LG Announces New Ad Targeting Features for TVs (gizmodo.com) 144
LG has announced a new offering to advertisers that promises to be able to reach the company's millions of connected devices in households across the country, pummeling TV viewers with -- you guessed it -- targeted ads. From a report: While ads playing on your connected TV might not be anything new, some of the metrics the company plans to hand over to advertisers include targeting viewers by specific demographics, for example, or being able to tie a TV ad view to someone's in-store purchase down the line. If you swap out a TV screen for a computer screen, the kind of microtargeting that LG's offering doesn't sound any different than what a company like Facebook or Google would offer. That's kind of the point.
Online ad spending reached more than $490 billion by the end of last year, and those numbers are only going to keep going up as more advertisers look for more ways to track and target more people online. Traditional TV ad spend, meanwhile, has tanked since its peak around 2016. In order to lure ad dollars back, folks in the television space, like LG, are using every tool at their disposal to claw back the ad dollars the internet's taken away. And it's clearly working. While traditional TV ad spend has plummeted, there's never been more money spent on advertising across the digitally connected TVs offered by companies like LG. Roku, for example, recently announced an upcoming Shopify integration that would let retailers target TV viewers with more ads for more of their products. Amazon rolled out a new beta platform that lets networks promote apps, movies, or TV shows to people right from the device's home screen. And I don't need to remind Samsung TV owners how their devices are getting absolutely plastered with ads from every conceivable angle.
Online ad spending reached more than $490 billion by the end of last year, and those numbers are only going to keep going up as more advertisers look for more ways to track and target more people online. Traditional TV ad spend, meanwhile, has tanked since its peak around 2016. In order to lure ad dollars back, folks in the television space, like LG, are using every tool at their disposal to claw back the ad dollars the internet's taken away. And it's clearly working. While traditional TV ad spend has plummeted, there's never been more money spent on advertising across the digitally connected TVs offered by companies like LG. Roku, for example, recently announced an upcoming Shopify integration that would let retailers target TV viewers with more ads for more of their products. Amazon rolled out a new beta platform that lets networks promote apps, movies, or TV shows to people right from the device's home screen. And I don't need to remind Samsung TV owners how their devices are getting absolutely plastered with ads from every conceivable angle.
Fucking lies (Score:5, Insightful)
If you swap out a TV screen for a computer screen, the kind of microtargeting that LG's offering doesn't sound any different than what a company like Facebook or Google would offer. That's kind of the point
Horse-fucking-shit! My monitors attached to my computer will never ever display ads on their own.
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I'm sorry, this room is reserved for donkey shows. You'll have to take your horse show elsewhere.
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But where am I suppose to have my dog-and-pony show?
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That was moved to the room down the hall.
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But only on Tuesdays. The knitting club has the room on Mondays and the Mysterious Brethren of the Unknown Mysteries Society is meeting there on Thursdays for unnameable rituals and tea...
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So you just stare at a black screen monitor?
It looks like you only read part of the quote (namely "If you swap out a TV screen for a computer screen, the kind of microtargeting that LG's offering doesn't sound any different") and missed the most important part (namely "than what a company like Facebook or Google would offer"). They aren't saying that the computer monitor is displaying the ads but that Facebook or Google are doing similar things (via a computer with a monitor attached).
So (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people still connect their smart TVs to the internet? Because the only household I know that still has a TV that I manage asked me how to get rid of ad infested nonsense, and I told them to disconnect the TV from the internet and just hook it up to one of their PCs if they want to run youtube or netflix.
They did and never looked back.
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
They make it hard to set up without. Luckily, it's easy to set up a temporary SSID and then tear it down right after setup.
I use a separate box for the smarts on my TV, though my TV is technically Smart - I don't trust the maker.
Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
I don't trust the maker.
Not when they openly admit that they are making their money by selling your info, not selling you the device. https://www.theverge.com/2021/... [theverge.com]
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Re: So (Score:2)
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HDMI cable.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
They make it hard to set up without. Luckily, it's easy to set up a temporary SSID and then tear it down right after setup.
I use a separate box for the smarts on my TV, though my TV is technically Smart - I don't trust the maker.
Yeah, what I do when I want to connect my LG TVs to the internet (their smarts come from AppleTVs) is I activate the personal hotspot on my phone, do the update(s), and then turn the hotspot off. That, coupled with me not having ever accepted their licensing agreement, keeps me ad-free and metrics-free.
