s downvoted because it’s wrong; It’s a myth. There is no “legal fiduciary duty” to maximize profits. There is a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, but only in the sense of not wanting to be voted off the board and possibly sued if you mislead them. If the whole board agrees on your plan to bank the company on a possible suicide move, you’re fine.
No they really aren’t, this is a common but silly misconception. Managers have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders but there’s a huge amount of latitude in what that means with the only real bright line rules being things like “don’t improperly enrich yourself with company assets”.
If managers want to sell tvs without ads, they absolutely can. If the board (which represents the shareholders) disagrees with that decision, they can fire the managers, but there’s no “law” requiring them to chase profits. That really lets normal greedy bullshit off the hook too easily - laws don’t cause anti consumer behavior, garden variety assholes do because it makes them more money.
> Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders.
This stupid meme needs to die. The management of companies has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of shareholders. That does not imply any legal requirement to maximize profit.
Perhaps it is exaggerated but ‘no ads’ means higher prices (due to lower revenue on the backend), and thus lower sales since people only really purchase TVs based on the shelf price. If the higher price doesn’t make up for lost overall sales revenue, that means lower actual revenue. There’s also the (maybe fictional) concept of selling the most TVs leading to more ad viewers, thus increasing the value your ad platform can provide compared to your competition.
Reputation only matters if it leads to a loss of sales. I’m sure ads don’t have enough impact to drastically lose more money than the ads otherwise make.
As long as they can make a reasonable argument, they’re good.
A legal requirement to maximize profits would be insane. Amazon couldn’t have spent a decade forgoing profits to build up R&D. Chipotle wouLd have to use cheaper chicken. Companies couldn’t donate to causes. It simply doesn’t work that way. (As someone else has pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the Supreme Court agrees.)
It's not exaggerated it's fake. You are obligated not to screw the shareholders not to service any fantasy that could hypothetically enrich them irrespective of long term effects.
To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”
right so the dollar store is obligated to charge $100 for everything because of your 'legally required' meme? That's not the way things work. You can sell things for less profit margin and companies do all the time.
I mean if they must show ads to make money, legally, maybe they need to actually force you to swipe a credit card every time you want to watch? That's more money, they're legally obligated.
Maybe instead of a video stream, you turn on the TV and it just steals your identity and steals your wallet - that's profit, right?
Just because everyone else jumps off a bridge does not make you legally obligated to do the same.
3.3% for LG last quarter, that 2018 number is better than anything they've seen in the last 2 years. Samsung is losing money manufacturing panels, but their reports are a mess.
For comparison, Apple is at 31%, Walmart is at 4.5%.
I was impressed with the thinking about value-per-dollar that went into a Vizio TV that we got from a friend. For instance instead of having six HDMI ports you don't need (or wouldn't need if they didn't burn out so quickly) like you'd have on a Sony or a Samsung there are just two HDMI ports.
I appreciate thin TVs that mount on the wall but the Vizio is a bit thicker and has room for a quality set of speakers that, in my opinion, outperform a Denon soundbar we have kicking around the house.
My take is that from one end to another end somebody thought carefully about what features to put in that would make the TV valuable to users.
Even higher end brands like Samsung are pulling stuff like this.
Market forces demand constant growth, and in a saturated market this means some business unit manager will keep adding more invasive advertising as long as people keep buying the TVs.
I've had good luck with TVs from Sony, which would probably be considered higher end based on price bracket. They ship with near-stock Android TV, don't make a fuss about not being connected to the internet, and allow firmware updates via thumb drive. Have had a couple now that I use with an Apple TV, which is a pairing that works very well.
I wonder if Sony are releasing the Linux source code they run Android on and I wonder if their firmware updates are signed. If they do release source and updates are signed, you could probably install a regular Linux distro with Kodi.
Likewise, but the problem now with the built-in software is that Android TV is getting increasingly user-hostile as well. The major UI update they made which added an uneditable promotional section to the top of the home screen eg.
These cheaper components are perfectly fine for a lot of people's needs. For example many companies buy display panels that failed to meet quality controls at Samsung or LG and package and sell them under their own brands at very steep discounts. Far from being unusable, they usually have minor quality differences like a worse bezel/stand, 5 allowable dead pixels instead of 3, or slightly more backlight bleed. If you can live with that, they are pretty great options to consider. Adding nonsense like advertising and sale of personal data completely kills that upside though.
Originally Vizio was buying the same components but selling for less because they didn’t have the brand name. The quality/price ratio was great when I bought my first 40 inch Vizio like 10-15 years ago.
If at least there was a company selling 'modular' TVs. Want a better processor? Here, switch this component and you're good to go, no need to buy a whole new TV. Want more HDMI inputs? Here are the modules you'll need. Want a LCD screen instead of an OLED one? We got you covered.
Things like this new ad "trend" makes you think the "smart" in "smart TV" was just a reference to their marketing ploy.
I think Toshiba tried to do this with replaceable processor modules. It really has limited consumer value and only lets them simplify production for different markets and upgrades with module swaps. All at the expense of more packaging costs to have extra connectors and housings or access panels.
Bullshit is correct, and the other side of it is that for every extra shiny feature, cost needs to be cut to maintain profit margin, so something else gets shittier.
My fridge has a digital display, always on, so I can calibrate the temperature of the fridge and freezer. This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges.
They cut corners by building the freezer shelves out of as little plastic as possible. Bits of plastic chip off over time, and the drawer itself is held together with tiny plastic clips that invariably break.
> This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges.
The mechanical thermostats in refrigerators are inaccurate and failure prone (after a number of years). A digital thermostat increases life/reliability of the unit, even if it (very slightly) increases power consumption.
Most of these don't have good display characteristics, as far as I can tell.
I wanted 4k120 444 10bit w/a decent contrast ratio and couldn't find any hotel TVs approaching that, but plenty of consumer """smart""" stuff.
I ended up getting a flagship sony TV, which looks pretty good... when it's not busy crashing or glitching out due to its embarrassingly terrible software. Of course I don't give it Internet access; that seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
I'm getting very disappointed in Sony stuff recently. Amazing hardware company, damn awful software company. My mx4 headphones are amazing, the app is pure pain and there's no way to adjust settings without the app. Oh, and it's mobile only so there's no way to adjust settings from my laptop at all.
"Recently", would be ~10 years. There was a time when the particular customers I work with consistently had Sony at the top of their lists (especially tvs).
Nowadays?...any cheap crap will do.
I suspect China will swoop in with brands that offer 'dumb' appliances that just work. Quickly moving up-market to the high end, and eventually displacing all these brands.
I liked my old Sceptre TV, but after 8+ years it recently stopped powering on. The identically-sized replacement has sound quality that is absolutely horrid... and by that I mean my cell phone sounds better!
Okay, a sound bar might be a reasonable investment but... my new Sceptre TV doesn't do HDMI-ARC, which means a soundbar is a big ongoing hassle, for the life of the TV.
I still give Sceptre credit that they have VGA inputs, and handle DVI converted to HDMI properly (separate audio input), which it seems all other manufacturers just shrug off and don't care to support, even if their know-nothing support reps may tell you otherwise.
The Visio business model was always to sell units at a cheaper price (ie lower initial margin) than competitors then monetize the user post-sale via data and adverts. If you bought a Visio television and didn't realize this, you didn't do your research.
It's a legitimate offering in the market for those who don't want to spend much. I purchased a Visio TV for my bedroom, where I only use Plex and therefore expected very little interaction with their ad platform (I was right).
Not sure if the 2022 models have changed but I have the flagship 20/21 Vizio and it works 100% fine with no internet connection. I haven't ever accepted the EULA so even with a network connection it displays no ads or obnoxious bloatware.
It's dumb but the best option ATM is to buy the best TV for the money and just use it with an Nvidia Shield. When TVs start locking down basic functions behind EULAs and/or use built-in cellular connections then we'll have a huge issue.
Does this mean it can identify the content being delivered over HDMI ? Not sure if the live TV example here is through their own internal tuner or using a cable box
I believe the tech being used very literally scans the stuff being shown on screen. I have read about this tech in the past. It also raises privacy concerns, as if you watch old family movies or some such, the TV could be beaming metadata of that back to the mothership for analysis. Creepy times we live in.
Smart TV SoCs usually have a capture engine that taps into the video stream being sent to the screen after HDCP decryption and allows it to be DMA'd directly to main RAM [1], and from there analyzed and sent to the manufacturer's ad partner of choice. As long as the firmware does not allow the end user to access these decrypted frames in any way, the TV will still pass HDCP certification with no issues.
As somebody that owns a Roku TV, I’m hoping that somebody releases some software to disable this sort of stuff altogether. This is absolutely fucking bullshit.
IMO automatic content recognition, and indeed any attempt by a TV to recognize or react to content or anything a user says or does, without GDPR-style genuine consent, should be outright illegal. Possibly even a felony. (Wiretapping, anyone?)
Assuming streaming TV via Sling/Hulu/ATT TV/YT TV, nVidia shield has a DRM module for watching content, however such hardware attestation compatibility is never a given and can spontaneously break[0]. Otherwise, you can get a TV antenna if you’re fine with the reduced selection that provides.
