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Amazon's Fire TV is Adding Full-Screen Video Ads That Play When You Start Your Fire TV (cordcuttersnews.com)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (18 children)

I may be an anomalous IT professional, but despite being a coder and generally a ginormous nerd, I've never really understood why people buy "smart" devices. This isn't a criticism; I honestly just don't understand why they're popular. The amount of convenience they provide really doesn't seem like it's worth it at all, to me

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have a few roku boxes and a Google TV Chromecast. The Samsung TV I bought is a smart TV and it's slow as crap. I ended up putting a Roku box on it and use it that way. Now when the TV starts I have to hurry up and hit a button on the Roku remote to wake it up otherwise the TV starts auto playing a random channel from their new TV app that you can't seem to uninstall. I'm really just waiting for the tv to die so I can go find a new TV that isn't smart. The problem is those seem to be more expensive now.

I like the Google TV Chromecast because it aggregates all the services you sign into and can start showing me things I like and may want to watch next, right from the home screen.

But you are right, the tv itself being the smart device just isn't worth it for me. I'd rather have a dongle or box I can swap out if it starts going south. I have a Plex server and I need something in order to play that on the TV unless I just start getting a casting device and just cast from a phone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can't you just disconnect the TV from the internet to prevent it playing channels?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I haven't tried that, but I might.

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