Re: So (Score:3)
Re: So (Score:3)
Micro cells (small consumer grade Stingrays) exist. I'll just do for 5G what I did for WiFi: Configure an AP for my TV to connect to that isn't connected to the Internet.
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This costs actual money, you can't get a cellular connection for free. Even if it's $10 a month, is a television maker going to pay that for every customer? There's no logical way that serving up ads earnes more the $10/mo per customer, unless the public is vastly more gullible than I have imagined.
If we the public are worth that much money then I will voluntarily and gladly watch ads for a cut of the profits! Because we do not share any of the profits, our streaming subscriptions are not reduced, our ca
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Re: So (Score:2)
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There may be an issue with this, mostly with COMCAST, which many people do not know about. To get around it you may need to tinker with the modem from COMCAST or buy a third party modem. All COMCAST modems comes with 2 routers, one for home use and a 2nd wide open to everyone. I am sure COMCAST lets these TVs automatically connect to that wide open access point.
So I guess LG is now joining Samsung and Sony to my "do not ever buy" from list. I have a non-internet TV which I hopes lasts forever. To bad a
Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
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The guest SSID is not open to everyone. It exists so that Comcast subscribers can use other Comcast subscribers' WiFi, kinda like a very very poor man's cellular network. You have to have valid Comcast credentials to sign into the guest SSID. The guest SSID's data transfers do not count towards the actual subscriber's data caps, etc.
Comcast cell phones do the same. I saw a study once where it mentioned that yes, that data doesn't count towards your cap, but it does use a quantifiable extra amount of electricity.
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You not only need valid Comcast credentials, you also have to be using their equipment and have not opted out of the program.
And while it doesn't contribute to the data cap, for those of us who receive less speed than the maximum we're paying for, it does reduce your available bandwidth. For example I get "up to 50Mbps" but my connection can only do 35, so it would slow me down. (old building)
Re: So (Score:2)
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Do people still connect their smart TVs to the internet?
I had been resisting, but when we got a new TV last year, my wife insisted that we connect it to the network, so she could watch Hulu on it. I set up a piehole, which was an eye-opening experience. For instance, a commercial for xyz would be on, at the same time the TV is trying to hit a site such as metrics.xyz.com I played piehole whack-a-mole for a week or so, but it seems to have settled down.
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Problem is the pi-hole solution is only going to work until they use DoH. They you'll have to filter their servers by IP, but they are going to use ranges from major cloud providers like google, AWS or cloudflare and banning them can have adverse effects on the contents you were trying to watch. You end up in the same situation as a government trying to censor a particular website or service.
Re: So (Score:2)
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Just by a cheapo Roku, Firestick, or Chomecast device for streaming. While Roku TVs may have ads, the Roku box itself so far has nothing except pushing some of its channels only on the home screen. That's the reasonable sort of advertising - keep it small, don't do tracking, keep it relevant, and don't serve up ads from a third party. If that's still too much, then get an el-cheapo(tm) mini PC with Linux to act as a streaming box.
If that's still too much, stop watching TV. Maybe it sounds crazy, but aft
Re: So (Score:2)
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What ads are on netflix? I never see any, unless you consider "here are shows you might want to watch" as advertisements. Youtube is a pain as those ads are hard to block with the normal adblock router plugins. But those Youtube ads come from Youtube and not from your television. Why have both Youtube ads and LG serving up random third party ads at the same time?
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I bought a high-end Samsung 4k TV, and it actually becomes difficult to use without internet. I’ll try to hack something up with the serial interface, but it is not an easy task. (They co-opt the last/default input with a menu, and when it doesn’t have internet access it barfs sometimes.)
This anti-consumer shit really needs to stop. Too bad congress is completely disinterested in doing anything about it.
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I am glad that the large TV I bought has no smarts. Unless it breaks I see no need to get a smart TV in the foreseeable future. The last TV lasted about 15 years, I'm hoping to get the same mileage from this one.
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Yes, I do.
However...
Pi-Hole rulz.
Top blocked domain is beaconserver-ce-vpc0-1537565064.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com (request source: Netflix)
Next up: analytics.ff.avast.com - which weirdly also originates from my own PC (I uninstalled Avast from it a year ago)
Then there's a large list of *pu.samsungelectronics.com - coming from my Samsung TVs. The TVs work fine, though, despite zounds of requests being blocked.