The general premise, though, is to get a non-smart ‘commercial’ TV without ads and use your own streaming box, maybe even a PC (with a proper OS-GPU-hdmi DRM chain), to control your experience.
The german evening news are available as free live stream via their android TV app, and outside of that, we just don't watch live TV.
But if I needed live TV I'd just connect a satellite receiver box to our AV receiver as second input, just like we've connected our Switch, Wii, N64 and the emulator RPi.
Console gaming monitors also set a minimum bar of supporting things like 120hz refresh rates, HDR, enhanced VRR ranges, and lower input+processing+output lag. It's disingenuous to blanket assign any cost difference between a specialized product and a low end product to money made from ads. Yes, ads help subsidize low end TVs but it's nowhere near offsetting most of the overall cost.
The real best way to avoid this is disable it in the settings and filter the device on your network then use something like a Shield TV for the smarts, unless you particularly want your TV to be a console gaming monitor in which case that's a fine substitute just not an initial assumption to avoid ads. So far (and likely forever given the average consumer) it has not been cost effective to serve these ads out of band and jurisdictional requirements on requiring opt-out (or defaulting to opt-in) have been getting better not worse on top of that.
Note on something like the Shield (and regardless of display) if you truly want a 100% ad free experience you will need to unlock the bootloader and either patch the official OS or install a stock Android TV image. Either of these options will disable official access to certain content/qualities but at that point you're probably avoiding those sources anyways as such content sources are themselves covered in ads. That or an OTA adapter for non-smart content in which case you're still going to get ads OTA, but at least not additional ones from your viewing device.
> Console gaming monitors also set a minimum bar of supporting things like 120hz refresh rates, HDR, enhanced VRR ranges, and lower input+processing+output lag. It's disingenuous to blanket assign any cost difference between a specialized product and a low end product to money made from ads. Yes, ads help subsidize low end TVs but it's nowhere near offsetting most of the overall cost.
That's true, but those are features you'll want anyway. You'll want 24-120Hz VRR to watch both cinematic films and content like Gemini at the appropriate framerate, you'll want proper HDR support to get a cinema-like movie quality, and you'll want reduced input lag for when you connect your gaming console to it.
The NVIDIA Shield is actually perfectly ad-free in my experience (I've got the Shield 2019 non-pro), but the recent Android update forced some ads on the new Google TV launcher (luckily you can disable that just fine). I'm not sure what you mean regarding ads otherwise.
> The real best way to avoid this is disable it in the settings and filter the device on your network then use something like a Shield TV for the smarts
That's actually a bad recommendation, because then you'll still have to deal with the painfully slow startup times of a smart TV whenever you want to watch content and the TV actually modifying the image (most cheaper TVs don't offer a mode that avoids sharpening/softening/interpolating/color correcting/etc). And regular TVs often don't allow color calibration with an external probe either.
> That's true, but those are features you'll want anyway.
I mean sure, people WANT them. Generally that's not why they are buying budget Vizio TVs though, it's because they are low cost. The tradeoff is they don't do all of these things. Get a normal TV that does and suddenly the price differential is going to change dramatically.
> The NVIDIA Shield is actually perfectly ad-free in my experience (I've got the Shield 2019 non-pro), but the recent Android update forced some ads on the new Google TV launcher (luckily you can disable that just fine). I'm not sure what you mean regarding ads otherwise.
Well, as you say, when you turn on the device the first thing you get is home screen ads. Taking that back the first thing you get when you turn it on is offers for sponsored apps and then some pre-installed ones anyways, after that initial setup you get home screen ads when you turn it on. Then you get whatever ads are in the service apps themselves. Take for example the default apps Amazon Prime and Hulu, the former gives in app banner ads for paid items based on your ad profile and the latter will push anything from TV like ads down to just service upgrade tie ins depending on your subscription level.
> That's actually a bad recommendation, because then you'll still have to deal with the painfully slow startup times of a smart TV whenever you want to watch content
I recommend either turning the TV on at the store or watching a review before buying it. The TVs I have display the picture quicker than my pg32uqx gaming monitor but there are many TVs that won't. Similarly there are many monitors with garbage initialization times as well. Both monitor and TV are allowed to enter deep sleep mode in my case rather than hard power off, each was a god awful wait otherwise.
> and the TV actually modifying the image (most cheaper TVs don't offer a mode that avoids sharpening/softening/interpolating/color correcting/etc). And regular TVs often don't allow color calibration with an external probe either.
I recently got a dirt cheap $300 43" 4k TV for the Niece/Nephew recently, game mode and a few settings disabled most of the processing. As far as color calibration with an external probe... refer back to the price, I'm not expecting the display pass HDR1000 validation with a 98%+ wide gamut accuracy I'm expecting it to not be $900 and it's not just default built in ads removing 2/3 of the price it's the real market space differentiator - cut corners to save cost.
Companies go where the money is, this is unfortunately where the money is.
Samsung sells "commercial signage displays" which are kind of dumb TVs. The BE55T-H for example is 55in 4k for $600, stripped down OS / basically just HDMI in. BE65T-H is 65in for $800.
They're also intended for always-on semi-static content from what I understand, which is nice.
> They're also a bit better displays given they're intended for always-on semi-static content from what I understand.
While perhaps true, the extra price you’re paying is all in how they need to reach the same margins without that TV showing ads or otherwise having smart features they can sell.
But that’s the base price people would compare against. A 50% premium to get rid of that creepy stuff is pretty heavy, though it may be less for higher end stuff or newer models.
Yep, and I know TVs are cheap now because they’re always brought up to explain why the official inflation numbers seem lower than actual experience. “Okay, yeah, food, transportation, health care, and housing, sure, they went up… but if you pointlessly destroyed your TV and needed to buy a new one — whoa, Nelly, you’d be sittin’ pretty!”
Those prices seem extremely reasonable. I will be looking at them for my next tv purchase, even though its probably more than a few years off. I just hope they keep the line
Whether that's actually true would depend on the picture quality. Paying $800 for a TV that has similar picture quality to a $300 walmart black friday TV is not "reasonable" at all.
And the money is only there is the customers are still there.
If they're getting up and walking away with their money (or even demanding it returned for a loss of value), an anti-consumer decision isn't so easy to justify.
I'm never going to buy a TV that tracks what I watch, let alone one that exploits that information to advertise to me.
The firmware updates could come over a TV broadcast at some point.
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs, so that is another thing to worry about.
There's been talk in the past about delivering data to STBs via closed-captioning side channels [1]. I don't know if it ever was actually done, but I've got to imagine there's even more room in modern broadcasts for this sort of thing.
Likely, assuming your router is intercepting and forwarding all port 53 traffic to it (since they tend to hard-code a DNS server). If they hard code an encrypted DNS client, a custom encryption solution or DOH or otherwise, it can’t be defeated via the network and you’re better off not supporting these practices financially by purchasing the product.
Usually not with a default pihole setup. Most smart TVs hardcode a dns server of 8.8.8.8, or one the company runs (rarely), which gets around a default pihole setup.
Why would I purchase something that is actively hostile to my interests so much that I don't want it to connect to the internet? Doesn't sound like anything I'd want in my house.
It seems to me that if you stop paying companies working against your interest money, or only pay them money for products that aren't against your interest, you're probably going to do a lot better in the long run in terms of protecting your interest from unethical corporate raiders.
No. Because the setup screen you get demands that you connect to the network and refuses to let you do anything with your dumb old dvd player until you give it network access.
I wonder how many buyers will regret that purchase…
It’s amazing to me that anyone would knowingly be ok with their tv spying on what content is being showed to serve ads, somethings that literally no-one except advertisers asked for.
The privacy implication of these systems is huge. Profiles about viewing habits can tell a lot about someone’s political and religious affiliations.
Having nebulous third parties manage these databases, probably badly, risking leaks, providing ad and government agencies yet another intimate way to monitor and profile citizens…
I hope some government body like maybe some EU body is going to highlight the risks these technologies pose to all of us.
Samsung does the same, and it seems the race is on for manufacturers to provide these ‘features’ as a way to remain competitive and get additional revenue streams.
Consumers tolerating this and just trying to block the ads locally in their house — this is like ignoring the fact that the manufacturer has stuck a huge sex toy in the center of your TV, and wrapping it with a napkin to continue watching.
I was pretty much committed to never buying a Vizio product just based on my experience with their quality and other reports about their "smart" embedded software, but this pretty much seals it. Samsung has been getting pretty bold here too.
I really prefer the free market to correct this kind of abuse, but I'm not sure how that works when they're all doing it. Theoretically everyone could just stop buying TVs but that's not going to happen. So it's just death by a thousand papercuts (abuses) I guess. Very sad.
I seem to recall Samsung sending me notification banners on my Galaxy phone several years ago, around the holiday season, to buy more Samsung shit. From that moment on, I disliked them.
> Theoretically everyone could just stop buying TVs but that's not going to happen
It has happened which is why manufacturers are struggling now and doing nonsense like this to allow them to sell TVs at the old market prices from back when a TV wouldn’t last that long.
Considering the executives at these companies are mindless automatons, they will view declining sales as a signal that they need more "smart" features (ie: third-party integrations to provide alternative revenue streams) rather than an indicator that they need fewer "smart" features.
