This is already extremely common. For example, my TV uses some sort of Roku-branded OS. They literally have ads on the home screen when you first turn on the TV. It's something I've struggled to work around, and eventually gave up. I just kind of avert my eyes until my Apple TV kicks in.
I feel like this should be illegal. It's kind of like billboards on the side of the road, it's something I never want to say but it's forced upon me. I bought your product, why is it allowed that you can just throw ads on it? I understand they sometimes sell these TVs at a slight loss to make up for that, but I feel like they should be required to sell the same TV without Ads for the same 3% margin added on. I bet most people would pay for the latter if it was provided.
The solution for now. I fully expect future TVs to ship with cellular modems that connect to any carrier willing to jump into bed with the manufacturer.
Considering how expensive are the data in some parts of Europe, I completely expect, that people will be ripping it off and selling it as a cellular modem with unlimited data on eBay for 99EUR.
On device or in the cloud, the advertisers need some method to match images. Might as well fully exploit your advertisees and have the client device calculate the hashes.
As to the actual matching strategy, I would guess a perceptual hash that is robust to some amount of noise and varying resolutions. Since you are comparing repeated hashes, say at 1Hz, you have multiple chances over the observation window to match a fingerprint to the lookup database. 30 minute show x 60 frames per minute = 1800 hashes to make the id
Pretty sure all new TVs have HDMI CEC, so you can just buy any TV, connect it to a $100 to $150 Apple TV/Nvidia shield/google thing or whatever and have no ads (from tv manufacturer).
Nonsense. Buy an LG TV of any kind. Never connect it to the internet. Plug in an Apple TV (or Linux HTPC box of your choice). Ad-free TV at consumer prices.
I will never use a TV's OS for more than the first 5 minutes it takes to turn on HDMI CEC as default. That lets the device on the other end turn it on and off, change the volume, etc. I recently had Best Buy deliver a 75 inch, only cost me $350, probably because the little garbage computer inside is loaded with ads. I'll never know.
I had an old LG TV, I played around with MITMing it by telling my DNServer to return my NAS's IP for *.lg.com, etc servers, and I was recording the HTTP requests it was making (this was last decade and I guess lack of HTTPS wasn't shameful yet). I got rid of this TV, but never fixed the DNS settings, and it seems my new LG TV has never been able to phone home to show me the EULA to accept.. in return I do get a more limited experience, but I can switch inputs just fine.
So TL;DR: it's probably possible to configure Pi-Hole (or dnsmasq) to block the ads/phone-home behavior of the TV.
I think their eventual hack to circumvent this kind of stuff is leveraging stuff like "Amazon Sidewalk" where everyone is unwittingly providing free internet for the IoT-enabled things they buy >_>
Maybe it's time people started hacking the TVs and getting custom OSes running on them.
Though I suspect that the processors inside TVs don't have publicly available datasheets, and the actual boards get changed pretty often, so it will be a lot of work for little payoff.
One thing to look at though is to see if your TV has a signage or commercial mode, and switch to using that instead.
I recently bought a TV (HiSense) after a very quick bit of research about the dimensions and the fact that it had GoogleTV as the OS.
Unfortunately for me, the operating system for many TVs is region specific! Once the product appeared on Hisense's Australian page it did mention having VIDAA instead of GoogleTV, but this was after I had purchased it. I can confirm that VIDAA is quite bad, demanding agreement to several fairly ad-driven user agreements before you can use any smart features. "Enhanced Viewership Program" or something, which in the text says that VIDAA will monitor what you are watching on the screen, then use that information to display relevant ads. Yuck.
Fortunately it does switch to HDMI when you turn it on, but I've got to decide what system I get to drive that HDMI port. I wanted not to have to bother with an additional device, but that's how it is I guess.
As a bonus comment, VIDAA's kid-mode- content includes a very large number of purported TV programs - but they are actually Youtube playthroughs of video games, cut into "episodes" and presented as a "season".
I haven't seen any ads on my HiSense TV (low end/budget brand), though I have been concerned about updates eventually bringing me this feature.
The TV is pretty much exclusively used as a 85" monitor for a media PC so I think the risk is low, but this was the final prompt to finally block internet access for the TV at the router.
I didn't want to completely block it from the network as it's useful being able to hook into it from Home Assistant
I bought an NVIDIA Shield, but promptly returned it to the store because it will not function without signing into a Google account -- a requirement which was not mentioned on the packaging nor in the printed documents in the box. TBH kinda ultra sick of corporations having unilateral encumbrances on your rights and freedoms to use literally anything technological.
Should also be applicable if you have to have an online account with a 3rd party service to use a product, as I experienced with the NVIDIA Shield[0]
At the same time, "not agreeing with the EULA" is a valid reason to return a product to the store, as I did. Consumer protection laws would be on your side here, in the jurisdictions I'm aware of (Canada/US)
EULAs like this should be illegal. Comparable to "Warranty void if this sticker is damaged" type scenarios.
The enormous "gotcha" games being played under the guise of "if it's not illegal, we're going to exploit it" are grotesque. TVs are just one of hundreds of examples of products and services being used to invade and exploit privacy with no commensurate return on value for what's being exploited.
We need a law constraining this shit to 100% opt-in voluntary features with no dark patterns, with penalties for anything that even vaguely looks like a dark pattern. Fines and jail time time for c-suite for any violations, enough that they'll stop playing the stupid games.
Or just back to the retailer and tell them why you're returning it. If they put up an argument (which they likely won't), then at least in the US, I think you could sue to be compensated.
If you didn't see and agree to the TOS prior to purchase, and you find the TOS you discover later to be unacceptable, then I'm confident that you'd win in court.
I have a smart TV running Roku. I still use cable (for news), so the other 2 sources I see are the 2 computers I have connected. The only time I ever see Roku is when I'm selecting a source. The TV is smart, but I'm smarter: no Ethernet cable.
One would think that this would represent an opportunity in the market to, you know, sell TVs that only do their basic function, and not try to tack on ads and such, right? Or, is it that not enough people care about this stuff...so the masses simply put up with it, and move about their lives...and Tv makers (and other device manufacturerers) go with the flow of taking as much advantage as possible?
The problem is that ads and tracking data represent recurring revenue for the manufacturers, and they know full well that many people are going to Walmart or Best Buy and picking the cheapest one.
That changes the decision considerably: not many people feel strongly enough about this to pay more, and even people who do care about privacy or find ads annoying usually aren’t willing to pay much more for it.
An Apple TV is the clear market leader on streaming devices but even there you see people talking like it’s exorbitant to pay an extra $50 for something which will last twice as long as a FireTV or Google TV, and for TVs it’s even less favorable because the people who care enough to buy our hypothetical safe TV are going to need one of those anyway so they’re probably going to pick the cheaper (advertiser subsidized) one and never connect it to the internet.
That's not why, it's because the most important factor for people is price and tv with ads can sell for cheaper than the one without. I would never dream of touching a streaming service with ads but I'm clearly in the minority since I'm the only one paying the premium for ad free.
Are you saying TV prices dropped sharply once they started including the adware? It sounds more like the adware is selling at the same price point normal TVs were in years past, and the ad-free were relegated to a higher priced tier that didn't previously exist.
I feel like this should be illegal. It's kind of like billboards on the side of the road, it's something I never want to say but it's forced upon me. I bought your product, why is it allowed that you can just throw ads on it? I understand they sometimes sell these TVs at a slight loss to make up for that, but I feel like they should be required to sell the same TV without Ads for the same 3% margin added on. I bet most people would pay for the latter if it was provided.