Posted by decimalenough 6 days ago
This seems to be more of the same I guess. Choice text from the link above:
Q: Why did I see an ad in Scenic Mode?
A: After Scenic Mode launches to full screen, you may see ads. We offer free, scenic content by supporting it with ads. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.
Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off?
A: No, not at this time. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.
I disagree that it should be normal.
JavaScript features are supposed to enhance a document that primarily communicates via text. The text should be readable, and not withheld, without it.
Luckily with TVs you can freeload: just never connect it to the internet and only apply updates via USB. Stick an Apple TV / Chromecast / console into it for playback. This might even become standard operating procedure considering Samsung is getting into the ad game, and LG and Sony likely to follow.
I spent $3,000 on a Samsung Smart TV -- and all I got were ads and unwanted content - https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/i-s...
It'll be a cold day in hell when I believe corporate lies that they're doing all of this for my benefit. Especially when they neither clearly disclose all the ads and spying before purchase, nor offer an option without it at any price.
Like how would it be received if the builder of your house could come in and put up ad murals on your walls without asking? Would we accept "it subsidizes costs" as an answer?
Ironically they also provided a button where I could "adjust what you see on the home screen", but it turned out I could only add more crap. Not take anything away.
It's annoying, because it is not the same product I bought. It's worse.
The best solution is commercial displays but those can be quite a bit more expensive and hard to pick out.
If said TV won't work without 5G connectivity, it goes on my "Do Not Buy" list.
Sure we could all try to ignore the horrors of modern society and move to a cabin in the woods (and then get to know our local mailmen when we find out that even that isn't enough) but perhaps it would be better and take a stand now while we can.
I had a really snarky reply to this, about how I'd just crack it open and remove the sim card, warranty be damned. Then I realized that even sim cards are going away, that's all done in software on the latest phones (no doubt an option soon for everything). Sorta fucked, I wish you were wrong.
Keep in mind that the tv already has ethernet and wifi to ISP controlled networks. Basically almost every consumer ISP offer mandatory includes an ISP managed gateway, that can pre-certify your appliances or operate hidden ssid networks or "public" wifi access point to the ISP's network. So "smart" appliance operators only need deals with a few big ISPs to get this reach, no 5G required.
With less than a dozens deals you would cover most of the US and EU.
Market the 5G as "always connected" to the customer. Free 720p streaming, a "plus" OTT platform that costs $10/mo that gives 1080p streaming over cellular (and 4K on traditional internet - advertise the 5g as a backup in this case).
Ads sold at an upcharge to the advertiser to reach the "always targetable" smart TV. Hit 'em hard with the ads to pay it.
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/devices/tcl-and-t-mobile-launc...
T-Mo's already running RedCap in the states, so it's a matter of time...
Is that really true? I never thought Internet subscriptions would require use of ISP's own device. I for sure have been using my own DSL modem/router/wlan device for my own connections (EU).
Providers are (I believe) required to let you bring your own equipment. Every DSL or cable service I've seen has allowed this.
However, it is also required that the modem you plug into the network accepts and runs firmware provided solely by the network operator. They can update your device at any time and there's nothing you can do about it.
So yeah, you can run your own hardware if you want, but the ISP will run their software on it whether you like it or not.
I imagine fiber is a different story.
I’m skeptical an arrangement like this could work. The authentication mechanism would be interesting enough to attract security researchers and likely open anonymous Internet access that may undermine any potential benefit gained from viewer data. I could be wrong but I hope not.
I knew a guy who basically got internet access at his apartment in college via his local DOT. The message signs on the boulevard he worked on were just cellular mifi units with open or default credentials. Not super fast, but the price was right.
I once got a few years of free broadband Internet because I signed up for broadband plus basic cable, but they never put broadband on my bill. They came and did the installation and everything. Then when it eventually shut off, I called them back to complain and they said they had no record of me being a broadband customer, so I was able to sign up for the lower new customer rate.
At the same time, my TV had a built in digital tuner that could tune into the on-demand streams of other people in my neighborhood. I could watch as the paused/rewind/etc. The watching trends were interesting. Late nights you'd see soft-core adult movies, Saturday mornings you'd see lots of kid's shows.
That's more clever than my reuse story. I repurposed an outdoor AP into a client bridge and pointed at the nearby walmart. I had it feeding an unlocked AP and a yagi pointing into the neighborhood.
I ran it for a year without getting my door kicked in.