I've never owned anything but a dumb TV so excuse what probably is a dumb question but if you buy a smart TV is there a reason you have to use the "smart" features? Why not just never connect it to the network? (Then use an external streaming box and treat it as a dumb tv.)
Often you must connect it to download updates and set it up. For my last TV I even had to make a Samsung account for god knows why just to set it up. After that I think you can disconnect from WiFi and use it just fine. You can also turn off the system UI if you have an Apple TV or similar so that it goes straight into Apple TV rather than showing the pre-installed apps.
My Samsung Frame TV has never been connected to the internet (and never will be), but still shows constant nag messages. Not only do I have to not fall prey to them, but also must hope that anyone else using the TV does not lest I get ads foisted upon me. I will never buy another Samsung consumer product under any circumstances.
I've got a samsung tv that asks to set up an account, but I can still apply firmware updates with a USB stick, and the TV works fine if you ignore the prompts, and you pretty much don't see the prompts if you use a 3rd party remote that asks for specific inputs.
Google tv on my nVidia shield is now showing ads on the Home Screen. I don’t think it’s nVidias doing though, just that Google decided to show ads. I should be able to return it, just like my wink that was supposedly free for life…
This won’t be the case as soon as companies figure out how to embed always-on 5G cellular modems. They may not have the bandwidth to do software updates, but they can probably squeeze analytics into even the weakest cell reception spots.
Digital TVs are driven by software and don't really have a "dumb" mode. You only get the options that the software permits you. In at least one case I've seen, the TV remote doesn't work if you don't connect the TV to the Internet and activate it, so you can't select inputs.
I actually bought a Vizio TV years ago on the basis that it was sold with extremely unobtrusive software -- it had Chromecast support and a configuration/remote app you could put on your phone, but otherwise it did what you told it to do and stayed out of your way. They actually released a firmware upgrade six months or so later that added a crappy smart TV interface that has gotten increasingly crappy and intrusive over the years. It was infuriating. I had no way to opt out.
That's wild, I have my vizio completely disconnected from the internet and mostly use chromecast/ps4/pc devices that are connected to it.
I guess I'm willing to try smart tv features but the vizio kept getting into broken blank screen states. it works perfectly fine as a dumb device though.
These are the perils of giving your TV network access. I have a smart TV but you couldn't tell. I use the power button, input, left and right to select the source, and volume, and that's it. And as far as those functions are concerned, this TV is functioning identically to one from 15 years ago. Yes the remote has a button that says 'netflix' on it, but I don't lose sleep over it.
I can't speak for all Samsung TVs, but we recently purchased a Samsung 75-in Q70R and it has never been connected to the Internet. Works fine. The only time we use the TV remote for anything is volume control and selecting which HDMI input to show.
This is precisely what I do. Plug it in for power, connect receiver and let the receiver handle the rest. Xbox, Nvidia Shield, anything else comes from the receiver. My TV is a display and that’s it.
The menu is annoying (Samsungs) and complains about not being “setup” but it works just fine.
I don’t understand this take. I think it's pretty clear a lot of people use Netflix and YouTube and it's incredibly obvious that they wouldn't want to add an extra $100 for a lesser (read: non-integrated) experience to use it on their TV when the TV can do it natively. Of course I'm going to connect my TV to the internet, that's the only thing I use it for.
I think the only solution here would be for appliance vendors to have a "nutrition box" for privacy and advertising, so the user can pick the least obtrusive TV and the vendor cannot just add ads later.
But in the US I don't see that happening this decade.
I've seen the performance, advertising, bugs, and connectivity issues that happen on these smart TVs and in no way are those plug-in devices a "lesser" experience. An Apple TV interface just works and keeps rocking incredibly well. Once you've got one, you can use their one remote for their own controls as well as common TV ones (turning it off/on, volume). You pay a premium to never have to interact with the cruddy TV interface again.
You get this take because the solution that works right now is to never connect the TV to the internet, and instead do all of your streaming through an Apple TV (or a Pi Kodi box or something).
I’ve never had a smart tv that ran Netflix, etc natively better than a Roku or Fire Tv. Non-integrated means nothing here. You press a button and get Netflix whether it’s on the Roku or the slower integrated Samsung software.
> I think it's pretty clear a lot of people use Netflix and YouTube and it's incredibly obvious that they wouldn't want to add an extra $100 for a lesser (read: non-integrated) experience to use it on their TV when the TV can do it natively. Of course I'm going to connect my TV to the internet, that's the only thing I use it for.
A decent Roku can be had for $25 on discount. I think it is $35 regular price. And I'll bet it's better than what most smart TVs offer. I haven't used modern smart TVs, but several years ago, the inbuilt apps sucked. Netflix is more likely going to update its Roku app than some app on some TV. Indeed, those friends of mine who bought smart TVs 10 years ago got burnt by this within 2-3 years of purchase.
The only smart TV I used is a Bravia 4K from 2019 and I was able to install Kodi and side load additional extensions. It was good for me. If Sony stops updating it, I think it’s fine to add a dongle to extend its lifespan. But yeah I was thinking of more expensive pieces like Apple TV.
The native TV experience is the lesser experience in this case though, and even my non tech peers agree. These devices are so underpowered they scarcely change the volume without input lag. Most everyone I know uses something like an xbox, apple tv, or fire stick, because chances are the vizio netflix app is terrible, and they might not even offer an app for some other streaming service you buy. The only time I've seen someone personally use a smart tv native app was when it was a tv actually made by roku that integrated the roku device.
I own a "smart" TV (solely because none of the shops in my area sold dumb ones) but have never connected it to the Internet and never installed any software updates (nor do I ever intend to). It remains a screen. I use an Apple TV and another set-top box from my internet provider for streaming.
Some TVs deliver features they've promised through updates. My 2018 Sony needed an update to support Dolby Vision. More recent models needed updates for HDMI 2.1 support.
There are also bugs that get fixed through updates. (HDMI CEC is notorious for this -- an update might fix something but break something else.)
These days even HDMI has Ethernet on it so you have to make sure your streaming box doesn't export that to the TV. Or your TV could connect to your neighbor's WiFi or maybe the TV has a 4G/5G modem in it.
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs. That could result in a hacked TV that then starts attacking your streaming box to enable networking etc.
The TV could ship with cellular modems, and download the ads even if not connected to Wifi. While not done today, it could be how it operates in the not-too distant future.
One reason might be if the TV channels are delivered over IP to an app running on the TV. One could move the app to a streaming box, but that would be largely functionally equivalent since it would still require the same underlying platform.
There are dumb TV alternates, such as the ones mentioned in this thread, and there are manufacturers which are better in this regard.
If people are going to prioritize cost while making their purchase decision, it is obvious that the manufacturers are going to see how much they can push.
If people stop buying such TVs, they will stop. So, stop buying such TVs.
I'm sure you all stand ready to make slippery slope arguments, but an inducement at the end of a live TV broadcast for the user to continue watching the same series by other means does not strike me as either novel or objectionable. All streaming services will prompt you to continue watching the next installment of serialized content at the end. How is this actually different from that?
Just another unwelcome participant trying to get some of that sweet sweet attention-economy cash, as if there weren't enough vying for that spot already. In specific answer to your question, I'll just point you to your first sentence correctly identifying this as one of those slippery slope situations that the fallacy is named after.
Isn't there a pretty obvious middle ground for broadcasters, advertisers and TV manufacturers to monetize? Smart TVs can track watching behavior and use it to better target ads placed into ad slots already in the broadcast. It's exactly what YouTube and most streaming audio does. Networks can broadcast shows with markers instead of baked-in ads. TVs can request appropriate length ads based on viewing and get more money per slot without viewers seeing more ads.
It's crazy that me jailbreaking a device voids its warranty, but companies can make these kinds of updates without any real consequence.
Customers should have the right to return a device any time if they don't like a particular update to the product. I know it's drastic, but if companies can turn what should be a basic device into an amorphous system that starts serving ads without the end-users consent after purchase, that should constitute a material change to the end product that was not appropriately advertised.
This is the exact kind of thing that consumer protection laws should be able to cover.
I don't want to return my TV, I want to sue them for the theft of my functional TV and replacement with a superficially similar but vastly inferior alternative.
If I buy a Google Home from JB Hifi I am not Google's customer, I am JB Hifi's customer. If they don't want to deal with a huge load of refund claims for Google products they are free not to sell them.
If the retailer is the only available target, they're a fair target. Make it clear that these products will cost them money if they try to sell them, and they'll stop selling them.
A class action which may cost the manufacturer 10s of millions of dollars. Yeah, you only get a small check. Yeah, the lawyers get a lot. But what other remedy does the average consumer have against this type of subtle but abusive behavior.
> I don't want to return my TV, I want to sue them for the theft of my functional TV and replacement with a superficially similar but vastly inferior alternative.
So you want to file a lawsuit for damages that would be limited to the value of your TV (possibly reduced by the value of the substitute), instead of getting a refund of the purchase price of your TV?
Other than enriching a lawyer, what benefit would that provide you?
Maybe. I think it brings about more schadenfreude to just see their sales tank when they realize that maybe people don't want their tv owner to show pop ups on what should simply be a means of presenting content from other services.
