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Roku explores taking over HDMI feeds with ads (www.lowpass.cc)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.

This way, when an owner of a Roku TV takes a short break from playing a game on their Xbox, or streaming something on an Apple TV device connected to the TV set, Roku would use that break to show ads. Roku engineers have even explored ways to figure out what the consumer is doing with their TV-connected device in order to display relevant advertising.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I doubt that Roku is the only one exploring this option though. Heck Samsung displays ads everywhere in their UI, including the individual, source selection items.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

seems like it depends on the region? my Samsung gen 5 tv with region set to Ukraine displays zero ads in the Smart Hub thingy even tho I'm logged onto my Samsung account and connected it to the internet (I'm not actually using the "smart" features tho, I'm using an hdmi feed from a Mi Box S)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Could be, I'm sure other countries will be different since they all have different privacy laws. Honestly though none of this TV stuff really bothers me much in the sense of day to day life, it more just bothers me in the abstract sense.

I don't hook up any of my tv's to the network anyways, and I'm just always on HDMI and a media pc anyways with pi-hole on my router so no ads for me, this was just something I noticed when I hooked up my brother-in-law's tv and he wanted to use the built in smart stuff, which I don't blame him, it's his choice in privacy vs convenience.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

i think the tv boxes are a great middle ground, like my mi box s gen1 was shipped with clean Android TV image straight from google without any bloatware...
it's basically as "bad" as any android phone (aka privacy is opt in, but it's not as bad as e.g. lg with their data collection, and it does not show any intrusive ads, since it's a clean Android build (app sidebar shows suggested apps from google play, but it's an android thing))

(they started adding bloatware like their own spyware launcher and replaced android tv dashboard with crappy ad-filled google tv one starting with android 9 update on gen1 or all gen2 software revisions though...)