Additionally they could start producing them without HDMI or other ports to prevent Apple TV or other similar devices from connecting.
What I’m trying to say is that corporate greed is limitless and the only thing that can prevent abuse will be strict regulations at the end of day.
When a company treats its customers like crap, that opens an opportunity for someone else to come along and do better.
Corporations are copying each other's bad habits right now, the kind of behavior you've described is a trend and the ones partaking in this race to the bottom will fail. I'm looking forward to a "revolution" when one rediscovers there's actually a market for quality consumer electronics that treat you decently and are a joy to use (think Apple's earlier iPhone models, auto manufacturers going back to knobs and buttons, etc) and might pursue this myself if nobody else does.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to legislation enforcing some basic, much-needed principles (like privacy preservation, requiring opt-in consent, attaching more liability to collected user data even to the point of establishing fiduciary-like duty on the sensitive stuff, stricter transparency and better user controls promoting consumer choice). I just think you need to be careful about getting too prescriptive on the "how".
With things like Amazon sidewalk, Samsung smartthings network, etc. it can still get data out
A low res, low quality jpeg once a minute or N seconds into a scene transition is quite small. I think audio fingerprinting can be effective and very low bandwidth as well.
If they do that, they’re not going to be very upfront about it.
For real, I haven't seen an "Open" Wifi network that wasn't a Coffee shop or Airport in over 10 years.
Yes, it's insidious and evil, but I'd argue the attack surface is almost nonexistent in 2025.
They even have a habit of blatting miscellaneous user preferences in updates by accident just because they’re careless.
The cynic in me thinks that they've tried that and only after it backfired they created the promise (and they'll silently revoke their promise in the future)
It never got hooked to the internet, and it never will. Hopefully network over hdmi doesn’t become a thing lol.
I am paranoid about these things starting to…(oh, wait, there is a great y combinator-able business idea in there that will make life suck a little bit more, never mind)
The inevitable wave of enshitification is real. We need to learn to surf.
I think every single smart tv manufacturer does this today.
At least I know LG, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, Philips, Sharp and Vizio does.
Since your smart TV is on your same domestic IP, there's a market for getting data on your watching habits to combine with your browser habits collected elsewhere.
The advertisers know more about you by now than you do.
That's why AppleTV is the best option for the moment.
The time you spend installing apps is minuscule compared to using them. And after that it is Netflix or google tracking you. Not Apple.
That is demonstrably not true.
If you run Jellyfin and pirate using thepiratebay and yandex searches, you can get 4k 7.1 audio shows.
Why would I pay to be abused and treated like a potential theif if I pay for services, but if I pirate I do get the best quality and experience?
If the company's paid experiences were top notch, I'd have stayed.
But it turns out 40TB, 20 cores, and an Intel Arc for high speed transcoding easily handles 200 shows, 3000 movies, and more. And the big upside? No more 'killed by Netflix' or trying to figure out what streaming platform has THIS show today.
My newer 4K controller started acting up recently and I had to ifixit.
And how usable are they if you're outside of the Apple ecosystem (i think I saw an article recently that someone was stuck and needed to use a mac or an iPhone to get unstuck).
But, as far as Roku they are subsidized by selling your data and pushing ads as you call out above. Not really a fair comparison. Just like you have to pay more everywhere for the ad free tier you end up paying more for Apple TV.
I will say though that the Apple TV handles 4K flawlessly. I am willing to bet that it has quite a bit more power than any of roku’s offerings.
If you go to the trouble of setting up a media server and Kodi/Plex on the TV, and install a barebones launcher that avoids all the ads on the official launcher, the remote still works well. I don't know whether to blame Sony or Google but every system update brought bigger and bigger ads to the point that I took an afternoon off to sideload an extremely plain ad-free launcher.
"I left the tv idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over.
I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips."
https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123166
(the actual Verge link needs to have mobile. removed or changed to www.)
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/how...
Fabulous boxes - I’m still running a 4 generation old one and they just work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
Sure, we don't have billboards that scan the biometrics of whoever's walking past in order to deliver customized ads, but instead we have conditioned everyone to glue themselves to their own personal miniaturized billboards.
Instead they do so, so that they'd be the broker for that info. It's trivial to get that static info via apps, build a database, and setup scanners.
However Google has all randomized identifiers, and can link you to the same for the right price. I wonder how much they make on this front.
Knowing Google it's probably just stats, eg age, income, schooling, upcoming and past purchases, etc.