Their sales won't tank, because this will start to get rolled out across the industry. They might take a hit for being the first mover, but once this is normalized they will ride the same gravy train as everyone else.
This is classic industrial organization economics. These companies know that they are all in tacit collusion agreements with each other. It's not hard to set up "repeated prisoner's dilemma"-type games where collusion is the dominant strategy.
Basically, as long as companies know that it's in their long-term best interest to all do the same thing, then they will all do the same thing, even if it might yield some extra profit in the short term to deviate.
The only way to stop this garbage is to make it so bad for companies to engage in this behavior that the costs outweigh the benefits. Given the above situation, where the supply of alternative goods is likely to dry up, the only other forms of recourse are punitive court damages or prohibitive policy/law from a suitably powerful government.
that's certainly possible, but I don't think it's an inevitability. For example, Samsung tried the exact same thing in the mobile space, despite holding a much more dominant position in the market than Vizio in TV's. But the rest of the competition didn't follow suit. Even amongst billion dollar coporations, a prisoner dilemma still has that allure to suddenly have one "defector" (or more) turn around and suddenly proclaim "hey we aren't doing X bad thing!". Technical details may go over consumer's heads more of the time, but ads is a near universal experience in a first world country. Marketing something as "we don't have ads" would be understood quickly.
But maybe it's just my cynicism of the modern court system that makes the suing solution sound like a waste of an individual's time and money, only to end up with nil in terms of industry impact. If that user is a very outspoken millionaire ready to fight, I welcome it. But I'm unsure if that sort of user is around these parts making comments dreaming of such opportunities.
Vendors that have a large amount of returns are often penalized by the store. Returning the product (if possible) would have a much bigger impact than you getting a $10 merchandise credit to cover the value of the “change in functionality”. You’d also have more money to buy a different TV…
But having to return something is an impact on me, and they know that statistically most of I will probably not bother.
There should be some sort of penalty for inflicting the damage after the sale besides merely nulling the sale.
Now I have to find another tv, and until I finish the return and shop and install process, I have either a defective tv or no tv, which screwed up any plans I made involving it.
Meanwhile, I did not get to mess with the money I paid for the tv after I paid it. It went into the manufacturers posession and I never got to touch it again, take some back, change the interest rate it's earning, change what stocks or equipment it was spent on...
Being able to return for refund is great, but it doesn't actually make you whole, and the damage done to your property and your use of your property was deliberate and unnecessary. (not an accident or honest failure or act of god, but a knowing choice to damage property owned by someone else.)
Getting the money back and no more is like getting punched in the face, and all you get for that is you get to make them stop punching you in the face.
And the damage may or may not be a mere trivial annoyance.
This is a contrived example, but ALL examples are contrived and yet countless real examples exist and happen all the time, so the contrived nature is irrelevant:
What if for example the tv were used as part of a recording process monitoring a long-running experiment that was either very expensive to set up, or whose results are important, not just money important but Important, and can't be replicated except by starting over which may require time no one has like years, and the banner ad obscured a critical part of the image and blew the whole process?
You can't just say "you shouldn't construct something so important with consumer parts". It's true but it doesn't get the property damager off the hook, since it's still a fact that the damage didn't happen by itself as a natural proprerty of the fact that a device was sourced from BestBuy, the damage happened because the manufacturer chose to actively cause the damage.
Actually, what you probably want is a mass direct action, not endless individual lawsuits, but, first, you want a legal rule of recovery far better than you would get even for actually taking back the TV under current law.
Class action normally means you get even a smaller nothing than you would get in a direct action, but, if you win, your lawyers, despite the reduced per-plaintiff recovery, get many times more than they would in a direct action. (It also means that, for N plaintiffs, the defendant, if they lose pays an amount x where 1 << x << N times the amount they would pay with one plaintiff.)
Not in small claims court. At least not in my jurisdiction. You can seek monetary damages in (presumably) any jurisdiction but not necessarily return of property.
>I want to sue them for the theft of my functional TV and replacement with a superficially similar but vastly inferior alternative.
You're free to sue them, but I suspect the lawsuit is going to get tossed almost immediately. Do you really think a multi-billion dollar company is going to expose themselves to a theft lawsuit?
Jailbreaking a device doesn’t void its warranty in many/most places; consumer protection laws override those illegal warranty lines that say otherwise. If you ever have real trouble getting something fixed on your device just reset it to a non-jailbroken stare and they won’t know the software was ever modified.
I think they provide the tools to jailbreak. With a kernel exploit to trigger it may be possible to bypass, but then it becomes a cat and mouse game, which would presumably be easier for the vendor to win (detect any program running as root, any root kits, etc, all which can be added in surprise patches). Plus, if you provide an official jailbreak, that removes some incentive for security researchers to discover new jailbreaks.
I comment this under any similar threads in the past and will continue to for any Australians who don’t know, but this would be a valid reason for a return/refund under Australian law. A company can’t remove or “functionally change” features after you’ve bought a product, or if they do, you’re allowed to return it for a refund.
I’ve done this in the past with a few different pieces of tech already, such as Bose speakers and a Samsung TV.
In both NZ and Australia all returns/refunds and most warranty claims can be done through the retailer who sold you the product. Part of doing business in these markets is being the middle man between the manufacturer and the end customer.
Smart phones are ~annually getting major updates that change the functionality of the device. You typically can't revert back either. Some people might not like how the new method of doing something is different than the old.
However, you are not forced to apply the update. So that's a bit different.
It works for all technology, including phones, home appliances, everything. If it has a feature advertised/included on launch, and then they remove or change that feature enough that it no longer works "as advertised", you get an instant refund, even if outside the warranty.
We also get longer warranties than most other countries. Even if a brand says you only get a 1 year warranty, our consumer protection laws say a warranty has to apply for "as long as seems reasonable", so for most technology that's 2 years.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has this to say:
Warranties are separate from your automatic consumer guarantees. The consumer guarantees which apply regardless of any warranties suppliers sell or give to you, apply for a reasonable time depending on the nature of the goods or services. This means consumer guarantees may continue to apply after the time period for the warranty has expired.*
You can ask for a replacement or refund if the problem with the product is major.
What is a major problem?
A product or good has a major problem when:
it has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it
it has multiple minor problems that, when taken as a whole, would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about them
it is significantly different from the sample or description
it is substantially unfit for its common purpose and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time
it doesn’t do what you asked for and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time; or
it is unsafe.
There is no specific time when the consumer guarantees no longer apply to products. They may apply even after the manufacturer's warranty period has past. The length of the consumer guarantee period depends on a number of factors including:
how much time has passed since the consumer bought the product
the type of product
how a consumer is likely to use the product
the length of time for which it is reasonable for the product to be used
the amount of use it could reasonably be expected to tolerate before the failure becomes noticeable.
I had a MacBook die just outside of warranty. It was purchased in Australia. I was overseas and spoke with support who said have to pay to fix. Flew to Australia and had it replaced under consumer protection law.
Bose changed (some of?) their home speakers to "require" you to use their app to set them up or use Spotify/etc, where you use to be able to just cast directly to them. It effectively turned smart speakers into dumb bluetooth speakers unless you did it all from inside their app. I don't want to use their app, and I didn't need to before, and while it was outside warranty the store had no problems refunding me.
I was also one of the people who bought a Samsung TV that didn't have ads, then suddenly had ads. That also got me an instant refund with no questions.
In both cases I printed out a copy of the product website where they published the changed features (eg the changelog or PR release or whatever I could find) and I also printed off a couple forums/media-articles talking about the changes. The stores didn't question it or have any issues with refunding me, I guess they just then file with the manufacturer for their own refund.
Does the law seem to discourage these types of updates? Are there any know products that didn’t get an update like this just in Australia because of the law?
How did you get the TV to the store? I assume you didnt still have the original box lying around? Seems pretty dangerous for the TV’s panel to move it without the box.
In the United States there's the Magnuson-Moss warranty act which (among other things) places the burden on the manufacturer to prove that your miscare caused the failure; they can't simply say "you jailbroke the firmware, no warranty for you!", nor can they say "you broke that seal, no warranty!", nor can they say "you didn't install a Dodgerific oil filter in your Grand Caravan, so no, we're not going to warranty your spun main bearing" (however, nothing stops them from saying "that oil filter you installed does not have an anti-drainback valve like our oil filter does, thus your engine did not receive lubrication as quickly as it should each time it was started, so that's why your engine is damaged, and we're not going to warranty that."
From Wikipedia:
> The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.
The MM act also provides for awarding attorney's fees in a lawsuit against a manufacturer for violations of the act. Pretty sweet.
Separately, there are implied warranties of merchantability and fitness under the uniform commercial code.
US customers are almost completely ignorant of this. It really steams my cabbage when I see people heap praise on a company for warrantying an item that failed horribly, just outside the warranty period, and was an item that is usually quite durable and long-lasting.
Does any of this cover the scenario of a customer applying an irreversible manufacturer's update that leads to the product no longer performing every aspect of what was originally advertised? The notion of "damage while in the possession of the consumer" gets a bit murky... I'd try to argue that the consumer temporarily placed the device into the manufacturer's possession during the update process, but I'm not sure if that would hold up.
