Customer service
Customer service
Something like a chromecast would be the easiest solution.
Me personally, I just like having a media pc hooked up to my tv. I bought an amazon fire tv cause it was fairly cheap for 4k and its never been hooked up to the internet.
It is a problem, my shield tv started having ads on the home page, but I was able to install a new launcher on it to fix that.
Overall having a media player plugged in to a disconnected tv is the way to go. It is easier to replace a chromecast than the whole tv.
I’ve been having a seperate media box connected to my TV for decades now, and if I want to get support for newer video encoding protocols (which happens maybe every 8 years or so) I can just change the media box, which is far cheaper than getting a whole new TV just because you need the hardware decoder chip for a newer video encoding.
The dumb part of the TV easilly lasts decades.
Samsung, AFAIK, doesn’t have a streaming service so that doesn’t matter.
We weren’t talking about ADs on some streaming service, we’re talking about ADs displayed on the TV from Samsung themselves
Also, AD proxying with content isn’t always guaranteed, I’ve seen YT do it ofc
Not sure about Samsung devices but I’ve got a few Rokus and my pihole does a great job of blocking ads.
They still push “promotions” into the menus and every month I have to go through and turn them off, but I don’t see ads in the UI.
That’s how I handled my “smart” TV - I had a spare minipc from my old homelab, threw Linux on it and plugged it into the HDMI port.
It has never connected to my network, despite the BestBuy employee insisting it would need firmware updates for better picture.
firmware updates for better picture.
Good fucking lord.
Omg, that reminds me of a time when a retail employee insisted that installing Linux on a particular machine would rock crashing the hard drive. This was, oh, maybe 2006 or so.
I did not buy a new computer that day.