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With my noscript, I block anything with "*analytics*". If I'm hurting the monetization that pays a slashdotter who makes a living at an advertising company disguised as tech, then I say get a real job that doesn't involve the web.
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Mine had to be connected once because the shipped firmware was buggy as hell. I was ready to return the thing. In fact their dhcp implementation was broken too. I run ISC dhcpd which is about as vanilla as you can get. The logs showed the server recognized the request but the tv never accepted what was offered. It came up with some random gateway that wasn't mine. Finally gave it a fixed lease and it connected and updated.
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I do. I've got a Samsung TV. When I'm sitting on the sofa, I find the remote-controller operated apps are so much easier to use than PC apps. I mostly use subscription services or local content, and it doesn't show me ads at all. I guess Samsung are probably collecting and sellling my viewing info, but to be honest I don't care that much. What solutions with good remote control support don't collect viewing info for advertising purposes? Apple TV maybe?
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You could get a finglonger and push buttons on the TV... Or do what dads did in the 50s, shout at the kids to change the channel while you sit back and drink a beer.
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Do people still connect their smart TVs to the internet? Because the only household I know that still has a TV that I manage asked me how to get rid of ad infested nonsense, and I told them to disconnect the TV from the internet and just hook it up to one of their PCs if they want to run youtube or netflix.
They did and never looked back.
I'm tech-savvy, but the thought of maintaining and administering two extra PCs just to power my family's two TVs sounds like a pain. Plus child-proofing those PCs so my kids can watch Disney Kids but nothing else. Plus making sure that my PC is sending out 5+1 audio and the TV is picking it up right. Plus installing periodic updates if they're Windows, or grappling with DRM pathways if they're linux, or fighting against inadequate parental controls if they're Mac. I already have to do systems-admin that fo
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I have plugged Chromecast into both of my TVs but we never use it because the hassle of bringing up a laptop to the media room, making sure we have a power cable, trying to figure out 5+1 audio from it, stowing it away somewhere so the laptop screen doesn't distract from the darkened media room while we watch a movie -- it's all a waste of time.
I agree with most of what you said, but this doesn't seem right. The idea of a Chromecast is you can use a phone / PC / laptop / whatever to find content and "cast" it to the Chromecast, but it takes it from there, and does the actual streaming direct from source itself. The device (phone or whatever) you use to start the cast just functions as a remote control. You don't have to worry about configuring 5.1 audio, HDR, 4K or anything like that. You can cast your screen or browser tab directly, but with vide
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I agree with most of what you said, but this doesn't seem right. The idea of a Chromecast is you can use a phone / PC / laptop / whatever to find content and "cast" it to the Chromecast, but it takes it from there, and does the actual streaming direct from source itself.
Oh! I'd always used it by dragging an MP4 file onto the chrome browser, and then clicking on the chromecast button. I'd seen a flicker as it switched to fullstream. I guess it was (mostly) seamlessly switching from casting the screen, to casting the raw MP4 stream and having the chromecast decode it?
Re: So (Score:2)
How much for a dumb monitor (Score:2)
How much more do I have to pay for a dumb monitor? I already have a PC hooked up to my older TV as the smart TV portion didn't get supported too well and stopped being useful after 2 years. I have a 1080p TV, and I'm going to want 4k soon, but everything that I see about them just makes me not want to support their business practices.
I just want a screen with a bunch of inputs. Even speakers could be optional because most TVs have terrible sound anyway as all they care about is making TVs thinner even at t
Re: How much for a dumb monitor (Score:2)
Re: How much for a dumb monitor (Score:2)
There are high end monitors in many DoD SCIFs. Where the installation of anything with wireless capability is restricted, if not outtight prohibited. These probably are not available at your local consumer video store. But I'd check with our IT group and see where they buy theirs.