"Detroit Metropolitan Airport is now home to a first-of-its-kind departure board that uses facial recognition tech to show travelers customized info about their flight."
Those idle tv moments are probably bought as an ad slot
There's a little about Eric's son here:
"George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father": https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/19/george-orwell-...
Well, when I got the Xbox, it worked. But a few months after, it wouldn't receive any signal on my TV. After some googling, it turned out that the Xbox had a firmware update which now made them incompatible. Incompatible, yes. HDMI. And incompatible.
So I updated the firmware on the TV for the first time and it worked again. A few months later, the same happened again and I was forced to update another time.
So, just as a cautionary message: if your TV has appliances which need to be updated connected to it they might become unusable/essentially bricked if you decide to do that.
I recall that when I was doing console gamedev stuff, some monitors would not work if you set the console devkits into 'retail' mode, especially some of the old cheap LCDs that IT had stashed away to use as temporary loaners if someone's monitor was broken.
This is because some idiot introduced KPIs like “minutes streamed”. Can’t you just be a dumb device?
I imagine that in ten years, every electric appliance is infested with chatbot-level sentience and constantly wants to engage in conversation. EU will introduce laws that force electronics to STFU.
And this is why all of those people who say "just don't connect it to the Internet" are wrong.
You can decide not to connect, but are you going to tell every single guest not to, and have them think you're a crazy person because they don't understand the problem?
For those that say, I just won't tell them the WiFi password. I have news for you: many phones have hotspot and data plans where streaming to the TV won't be an issue.
What’s the PC app please?
https://github.com/JPersson77/LGTVCompanion
I have a few extra buttons on my gayming keyboard that I pretty much never use, so I assigned three of them to a script that uses the above app to change brightness between 30/50/100.
At the beginning, there is an FAQ that says you can't turn off ads in scenic mode.
Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off?
A: No, not at this time...
Q: Can I change any settings for Scenic Mode?
A: Yes. To use Scenic Mode with or without volume, navigate to the left side menu on the VIZIO Home screen, click Settings > Extras > Home Page Settings > Scenic Mode. Once you’re in the Scenic Mode section of Settings, scroll down and select either Volume On or Volume Off. You will see a checkmark appear, noting that you’ve correctly selected your setting. If you want to turn off Scenic Mode completely, follow the same instructions to get to the Scenic Mode section of Settings and select Disable.I don't get why they would try to make themselves sound worse than they are.
Defaults are powerful. They want people to believe that's just how their TV works now, because it's a hassle to buy a new TV.
That's it, that's the entire story.
I prefer to state facts and leave interpretations to others.
Vizio wrote this:
>Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off? A: No, not at this time.
We’re prey for their bottom line as they can’t sell TV’s for a profit without running ads all over it. I’m done. I’m out. Back to books, vinyl, fresh press, gnu, board games, and going outside.
That's why I don't buy the "but ads make it cheaper" lie.
Of course you could just do the one update and then unplug it.
And even if you don't connect it to your wifi, do you trust that everyone who uses your TV will remember to not do that?
There's also speculation that some manufacturers were looking into ways to piggyback ads and tracking onto public Wifi. For example, if you're in the US and you're near anyone who has Xfinity/Comcast service and haven't disabled the open hotspot, if that is even possible nowadays, there's a possibility that the TV might try to connect to the open hotspot. I don't know what the state of this is, but it's not that far-fetched that smart TVs could do that.
For the latter problem, you could potentially open up the TV, disconnect the wifi module if it's discrete, but then you're hoping that it is discrete, and that the TV will still function without that module.
Also this sad excuse for an FAQ:
Q: Is payment required to receive Scenic Mode? A: No. Scenic Mode does not require payment and is part of VIZIO’s mission to continually make your Smart TV better than when you bought it.
Smart TVs are really and truly awful.
Now, it constantly nags me to buy a new remote, aggressively changes to an ad screen the moment you disconnect an input, and runs more slowly than before. Great job, Vizio!
"Scenic Mode does not require payment and is part of our mission to continually make your Smart TV better than when you bought it."
That'll teach me to buy a TV from Lumon Industries...
(Right now, the ad-free Netflix that I pay for is testing limits sometimes, of how much they try to control my experience for their own whims, but it's tolerable, and there's potential obnoxious things that they tastefully haven't done.) (Though they did briefly give me two creepy categories, for about a day, but then maybe someone realized their mistake, or got the Netflix fired-fast.)