Similarly, my Sony TV updated and now freezes when I try to watch Netflix (I have to unplug it from mains). I hate that I can't return it because it's not in warranty, but this isn't the TV breaking, it's Sony deliberately ruining it.
The warranty is irrelevant. If Sony (or whoever it was) sent an employee to your house to break your TV, you would sue them. The fact that they broke your TV via the internet doesn’t change that. The size of the loss would probably be the price of a new TV, so you would qualify for small–claims court rather than the normal civil court.
Well, seems Sony TVs have lots of issue related with Apps. Mine had tones of problems with YouTube. Didn't know that we could actually try to return it then. Was thinking of get a new one and kids cracked the screen. So we got a Samsung. In general we are happy with it but there is one thing drove me nuts: there is no dedicated button to switch video sources.
As long as it can show images and play sound correctly, those are really non-issues as I'm using Android TV boxes anyway. So disconnect the TV from internet and use a TV box instead, all issue resolved.
This is the precise sentiment that I've had each time I've found PlayStation wants to update itself. With each update, I found the device I purchased to be worth less. If silicon could be depressed, I'd call it Sony.
I’m usually against any legislation for government interfering in a free marketplace but this I can get behind. It won’t be a loss for the vendor since they get their TV back, just teaches them a lesson to not fuck with my stuff.
One question though, “liking” something is subjective and ripe for abuse. Use the TV for 5 years and then return it back because consumer wants to take unfair advantage of the law.
I’m curious, why are you usually against government interference given that you’ve apparently managed to identify at least one instance in which it is a benefit to the consumer?
My own view on regulation of markets is that it is just an incorporation of externalities into the market (better reflecting the actual “costs”)
Because it usually leads to terrible implementation. Lawmakers have very little clue about technology, have you see our Congressmen (assuming you're American)?
No one thinks about externalities or loopholes. The entire house-of-cards is built for better polling and public approval, not about actually improving anything.
Ultimately public loses, politicians gain polling points, and corporations exploit loopholes that are designed into the system.
But HN usually never fails to have a kneejerk reaction to any discomfort with "let's legislate it".
Worth noting that a lot of HN lives in Europe which seems to manage to legislate these things a lot better. My own view is that the US failings in this area are in large part the fault of the “small government, no regulations” crowd hamstringing legislation and giving lobbying groups a chance to influence proceedings. If government jobs were considered higher status (a cultural issue) then there likely wouldn’t be nearly as much corruption.
Not to be that person, but the free marketplace doesn't exist. All markets are legislated, and government picks winners and losers all the time, and that's not inherently bad.
I am fine with legislation that improves competition. Usually safety as well but that is misused (California cancer warnings) and ulterior motives hides behind "It's for the children".
We should question anyone that wants to implement legistation without proper debate and vigilence. Instead, we are frothing for legislation at every opportunity, but I don't see solid public debate about it. Revolving door in DC is spinning faster by the day, but no one seems to care.
Unregulated markets are very rarely ‘free’. Without government interference we ussually end up with a monopoly/oligoply who do whatever they and basically start acting like the government.
Back in the early 70s (the Vietnam War was still on) my father was working for a glass company that made TV tubes (among other products).
He told me that TV manufacturers knew how to make TV screens so thin and light you could hang them on the wall like a picture. He said they weren't bringing them to market because they were making plenty of money selling cathode-ray tubes.
The first LCD laptops rolled along into shops about 1990, but it was at least 2000 before flat-panel TVs appeared.
TV manufacturers have been in cartel-mode for at least 50 years.
Laptop screens can get away with poor range of viewing angle because they typically aim directly at the viewer. The same isn't true for TV screens. I'm not saying there wasn't a conspiracy, but there also weren't good viewing angles in those 90s laptops.
people underappreciate how much big-box stores are willing to take returns. if you bought a TV at wal-mart and years later it started showing ads, you can take it back.
smaller retailers might not have the same terms with their vendors, but for the big ones they can and will pass that through to the original vendor, and that stuff is all tracked. return rates are a big metric that vendors use to measure customer satisfaction and figure out what they can get away with.
I know someone who kept “updating” their TV every year by taking advantage of Costco’s generous return policy. After the 4th time, they let him know they won’t be doing it anymore — I don’t know if that was a whole-store change or it applied specifically to him.
Costco was saying they wouldn't do it for that person any more. It's still very much their policy to take back returns for products you don't like or that broke.
You just can't abuse the policy. It may take them years to detect that abuse, but they'll stop you when they do.
> people underappreciate how much big-box stores are willing to take returns. if you bought a TV at wal-mart and years later it started showing ads, you can take it back.
source? walmart's return policy explicitly says the return period is 90 days.
source is working at various big-box stores, as well as returning things to them. the official return policy has little bearing on what the employees are empowered to do.
policy is the least they can do. if you're being a jerk and the want to get rid of you, they can quote policy. if they want to help, they can.
Alternatively Walmart just could threaten Vizio that they’ll stop stocking Vizio TVs if they don’t stop doing shit like this. Cheap TVs are a commodity it’s not like Walmart couldn’t easily replace them with some other supplier. And it’s not like Walmart directly benefits from these ads.
yeah, this is why it works. wal-mart has more power than you do. when you return a TV to wal-mart, they aren't taking the hit. they're turning around and requesting credit from vizio.
and then when they make their next round of stocking decisions, they're looking at vizio return rates and negotiating accordingly - either ordering less product, or requesting lower prices.
And naturally, if they are offended or upset at the product too (ads?! after you bought it?!), they may become your advocate... and go well beyond just being nice and helpful.
> the official return policy has little bearing on what the employees are empowered to do.
Employees may be empowered but that doesn't mean they'll help. It's a lot of trouble to take your TV off the wall, get all the accessories together, and cart it in to the store. If the employee on duty doesn't feel like helping, you're out of luck.
I wonder if someone can take this to small claims court over this. At best the company will take the TV back, at worst you can approach the local TV station to publicize this issue.
how will the local news station feel when they discover that the TV can show ads during the local news? Possibly overwriting the local ads?* And the local news doesn't get a cut?
* most of local news is just "native advertising" anyway, like that piece on the latest kitchen shelves or the upcoming "fleet week" or the local basketball team's star.
Odious as I think this feature is, I would hope that the local tv channels would not have a leg to stand on (same reason I can run an ad blocker — the sender doesn’t have the right to control how I watch). But they can whip up local opinion.
> Customers should have the right to return a device any time if they don't like a particular update to the product. I know it's drastic
That's not nearly drastic enough. Customers should have the right to know what potential updates to the product do in advance, to refuse any particular update to the product, and to roll it back if they don't like it, as well as making any other update to the product they want. That's how products have worked for thousands of years, it's how computer products work when they're running free software, and it's an absolute bare minimum to preserve basic liberal rights like freedom of speech and freedom of association. A future world where X Æ A-Xii Musk can have your Tesla car reprogrammed to scan what you say in the car for possible anti-Tesla sentiment is not a free world.*
The fact that even getting your money back after manufacturers vandalize your product after purchase to spy on you sounds "drastic" to many of us is an indication of how far we've fallen into a dystopian future even Stallman wasn't pessimistic enough to imagine 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, I don't know how we can get these rights in practice without requiring all software in consumer products to be open source/free software, and the software industry is currently organized in a way that is extremely hostile to that course of action. To a significant extent it wouldn't require positive action by regulators; merely refusing to enforce copyright on software would get us most of the way there. Someone would still have to figure out how to update the Vizio Flash chip and reverse-engineer the Vizio drivers, while a successfully enforced GPLv3 would require Vizio to help them, but at least without software copyright they could do it without any fear of legal repercussions. And Linux isn't under GPLv3, iOS isn't under any GPL, and enforcement of even the weaker GPLv2 against Vizio has so far been unsuccessful.
So, at least for the next couple of decades, we are sort of doomed to endure this sort of thing. Maybe a new free software movement founded today could change these things for the better starting 20 or 30 years from now.
______
* Maybe X Æ A-Xii is such a good person that he would never do such a thing, but historically speaking, structural guarantees of individual liberty have been much more effective at promoting the public welfare than ceding unlimited power to either rulers (who we hope are benevolent) or to "the will of the people", as amply demonstrated by the blood-drenched history of human dictatorships. Some rulers really are benevolent, but nobody remains in power forever. There's no guarantee X Æ A-Xii's heir will be so benevolent.
That press release in no way relates to jailbreaking, but to requirements to use branded parts...
However, yes, Magnuson-Moss also specifies that manufacturers must honor a warranty unless they can prove the failure happened due to damage or misuse caused by the customer. That (I believe) is why jailbreaking alone can't invalidate a warranty by itself.
And yet it's still commonplace for electronics to come with stickers saying "Warranty void if seal broken" despite what the law actually states. Magnuson-Moss was passed in 1975. It has been 47 years and still corporations flout the law with impunity. Does it really matter what the law is if the government refuses to enforce it?
I agree that this is distasteful, however one could argue that capitalism is working in this case (it just doesn’t usually work as fast as people would like). Who’s going to buy a Visio TV anymore? Or a Samsung? Those companies are on every techie’s shitlist, and from there the word gets out (through reviews and word of mouth), that eventually normal people stop buying them.