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How much revenue from tracking do they actually make? I mean I want to see numbers. The advertising cost per eyeball on the web has always seemed wildly out of proportion to traditional advertising. Especially when some studies have shown that sellers really don't know very well how effective ads are at increasing their sales. All of the tech goes into serving up and targeting ads but the rest of it is more like faith based magical thinking than actual substance. To be honest, I think sellers may be gett
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Here's a two-parter from freakonomics radio about advertising. Their conclusions are mixed, because so much of this is difficult to determine. Part 1 is mostly TV and print advertising, part two dives into digital advertising.
https://freakonomics.com/podca... [freakonomics.com]
https://freakonomics.com/podca... [freakonomics.com]
But also a rebuttal of sorts. They seem to almost certainly they have a pro-advertising bias given that it's a tech company that has "web" in the name.
https://thenextweb.com [thenextweb.com]
Re: How much for a dumb monitor (Score:2)
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They make enough that they've gone on the record to say that consumer pricing would be significantly higher if they weren't monetizing everybody. And the thing with this money is, it's not the number of pennies per user that matters, it's the fact that these devices will stay on for years. It's exactly like the Chinese Lottery approach to cracking encryption - you put this in a billion consumer devices, and passively harvest the results.
Next up: Crypto mining ASICs in every TV. Not enough to make the EPA st
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Real answer, about 20-60% more than the normal going TV cost. What you are wanting is a "Commercial" grade signage display, which for all intents is really closer to a big PC monitor than a traditional "TV"
You can get a really nice Samsung 75" TV for about $2000 [bestbuy.com]
Now a close commercial match to that would be something like a Samsung QM75F [samsung.com] which at dealer cost is around $3100. Same for an NEC C751Q, about $3000 dealer cost [sharpnecdisplays.us]. Neither of those will have the same fancy picture quality or image processing featur
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There were no dumb TVs at the store. (I suppose you could use a computer monitor, instead, ironically, those are still dumb.) There were also no large 1080p TVs, they were all 4k.
I haven't seen any ads on the TV yet, unless you count the fact that Netflix, Prime Video, and LG Channels are more prominently displayed than other choices. But, shit, now I know why my TV wanted to upgrade and reboot this morning.
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No HD TVs? That's crazy. No one needs 4K for TV, though you might want 4K for a computer monitor... So glad I got my dumb 47" 1080p TV while they still made them. I really do need to cancel my netflix, I'm really only using the TV for youtube these days. If it ever dies, maybe I'll got back to books.
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For what it's worth, TCL seems to make good-enough TVs at pretty competitive prices, and although they do tend to have smart-stuff built in, it's either actually-useful and standardized (Android TV, Roku), but also has the capability to set the unit to 'HDMI 1' and have its software forgotten about. Neither of the two in my household have internet connectivity, and although I went through a bit more time finding as many 'disable' buttons as I could find, I was one within half an hour and I don't get nagged
Too much (Score:2)
I wanted a 4K monitor (32 inch+) with 2 or more HDMI plus sound. Doesn't exist. Ended up getting a smart TV because it simply has the hardware features I needed. Haven't connected it to the internet so no problem.
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I have hard time understanding these threads about not finding non-smart TV. I bought a normal TV recently, no-name Chinese model 32 inch with 3 HDMI, 120 €, works perfect. Is this a US thing that you don't get low cost models anymore, or is that people want high end branded models that of course with "latest and greatest" OS?
Disconnected TV (Score:2)
So, if you don't allow it to access internet, it's just a flat panel display, right? It's not overwriting the display of the HDMI inputs? And they'll discount the purchase price if you let them believe you're going to plug it in to the net?
Sounds like the Roku TVs I bought. Great monitors for computers, no advertising whatsoever when they don't know about any networks.
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So, if you don't allow it to access internet, it's just a flat panel display, right.
Today yes.... but the MBA's never sleep, and there's huge money in selling your info. I fully expect the next generations to gatekeep features you actually want behind an active connection / "activation" whatever compels you to actually plug it.
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you mean like video games? and everyone just bent over and took it? yeah.. im not looking forward to this either :(
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in which case I'll create a small hole out for that traffic, and blackhole the rest with a router rule. And make sure that it's getting my Pi-hole server as it's DNS.
This isn't a battle they are going to win for anyone that has already gone through the effort to make these pieces of shit comply with MY wants.
Re: Disconnected TV (Score:2)
Even just cnsidering this (Score:2)
I'll pass (Score:2)
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The fact is, most of us want to pay content producers to keep producing things we like. And all of them are going to be using DRM for the foreseeable future. Reality is that I'm going to be using one of the boxes. Right now, Roku seems to be a least-worst option. They have their hands in a lot, but they get mostly out of the way from actually using the box.
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They actually have an app in the Roku store now. It works pretty well:
https://channelstore.roku.com/... [roku.com]
It also supports DLNA, so any DLNA capable app should be able to stream the channels.
