"each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue."

Fuck me, this is the amount of money that's enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?

I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.

I pity the poor fool who sets up their smart TV instead of just grabbing an HDMI cable and plugging in their computer.

i for one cannot wait for this future

Mine is a monitor and nothing more.

I am so genuinely surprised that there isnt a bigger movement to hack TVs to replace the OS's on them with non-invasive open software alternatives.

Especially with shit like this.

Don't give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don't need to 'finish setting up' your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.

Dumb monitor > smart TV.

Average users will not have the knowledge or patience for work arounds.

Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection just to watch a movie or series.

First thing I thought of, Idiocracy, love that movie.

My 10 year old TV which I watch 10 year old TV-series via HDMI from? I don't think so.

Tomorrow there's going to be article about how my car spies on me as if that's not 15 years old too. Or something about my office job that I don't have.

I'm becoming irrelevant. Not the target audience for anything.

I can barely see the ads whilst sailing the high seas. IP is the fakest of P.

Disconnected my TV from the Internet. I stream media from a PC on my lan to Kodi running on a fire stick. Setup openwrt to drop all packets to wan from the fire stick. These companies can get fucked and if they ever figure out a way to stop me from owning my devices, I'll just take up some new hobbies and be done with it all.

Server to host media. Super easy to set up and can run on a Windows client. Don't even need an independent server to run it on. https://jellyfin.org/

https://kodi.tv/ (or https://libreelec.tv/ for an OS that boots to just Kodi)

Application to watch through Kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellycon

Client to run Kodi on: MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick https://a.co/d/1EGnekO

If you didn't want to install LibreELEC to the PC and just want to keep Windows, you could run Kodi in Kiosk mode and it would boot directly to it just like LibreELEC.

I have not watched normal TV in years, let alone an ad on my TV. I spoke to my neighbors one day and figured out they were paying ~$60 a month for all their streaming services, and they're STILL getting ads...

Stuff like this is unacceptable, and I refuse to partake in the lunacy and delusion that is modern television.

Not mine. My TV's my absolute digital bitch. It lets me do anything I want AND nothing, unlike Warren Buffet's kids

My TV is a smart TV whose smart features I never, ever use because the first thing it does is switch to the input my Apple TV is on.

Ironic really that the reason I chose an LG is because webOS seems less cunty than Android TV and whatever shit Samsung are offering. But I still never use it.

Start buying commercial displays. Cost more but will be about as close to a dumb tv. You will have to provide your own smart device for apps ...

Since at one point in the near future I'll be shopping for a TV, is there such a thing as a good quality panel TV that is dumb? I intend to hook it up to a PC or a set top box. Alternatively, is there a smart TV that can be easily bootloader unlocked and rooted without consequences (similarly to how a Pixel phone can)? I realise this is even more niche than unlocking/rooting a phone, but still, someone might have ideas.

That's one reason I ditched cable years ago. Why the hell should I pay Comcast for the "privilege" of watching commercials?

Fun fact, Mythbusters episodes have a longer international edit length because America has substantially longer commercial breaks.

I revived the old LCD my grandparents were throwing out because it had good specs and no built in ads. Tossed in a new capacitor and it was good to go, otherwise I would just not own a TV.

There is a certain unfortunate irony in the realization that one of the easiest ways to avoid this kind of thing is to buy a commercial digital signage panel intended for advertising instead of a consumer TV.

Jokes on them, my TV can't connect to the internet anymore because of the the bloat added by Roku in automatic updates.

Pro Tip: Connect your TV to your Wi-Fi so the TV doesn’t bother you constantly, and shut off access outside your network at the router level.