13
Telly has only delivered 35,000 of its free televisions with always-on ads
(www.engadget.com)
Surprised it’s that high of a number.
It’s free though. As in you can “buy” it to try and hack it or just not use it to make the company lose money.
10 percent of Telly's shipments through FedEx arrived broken
No big surprise there. Shipments I get through FedEx are always beat to hell.
Or the fuckers claim they couldn't deliver, or it goes on the truck, off the truck, repeat 2x, lost, then found 1 month later, or they back up over your pavers off a driveway that's 7 cars wide, or leave your shit at side of said driveway instead of walking it to the porch 20ft away (one of these happens with every one of my FedEx deliveries) UPS usually does great, except the one moron that left my daughter's $3k medicine by the trashcans down my hill.
USPS > UPS > Amazon/DHL/etc > FedEx
If Amazon is doing better than you at serving the customer, you need to look deep inwards.
TVs are so cheap. I don't understand the business model.
line must go up, when all other avenues of generating revenue have been cornered the only path left to make line go up is ever more intrusive ads and similar rent-seeking/inshittification.
“Honey I’m home!
sits down
Work was great today sweety, we made some great ads, and not just any old boring ad. Genuine addiction inciting, mouthwatering, shake-em-down kind of ads!
Yeah we do great things at the ad factory.”
Does it have a proximity sensor on the power screen? If it is only a second screen, I can see an easy curtain hack.
I wonder how much money consumers will spend on products that are advertised to them when they won't even buy a TV...
Also I wonder what the quality is like on a "free" TV...
When I heard about it before, they were repurposing old 720p panels.
With how cheap 4K sets are these days, these free TVs are for people who can't even afford that. I'd say they're useful as a secondary use for the heat they generate, in that case.
That said, I'd be fine with always on ads if ads and sponsorships never interrupt my content. Like if I'm watching a YouTube video and it's 4:3, I'm perfectly fine with YouTube filling the sides with ads, as long as they don't make noise, and as long as I can watch the content uninterrupted. If the video is 16:9 and fills my TV (or monitor), I'm fine propping my iPhone up. They can even use Face ID to pause the content if I look away, as long as I don't have to look right at the ad (I'll be watching the content).
Advertising pays for stuff, and if it doesn't get in the way of stuff, I don't hate it. They should try working with people rather than straight up exploiting everyone. That just leads to people turning off the ads using a third-party method (e.g. Firefox with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock). Or I'll just download the video with jdownloader2.
I want one, it would be cool to hack and get a second free screen.
That's the neat part, the USA, being known for moronic decisions, made it so circumventing DRM measures on hardware you own is a federal crime. Telly detects you attempted to do that, Telly can send you to prison.
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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