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Here's my offer: (Score:2)
and B) I don't mind a few ads here and there, but on my Samsung TV the new ads disrupts the usability of the product. New advertising from Samsung on the over-the-air channel listing has made that feature nearly unusable because it jumps all over the place when I try to scroll. So if you are going to try to cram every nook and cranny with advertisements then you'd be
Re: Here's my offer: (Score:3)
When Google killed their service that enabled users to make micropayments to websites instead of getting ads, it solidified the view that ad-generated revenue had more opportunity for growth than taking a small vig from each transaction.
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Ad revenue is possibly a bubble. It's overinflated without actual studies that show advertising effectiveness. If ad targeting is so great then they're screwing up - the ads I see are for the types of products I will never buy.
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Re: Here's my offer: (Score:2)
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Here's the thing that they refuse to learn:
if you make a moderate amount of advertising fairly unobtrusive, people will roll their eyes and deal with it.
If you make it a heavy amount of advertising that is in your face when you're trying to just use the product, that motivates people to defeat it so that you display ZERO advertising, ever. And then they never buy your shit again. Which is where I'm at with Samsung.
I got one of their so-called "smart" TVs a few years back, and every time I turn the damn th
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A dollar and a dollar (Score:3)
When I was at Intel, working on "TV of the Future", I had to sit in meetings where the
sales weasels would go on and on about "A Dollar and a Dollar", with Intel making money from
the Canmore series chips and also getting a cut of ad revenue for each one sold.
The middleware came from Yahoo and was garbage, so the Canmore initiative went nowhere.
That sales mindset was detestable then, and now it's everywhere.
A way to switch to linux (Score:2)
My wife demanded we switch to linux basically the moment she was telling me, all a-fire, how some tvs did that and how dare they!
I said to her that is precisely why you have a VPN on your phone and are using my home DNS that filters out ads. I told her that this bullshit would probably hit our pc too once we couldn't postpone the switch to Win11 any longer.
So we're running kubuntu both on our shared PC and the tv attached to our new Bravia tv from Sony... which, as you can guess, saw internet for all of an
Wonder how long before (Score:3)
How long before this kind of shit starts hitting STBs? Google has already shown it's very much possible by embedding a remote activation code in Leanback Launcher on AndroidTV that lets them switch on ads based on region. All completely post-sale to rub salt in the wound.
The thing that may finally bring about the year of the Linux desktop might not be any specific killer app, but all the commercial players getting greedy and embedding ads into everything and people fleeing to Linux to maintain their sanity.
What info could they possibly collect? (Score:2)
I've already disabled my TV's Internet access (Score:3)
I've already disabled my TV's Internet access. I don't use it's smart TV features anyhow. (I prefer Roku)
No TV = No targeted ads on TV (Score:3)
I gave away my TV in 2003 and within days my IQ jumped by 20 points! Now I have more time to spend getting targeted ads off my computers.
FUCK THEM WITH A FROZEN MEATLOAF (Score:3)
Title says it all
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Fuck the system (Score:2)
Using monitors is not the answer. (Score:2)
Computer screens are not a suitable replacement for a TV unit. They are built using different technologies and with different image colour and dynamics in mind. You will never get deep blacks and smooth picture on a computer screen. I think it also goes without saying that, as Rammstein says, "size does matter after all". You can't comfortably enjoy a film with your family on a 24inch screen.
Find a TV which is usable without a connection. (Score:2)
Then cripple it after the initial setup. Use technologies like Pi-Hole or a hardware firewall to only allow traffic to the services you need on a whitelist basis.
Pay ME! (Score:2)
Who's going to pay ME to use their TV? I'll even take an 85" TV, if you give it to me in exchange for some ads.
Let me guess (Score:2)
This anti-feature will not appear as a features and benefits bullet point on the in-store sales display.
Also, if the "feature" somehow fails, unrelated actually wanted functionality (such as showing a picture) will also mysteriously fail.
LG TV. (Score:2)
If you don't want ads... (Score:2)
... or any other push junk, don't connect it to the internet. I bought a "smart" TV only because for the equiv of $350 US I got a 40 inch screen, 3 HMDI ports and - obvious for a TV, not a monitor - built in sound. Those sort of specs just don't exist for monitors, full stop and if they did they'd probably cost 4 figures for the same friggin hardware minus the tuner section.
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Only if Apple goes in with them and alllows the network over HDMI to pass through their boxes. But for now, they haven't thought of that route.
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