Jailbreaking, repairing, or even modifying a device does not void the warranty in the US. It hasn’t since the 70’s. That people still think that it does is pretty sad.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 339 ms ] threadWow at that.
For one thing, getting prime time coverage of ads, w/o having to pay networks is pretty amazing but how it's done (Just the spin of it all) is just pure evil and that spin - I don't think any ads benefit viewers though.
They are selling you a below-cost TV and making it up in ads, same as Microsoft selling you a below-cost Xbox and making it up in accessory sales.
I don't think it's correct to say there's not benefit. The benefit of YouTube ads is that you have unlimited 4K content available for free (below cost of bandwidth).
While you may say you'll pay 600 bucks for that 55" TV with no ads, most consumers will disagree with you and they show it through behavior.
If most YouTube users were Premium subscribers, it would more than double revenue. Premium subscribers are worth more to Google than free ones are in ads revenue, by a lot. Monetized channels receive orders of magnitude more revenue per view from Premium subscribers than free ones.
My current monitor is a 4K TCL Roku TV, but it's only connection is an HDMI cable to the PCs video card.
If you've already gone down this path, just block it on your wifi hotspot/etc. I've got a pile of ways I block things, from wifi blocking, nameserver blocking, to full blown firewall rules blocking IP ranges.
Solves untold grief too, no longer do my windows machines update on their schedule, they don't report usage metrics to MS/etc. Same with my LG tv, it doesn't get to talk to LG services except when I allow it (which is rarely). It just has some generic LG backsplash on the left hand side where it has in the past wanted to display ad's (although they backed off it at one point, but by then it was too late and lost its privileges.
Some will hop on any open wifi they can reach-- better hope no one spins up a open hotspot within range.
I’ve stood in one before the interior surfaces went up - such an insane amount of copper. They had a guard observing it 24/7.
"Carry this 30 lbs box out to your car for me and I'll give you $100..."
Sounds like an excellent deal to me. I can't imagine many grocery store employees ever get that big of a tip.
Still not a great ROI for the criminal risk being taken, but the people taking this stuff live in very different circumstances than myself and presumably yourself.
The cage material has to be made of a conductor like copper or silver. And it would probably have to be grounded too.
This website sells copper mesh with 0.63mm size 150mm x 455mm for £6.05 + tax (~$8 US). https://modelshop.co.uk/Shop/Item/Copper-mesh-woven/ITM6558
A 3m x 3m x 3m room is 54 sq m. You'd need about 791 sheets of the copper 0.63mm mesh + staples to nail is to the walls. Minus the area of the door. Cost about $6,328 + tax.
Steel window screen coated in copper might work even better and could be made by electroplating first a nickel flash and then the copper layer, avoiding the expense of vacuum coating. I'm not clear enough on the physics to be sure, and maybe it would be worse, but the skin depth in even ordinary steel is about an order of magnitude smaller because of its magnetic permeability.
"Booster bags" for shoplifting use (ungrounded!) aluminum foil. I think the reason they have to be several layers thick is that anti-shoplifting RFID tags operate at a much lower frequency, and aluminum foil is typically only 10 microns thick.
A Faraday Cage does not need to be grounded.
With 5G, they're adding lots of antenna's to boost connectivity. I suspect IOT 5G costs will continually go down over time relative to inflation.
Around 2010 the Amazon Kindle 3G with keyboard had a cellular connection for buying books, and it also had an experimentat web browser with worldwide free internet access.
I don't know who pays but it already happens, it's not new to 5G.
This is ridiculous and is so anti-user. I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs.
If managers want to sell tvs without ads, they absolutely can. If the board (which represents the shareholders) disagrees with that decision, they can fire the managers, but there’s no “law” requiring them to chase profits. That really lets normal greedy bullshit off the hook too easily - laws don’t cause anti consumer behavior, garden variety assholes do because it makes them more money.
This stupid meme needs to die. The management of companies has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of shareholders. That does not imply any legal requirement to maximize profit.
Companies can easily argue the point on stuff like this. Raw profit isn’t the only thing you can do for shareholder value.
A legal requirement to maximize profits would be insane. Amazon couldn’t have spent a decade forgoing profits to build up R&D. Chipotle wouLd have to use cheaper chicken. Companies couldn’t donate to causes. It simply doesn’t work that way. (As someone else has pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the Supreme Court agrees.)
To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
I mean if they must show ads to make money, legally, maybe they need to actually force you to swipe a credit card every time you want to watch? That's more money, they're legally obligated.
Maybe instead of a video stream, you turn on the TV and it just steals your identity and steals your wallet - that's profit, right?
Just because everyone else jumps off a bridge does not make you legally obligated to do the same.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding...
In the first half of 2018, LG Electronics' operating profit margin on their TV segment was 12.4% due to strong OLED sales[0].
0: http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=2...
For comparison, Apple is at 31%, Walmart is at 4.5%.
I appreciate thin TVs that mount on the wall but the Vizio is a bit thicker and has room for a quality set of speakers that, in my opinion, outperform a Denon soundbar we have kicking around the house.
My take is that from one end to another end somebody thought carefully about what features to put in that would make the TV valuable to users.
Things like this new ad "trend" makes you think the "smart" in "smart TV" was just a reference to their marketing ploy.
This but for everything.
Everything is so full of bullshit no one asked for these days. Refrigerators. Ovens. Cars. Microwaves. TVs. Computers.
You name it, it's full of garbage that both took a lot of effort to put there AND makes the product worse.
It's like capitalism has contracted herpes.
My fridge has a digital display, always on, so I can calibrate the temperature of the fridge and freezer. This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges.
They cut corners by building the freezer shelves out of as little plastic as possible. Bits of plastic chip off over time, and the drawer itself is held together with tiny plastic clips that invariably break.
The mechanical thermostats in refrigerators are inaccurate and failure prone (after a number of years). A digital thermostat increases life/reliability of the unit, even if it (very slightly) increases power consumption.
They're not Smart TVs, but then Smart TVs aren't Smart TVs, they're shitty computers that spy on you.
I wanted 4k120 444 10bit w/a decent contrast ratio and couldn't find any hotel TVs approaching that, but plenty of consumer """smart""" stuff.
I ended up getting a flagship sony TV, which looks pretty good... when it's not busy crashing or glitching out due to its embarrassingly terrible software. Of course I don't give it Internet access; that seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Okay, a sound bar might be a reasonable investment but... my new Sceptre TV doesn't do HDMI-ARC, which means a soundbar is a big ongoing hassle, for the life of the TV.
I still give Sceptre credit that they have VGA inputs, and handle DVI converted to HDMI properly (separate audio input), which it seems all other manufacturers just shrug off and don't care to support, even if their know-nothing support reps may tell you otherwise.
It's a legitimate offering in the market for those who don't want to spend much. I purchased a Visio TV for my bedroom, where I only use Plex and therefore expected very little interaction with their ad platform (I was right).
It's dumb but the best option ATM is to buy the best TV for the money and just use it with an Nvidia Shield. When TVs start locking down basic functions behind EULAs and/or use built-in cellular connections then we'll have a huge issue.
[1] https://blog.ammaraskar.com/roku-tv-philips-hues
Fine print should not be able to excuse this.
Nvidia Shield + "Console Gaming Monitor" (from e.g. Gigabyte, LG, etc)
Yes it's more expensive, but that's how much they'd make from you with ads.
The general premise, though, is to get a non-smart ‘commercial’ TV without ads and use your own streaming box, maybe even a PC (with a proper OS-GPU-hdmi DRM chain), to control your experience.
0: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/2595...
But if I needed live TV I'd just connect a satellite receiver box to our AV receiver as second input, just like we've connected our Switch, Wii, N64 and the emulator RPi.
Sadly, an Amazon FireTV update is disabling this for firetv
The real best way to avoid this is disable it in the settings and filter the device on your network then use something like a Shield TV for the smarts, unless you particularly want your TV to be a console gaming monitor in which case that's a fine substitute just not an initial assumption to avoid ads. So far (and likely forever given the average consumer) it has not been cost effective to serve these ads out of band and jurisdictional requirements on requiring opt-out (or defaulting to opt-in) have been getting better not worse on top of that.
Note on something like the Shield (and regardless of display) if you truly want a 100% ad free experience you will need to unlock the bootloader and either patch the official OS or install a stock Android TV image. Either of these options will disable official access to certain content/qualities but at that point you're probably avoiding those sources anyways as such content sources are themselves covered in ads. That or an OTA adapter for non-smart content in which case you're still going to get ads OTA, but at least not additional ones from your viewing device.
That's true, but those are features you'll want anyway. You'll want 24-120Hz VRR to watch both cinematic films and content like Gemini at the appropriate framerate, you'll want proper HDR support to get a cinema-like movie quality, and you'll want reduced input lag for when you connect your gaming console to it.
The NVIDIA Shield is actually perfectly ad-free in my experience (I've got the Shield 2019 non-pro), but the recent Android update forced some ads on the new Google TV launcher (luckily you can disable that just fine). I'm not sure what you mean regarding ads otherwise.
