we live in hell
I don’t even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they’re saying…hey do you want a worse experience?
“Automatic content recognition” https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysis/acr-the-future-of-tv-and-audience-data#! Roku is not the only ones doing it :(
So the only way to opt out of this hell is to kill your internet connection? That sucks!
I blocked the servers with my pihole. Coincidentally, my two smart TVs are the two most blocked devices on my network. It’s not even close.
This was with only ~1 hour of TV watching, while the device in the third spot is my phone (which I had been using all day). And yet the second TV still had almost 3x as many blocked requests.
Smart TVs are fucking invasive.
So the only way to opt out of this hell is to kill your internet connection?
No. It’s actually simple to disable. On the Roku TV just go to:
Settings > Privacy > Select Smart TV Experience and disable “Use Info from TV Inputs”
terrible; keep your tv off the internet; it used the mic to determine that
Proof? There are other (some equally creepy) ways that it could get this info. Depending upon how the DVD player is connected, it could simply be getting info from that. It could also be taking occasional screenshots. There are other things as well.
Edit: poster below links to Roku and they use screenshots.
What brand? so I know NOT to buy it
The little asterisk symbol on the screen is leading me to believe it’s a Roku.
I have two roku tvs. The day I see this is the day they get disconnected.
I believe it’s Roku. That purple symbol in the bottom right is on the remote as well.
Very budget so this doesn’t surprise me.
Wtf I thought roku TV were one of the good ones. I use a Roku thing that you plug in and I haven’t seen this yet.
The Roku box was one of the good ones… about ten years ago. Though maybe this is just a TV thing. TIL Roku makes actual screens.
In the past few years especially, I’ve seen so many unshakable “good ones” go bad. Some, in the worst possible way.
The pitch doesn’t need to make logical sense. The entire purpose of horrible shit like this is so some asswipe with a marketing degree can say “look boss, I did a thing”. Welcome to late stage capitalism, where no one ever gets fired for shoving another advertisement in somewhere.
Pihole or similar DNS blocking. I can’t recommend it enough. My smart TVs are the #1 offender on my network. The only thing that will try to pull in more ads are my wife’s mobile games.
Can confirm, pi hole is awesome.
Some initial configuration required especially if you are doing it by device instead of at the router, but the results are well worth it.
Can confirm, well worth the $30 for the Libre le Potato that I run it on.
Wait, can I run pihole on any device? (I’ll probably look it up in the meantime)
