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Amazon's Fire TV is Adding Full-Screen Video Ads That Play When You Start Your Fire TV
(cordcuttersnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Technology
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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
Being poor makes you make different decisions than when you can afford any option you like. We wanted a big 4k TV and it was the best option for our wallets.
Well what do you use to watch TV?
An old hand-me-down 1080p TV and my laptop
And what do you use on your laptop to watch things?
Generally mpv
Do you think that setup would be preferable for the average person
It's not like an average person would be unable to use their laptop and some media player, regardless of which OS they use; the fact that I use a weird-ass player doesn't mean it's the only option available on a laptop. It just seems pointless to get another gadget to do the same thing you can do on a gadget you own (assuming you have a laptop, of course.)
It's also a lot mews convinient then just turning s single device on with a remote then using thst remote to choose what you want to watch
I feel like there’s a misunderstanding here that keeps coming up. The Amazon fire TV isn’t a smart TV, it’s a streaming device (usb stick style) that you plug into your TV. And it’s quite understandable why people want to stream videos on their TV, that’s how they access Netflix, Disney plus etc.
Edit: it’s apparently a TV as well.
No, the Fire TV Stick is a streaming stick. The Fire TV is a TV with the stick built in and it makes you go through the Amazon Fire UI to do normal TV things as well.
They have TV's as well as the Fire Sticks, and people buy them because they are cheap. I have Roku TV, but it never gets on the network, I just use Apple TV.
Fair enough, I wasn’t aware of that. I guess they added those at one point.
I guess those devices make more sense if you don't have a laptop. I only have a laptop (well, that and a Steam Deck which counts as mobile Linux I guess) so I just plonk it into the HDMI port
The Lemmy community is probably not the most representative group of people when it comes to consumer electronics. I doubt that most people plug their laptops into their TV every time they want to watch something. But fair enough.
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.
Can't you just disconnect the TV from the internet to prevent it playing channels?
I haven't tried that, but I might.
for tv stuff "smart" is the only thing that exists now