> The real best way to avoid this is disable it in the settings and filter the device on your network then use something like a Shield TV for the smarts
That's actually a bad recommendation, because then you'll still have to deal with the painfully slow startup times of a smart TV whenever you want to watch content and the TV actually modifying the image (most cheaper TVs don't offer a mode that avoids sharpening/softening/interpolating/color correcting/etc). And regular TVs often don't allow color calibration with an external probe either.
I mean sure, people WANT them. Generally that's not why they are buying budget Vizio TVs though, it's because they are low cost. The tradeoff is they don't do all of these things. Get a normal TV that does and suddenly the price differential is going to change dramatically.
> The NVIDIA Shield is actually perfectly ad-free in my experience (I've got the Shield 2019 non-pro), but the recent Android update forced some ads on the new Google TV launcher (luckily you can disable that just fine). I'm not sure what you mean regarding ads otherwise.
Well, as you say, when you turn on the device the first thing you get is home screen ads. Taking that back the first thing you get when you turn it on is offers for sponsored apps and then some pre-installed ones anyways, after that initial setup you get home screen ads when you turn it on. Then you get whatever ads are in the service apps themselves. Take for example the default apps Amazon Prime and Hulu, the former gives in app banner ads for paid items based on your ad profile and the latter will push anything from TV like ads down to just service upgrade tie ins depending on your subscription level.
> That's actually a bad recommendation, because then you'll still have to deal with the painfully slow startup times of a smart TV whenever you want to watch content
I recommend either turning the TV on at the store or watching a review before buying it. The TVs I have display the picture quicker than my pg32uqx gaming monitor but there are many TVs that won't. Similarly there are many monitors with garbage initialization times as well. Both monitor and TV are allowed to enter deep sleep mode in my case rather than hard power off, each was a god awful wait otherwise.
> and the TV actually modifying the image (most cheaper TVs don't offer a mode that avoids sharpening/softening/interpolating/color correcting/etc). And regular TVs often don't allow color calibration with an external probe either.
I recently got a dirt cheap $300 43" 4k TV for the Niece/Nephew recently, game mode and a few settings disabled most of the processing. As far as color calibration with an external probe... refer back to the price, I'm not expecting the display pass HDR1000 validation with a 98%+ wide gamut accuracy I'm expecting it to not be $900 and it's not just default built in ads removing 2/3 of the price it's the real market space differentiator - cut corners to save cost.
Usually not from the tv maker, but still a big banner at the bottom with a cheesy animation of the sitcom star or whatever?
Certainly never seen that just mid broadcast on a TV show
Samsung sells "commercial signage displays" which are kind of dumb TVs. The BE55T-H for example is 55in 4k for $600, stripped down OS / basically just HDMI in. BE65T-H is 65in for $800.
They're also intended for always-on semi-static content from what I understand, which is nice.
While perhaps true, the extra price you’re paying is all in how they need to reach the same margins without that TV showing ads or otherwise having smart features they can sell.
But that’s the base price people would compare against. A 50% premium to get rid of that creepy stuff is pretty heavy, though it may be less for higher end stuff or newer models.
Whether that's actually true would depend on the picture quality. Paying $800 for a TV that has similar picture quality to a $300 walmart black friday TV is not "reasonable" at all.
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/pro-tv/bh-serie...
https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/qled...
Might go some way to explain the costs.
And the money is only there is the customers are still there.
If they're getting up and walking away with their money (or even demanding it returned for a loss of value), an anti-consumer decision isn't so easy to justify.
I'm never going to buy a TV that tracks what I watch, let alone one that exploits that information to advertise to me.
Funny how Vizio already got fined for almost exactly this. But now it's back as a ""feature"" for advertising.
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs, so that is another thing to worry about.
1 = https://zatznotfunny.com/2005-11/tivo-cc-tagging-patent-appl...
See the recommendations on this thread for the additional work you'll have to do: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/recommended-strategy-for-cli...
Some consumer routers may not allow the configuration necessary at all.
No thanks not for me. Maybe I'll get a projector.
It seems to me that if you stop paying companies working against your interest money, or only pay them money for products that aren't against your interest, you're probably going to do a lot better in the long run in terms of protecting your interest from unethical corporate raiders.
Welcome to dark patterns.
I work in helpdesk for an ISP by the way. I see what smart tvs do, and it aint pretty.
It’s amazing to me that anyone would knowingly be ok with their tv spying on what content is being showed to serve ads, somethings that literally no-one except advertisers asked for.
The privacy implication of these systems is huge. Profiles about viewing habits can tell a lot about someone’s political and religious affiliations.
Having nebulous third parties manage these databases, probably badly, risking leaks, providing ad and government agencies yet another intimate way to monitor and profile citizens…
I hope some government body like maybe some EU body is going to highlight the risks these technologies pose to all of us.
Samsung does the same, and it seems the race is on for manufacturers to provide these ‘features’ as a way to remain competitive and get additional revenue streams.
I really prefer the free market to correct this kind of abuse, but I'm not sure how that works when they're all doing it. Theoretically everyone could just stop buying TVs but that's not going to happen. So it's just death by a thousand papercuts (abuses) I guess. Very sad.
I seem to recall Samsung sending me notification banners on my Galaxy phone several years ago, around the holiday season, to buy more Samsung shit. From that moment on, I disliked them.
It has happened which is why manufacturers are struggling now and doing nonsense like this to allow them to sell TVs at the old market prices from back when a TV wouldn’t last that long.
Neither TV has ever been allowed on a network.
This is a completely solvable problem; spend an extra $20, get a Chromecast, and never deal with this again.
I actually bought a Vizio TV years ago on the basis that it was sold with extremely unobtrusive software -- it had Chromecast support and a configuration/remote app you could put on your phone, but otherwise it did what you told it to do and stayed out of your way. They actually released a firmware upgrade six months or so later that added a crappy smart TV interface that has gotten increasingly crappy and intrusive over the years. It was infuriating. I had no way to opt out.
I guess I'm willing to try smart tv features but the vizio kept getting into broken blank screen states. it works perfectly fine as a dumb device though.
The menu is annoying (Samsungs) and complains about not being “setup” but it works just fine.
I don’t understand this take. I think it's pretty clear a lot of people use Netflix and YouTube and it's incredibly obvious that they wouldn't want to add an extra $100 for a lesser (read: non-integrated) experience to use it on their TV when the TV can do it natively. Of course I'm going to connect my TV to the internet, that's the only thing I use it for.
I think the only solution here would be for appliance vendors to have a "nutrition box" for privacy and advertising, so the user can pick the least obtrusive TV and the vendor cannot just add ads later.
But in the US I don't see that happening this decade.
A decent Roku can be had for $25 on discount. I think it is $35 regular price. And I'll bet it's better than what most smart TVs offer. I haven't used modern smart TVs, but several years ago, the inbuilt apps sucked. Netflix is more likely going to update its Roku app than some app on some TV. Indeed, those friends of mine who bought smart TVs 10 years ago got burnt by this within 2-3 years of purchase.
There are also bugs that get fixed through updates. (HDMI CEC is notorious for this -- an update might fix something but break something else.)
Some years ago there was a paper about transmitting malicious TV signals and getting code exploitation on TVs. That could result in a hacked TV that then starts attacking your streaming box to enable networking etc.
One reason might be if the TV channels are delivered over IP to an app running on the TV. One could move the app to a streaming box, but that would be largely functionally equivalent since it would still require the same underlying platform.
This is the case with my TV provider (https://www.init7.net/en/support/faq/TV7-Voraussetzungen/).
Now, ads haven't been an issue. However, unwanted Android TV updates have (I've now disabled them).
If people are going to prioritize cost while making their purchase decision, it is obvious that the manufacturers are going to see how much they can push.
If people stop buying such TVs, they will stop. So, stop buying such TVs.
Customers should have the right to return a device any time if they don't like a particular update to the product. I know it's drastic, but if companies can turn what should be a basic device into an amorphous system that starts serving ads without the end-users consent after purchase, that should constitute a material change to the end product that was not appropriately advertised.
This is the exact kind of thing that consumer protection laws should be able to cover.
Those of us who would rather not waste the kind of time and money needed to sue an electronics manufacturer would prefer a return option instead.
You don't see the manufacturer's ability to reach out and destroy the item you've already purchased as a defect in the item?
So you want to file a lawsuit for damages that would be limited to the value of your TV (possibly reduced by the value of the substitute), instead of getting a refund of the purchase price of your TV?
Other than enriching a lawyer, what benefit would that provide you?
This is classic industrial organization economics. These companies know that they are all in tacit collusion agreements with each other. It's not hard to set up "repeated prisoner's dilemma"-type games where collusion is the dominant strategy.
Basically, as long as companies know that it's in their long-term best interest to all do the same thing, then they will all do the same thing, even if it might yield some extra profit in the short term to deviate.
The only way to stop this garbage is to make it so bad for companies to engage in this behavior that the costs outweigh the benefits. Given the above situation, where the supply of alternative goods is likely to dry up, the only other forms of recourse are punitive court damages or prohibitive policy/law from a suitably powerful government.
But maybe it's just my cynicism of the modern court system that makes the suing solution sound like a waste of an individual's time and money, only to end up with nil in terms of industry impact. If that user is a very outspoken millionaire ready to fight, I welcome it. But I'm unsure if that sort of user is around these parts making comments dreaming of such opportunities.
