In theory, I like the concept of a smart TV. Not requiring a separate device hooked up to get your streaming services offers simplicity, and I was drawn to the concept.
I bought a new TV this past week. I was, admittedly, looking forward to paring down the number of remote controls it takes. But something insidious happened.
Advertisements.
Now I need to say this: I loathe advertisements. They're ugly, intrusive, and manipulative. When my son repeated them verbatim with enthusiasm in his voice, as if he really believed the claims they made, I actively sought to banish them forever. Now before this was passive. I use adblockers on my web browsers, I pay a little extra on some services to disable ads (even on my wife's Kindle), and stopped using any services that showed them regardless.
I could barely watch the pilot of the new Star Trek show because of the near 1:1 ratio of ad:show.
I'm currently in the process of re-configuring my home network to block all ads on any devices instead of relying on the devices own adblocking abilities.
But that TV. I turned it on, and a full THIRD OF MY SCREEN was an unhidable, unskippable, permanent advertisement. This wasn't a third party that I chose to do business with, this wasn't something I could make go away. This was a permanent billboard that the TV manufacturer baked right into my house.
It went back to the store immediately. A fair amount of searching later showed that most, if not all, smart TV's have some sort of built in advertising that you couldn't dispose of.
I'd rather have more remotes than a single ad
No comments:
Post a Comment