There should be some sort of penalty for inflicting the damage after the sale besides merely nulling the sale.
Now I have to find another tv, and until I finish the return and shop and install process, I have either a defective tv or no tv, which screwed up any plans I made involving it.
Meanwhile, I did not get to mess with the money I paid for the tv after I paid it. It went into the manufacturers posession and I never got to touch it again, take some back, change the interest rate it's earning, change what stocks or equipment it was spent on...
Being able to return for refund is great, but it doesn't actually make you whole, and the damage done to your property and your use of your property was deliberate and unnecessary. (not an accident or honest failure or act of god, but a knowing choice to damage property owned by someone else.)
Getting the money back and no more is like getting punched in the face, and all you get for that is you get to make them stop punching you in the face.
And the damage may or may not be a mere trivial annoyance.
This is a contrived example, but ALL examples are contrived and yet countless real examples exist and happen all the time, so the contrived nature is irrelevant:
What if for example the tv were used as part of a recording process monitoring a long-running experiment that was either very expensive to set up, or whose results are important, not just money important but Important, and can't be replicated except by starting over which may require time no one has like years, and the banner ad obscured a critical part of the image and blew the whole process?
You can't just say "you shouldn't construct something so important with consumer parts". It's true but it doesn't get the property damager off the hook, since it's still a fact that the damage didn't happen by itself as a natural proprerty of the fact that a device was sourced from BestBuy, the damage happened because the manufacturer chose to actively cause the damage.
So, in a much bigger way, is having to file a lawsuit.
> and they know that statistically most of I will probably not bother.
That's even more true with filing a lawsuit.
You're going to be out thousands of dollars and get nothing.
You're free to sue them, but I suspect the lawsuit is going to get tossed almost immediately. Do you really think a multi-billion dollar company is going to expose themselves to a theft lawsuit?
I’ve done this in the past with a few different pieces of tech already, such as Bose speakers and a Samsung TV.
However, you are not forced to apply the update. So that's a bit different.
So how does this affect smart phones? ;-)
We also get longer warranties than most other countries. Even if a brand says you only get a 1 year warranty, our consumer protection laws say a warranty has to apply for "as long as seems reasonable", so for most technology that's 2 years.
Warranties are separate from your automatic consumer guarantees. The consumer guarantees which apply regardless of any warranties suppliers sell or give to you, apply for a reasonable time depending on the nature of the goods or services. This means consumer guarantees may continue to apply after the time period for the warranty has expired.*
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees...
You can ask for a replacement or refund if the problem with the product is major.
What is a major problem?
A product or good has a major problem when:
it has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it
it has multiple minor problems that, when taken as a whole, would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about them
it is significantly different from the sample or description it is substantially unfit for its common purpose and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time
it doesn’t do what you asked for and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time; or it is unsafe.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees...
There is no specific time when the consumer guarantees no longer apply to products. They may apply even after the manufacturer's warranty period has past. The length of the consumer guarantee period depends on a number of factors including:
how much time has passed since the consumer bought the product the type of product how a consumer is likely to use the product the length of time for which it is reasonable for the product to be used the amount of use it could reasonably be expected to tolerate before the failure becomes noticeable.
https://business.gov.au/Products-and-services/Fair-trading/A...
I was also one of the people who bought a Samsung TV that didn't have ads, then suddenly had ads. That also got me an instant refund with no questions.
In both cases I printed out a copy of the product website where they published the changed features (eg the changelog or PR release or whatever I could find) and I also printed off a couple forums/media-articles talking about the changes. The stores didn't question it or have any issues with refunding me, I guess they just then file with the manufacturer for their own refund.
From Wikipedia:
> The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.
The MM act also provides for awarding attorney's fees in a lawsuit against a manufacturer for violations of the act. Pretty sweet.
Separately, there are implied warranties of merchantability and fitness under the uniform commercial code.
US customers are almost completely ignorant of this. It really steams my cabbage when I see people heap praise on a company for warrantying an item that failed horribly, just outside the warranty period, and was an item that is usually quite durable and long-lasting.
As long as it can show images and play sound correctly, those are really non-issues as I'm using Android TV boxes anyway. So disconnect the TV from internet and use a TV box instead, all issue resolved.
In the EU, I'm fairly sure it doesn't.
One question though, “liking” something is subjective and ripe for abuse. Use the TV for 5 years and then return it back because consumer wants to take unfair advantage of the law.
It can grossly backfire.
My own view on regulation of markets is that it is just an incorporation of externalities into the market (better reflecting the actual “costs”)
No one thinks about externalities or loopholes. The entire house-of-cards is built for better polling and public approval, not about actually improving anything.
Ultimately public loses, politicians gain polling points, and corporations exploit loopholes that are designed into the system.
But HN usually never fails to have a kneejerk reaction to any discomfort with "let's legislate it".
We should question anyone that wants to implement legistation without proper debate and vigilence. Instead, we are frothing for legislation at every opportunity, but I don't see solid public debate about it. Revolving door in DC is spinning faster by the day, but no one seems to care.
He told me that TV manufacturers knew how to make TV screens so thin and light you could hang them on the wall like a picture. He said they weren't bringing them to market because they were making plenty of money selling cathode-ray tubes.
The first LCD laptops rolled along into shops about 1990, but it was at least 2000 before flat-panel TVs appeared.
TV manufacturers have been in cartel-mode for at least 50 years.
smaller retailers might not have the same terms with their vendors, but for the big ones they can and will pass that through to the original vendor, and that stuff is all tracked. return rates are a big metric that vendors use to measure customer satisfaction and figure out what they can get away with.
You just can't abuse the policy. It may take them years to detect that abuse, but they'll stop you when they do.
source? walmart's return policy explicitly says the return period is 90 days.
https://www.walmart.com/help/article/walmart-standard-return...
policy is the least they can do. if you're being a jerk and the want to get rid of you, they can quote policy. if they want to help, they can.
This works for isolated issues because they are isolated issues.
and then when they make their next round of stocking decisions, they're looking at vizio return rates and negotiating accordingly - either ordering less product, or requesting lower prices.
And naturally, if they are offended or upset at the product too (ads?! after you bought it?!), they may become your advocate... and go well beyond just being nice and helpful.
Employees may be empowered but that doesn't mean they'll help. It's a lot of trouble to take your TV off the wall, get all the accessories together, and cart it in to the store. If the employee on duty doesn't feel like helping, you're out of luck.
* most of local news is just "native advertising" anyway, like that piece on the latest kitchen shelves or the upcoming "fleet week" or the local basketball team's star.
Odious as I think this feature is, I would hope that the local tv channels would not have a leg to stand on (same reason I can run an ad blocker — the sender doesn’t have the right to control how I watch). But they can whip up local opinion.
That's not nearly drastic enough. Customers should have the right to know what potential updates to the product do in advance, to refuse any particular update to the product, and to roll it back if they don't like it, as well as making any other update to the product they want. That's how products have worked for thousands of years, it's how computer products work when they're running free software, and it's an absolute bare minimum to preserve basic liberal rights like freedom of speech and freedom of association. A future world where X Æ A-Xii Musk can have your Tesla car reprogrammed to scan what you say in the car for possible anti-Tesla sentiment is not a free world.*
The fact that even getting your money back after manufacturers vandalize your product after purchase to spy on you sounds "drastic" to many of us is an indication of how far we've fallen into a dystopian future even Stallman wasn't pessimistic enough to imagine 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, I don't know how we can get these rights in practice without requiring all software in consumer products to be open source/free software, and the software industry is currently organized in a way that is extremely hostile to that course of action. To a significant extent it wouldn't require positive action by regulators; merely refusing to enforce copyright on software would get us most of the way there. Someone would still have to figure out how to update the Vizio Flash chip and reverse-engineer the Vizio drivers, while a successfully enforced GPLv3 would require Vizio to help them, but at least without software copyright they could do it without any fear of legal repercussions. And Linux isn't under GPLv3, iOS isn't under any GPL, and enforcement of even the weaker GPLv2 against Vizio has so far been unsuccessful.
So, at least for the next couple of decades, we are sort of doomed to endure this sort of thing. Maybe a new free software movement founded today could change these things for the better starting 20 or 30 years from now.
______
* Maybe X Æ A-Xii is such a good person that he would never do such a thing, but historically speaking, structural guarantees of individual liberty have been much more effective at promoting the public welfare than ceding unlimited power to either rulers (who we hope are benevolent) or to "the will of the people", as amply demonstrated by the blood-drenched history of human dictatorships. Some rulers really are benevolent, but nobody remains in power forever. There's no guarantee X Æ A-Xii's heir will be so benevolent.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-s...
However, yes, Magnuson-Moss also specifies that manufacturers must honor a warranty unless they can prove the failure happened due to damage or misuse caused by the customer. That (I believe) is why jailbreaking alone can't invalidate a warranty by itself.
The crackdown on "warranty void if removed" stickers is better than nothing, but your rights don't mean a thing if you don't know you have them.
Now, 'Your privacy and focus is ours even if you pay for our HARDWARE'.
Unless, consumers start seeing advertisements as an insult to their intellect this will get worse.