Scharon Harding - 8/19/2024 TV software is getting loaded with ads, changing what it means to own a TV set.
Utterly depressing. Companies should have to pay to put a billboard in your living room, not the other way around.
And i thought i had annoyances with the constant bombardment of Lunatic commercials on mine. Most pure nonsense. This is just getting totally out of hand.
Yet I can remember sitting around the huge console TV set with my parents in the 1970's (yes I'm rather old ) watching our favorite Sunday evening episodes of the 6 Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman and lamenting about the number of commercials throughout each of the 60 minute episodes which took up nearly 1/3 of the total 1 hour of each, but we always persevered because it was one of the favorite days of the week for us. It was the perfect way to end the week for us all. How some things haven't really changed in over 40 years
Yep, rushing back to the TV because commercials were over, haha! And remember how VCRs suddenly gave viewers the ability to fast forward over commercials? Heresy! And then VCRs that had the ability to detect and automatically skip over commercials? Early ad blockers! The more things change, the more they stay the same... (just now with fingerprinting, profiling, and tracking included!)
Exactly, but it's not that bad yet on my LG smart TV, I don't actually have to use the home screen, I can directly navigate to streaming apps, without seeing any ads. I wasn't born yet in the 70's, but I do know that commercials have always been way worse in the US. I know this because of The Oprah Winfrey Show. But what I wanted to ask you about, I recently watched an episode of Colombo from the 70's, and to my great surprise someone actually owned a VCR? I thought VCR's were invented in the 80's. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1466074/
Wow, looks to be invented in 1956 : https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2006/06/article_0003.html It was actually mid 80's before I owned one, and that was because video rental stores started opening up everywhere.
Yes thanks, I also did a bit of research and VCR's were available in the 70's, but probably only for the truly rich, so I don't think it was mainstream yet. JVC won the battle from Sony and Philips, so VHS became the standard in the 80's. What I saw in Colombo (1973) was probably a Sony or Philips VCR, see links. https://www.rewindmuseum.com/philips.htm https://www.rewindmuseum.com/umatic.htm
Yep. I remember they started showing up in schools before they became widely available for home consumers, and then in the early 80s it was more feasible to rent a VCR along with the movie as buying one was out of reach for most. It probably took a while for movie availability to make them within reach for mere consumers and not just the wealthy.
Apparently, yes. I just pulled up Best Buy and searched televisions with non-smart checked and got a number of hits. There is one model on clearance for about 67USD. But there are high-priced models, too.
On my new TV, I have to go to its dashboard to switch inputs, haven't found another way of doing it. Another TV which is currently using my setup for internet access, has huge amounts of DNS queries, of which the majority are metrics, tracking.
Yes, I read about Roku being a takeover target for several years now. I wouldn't even be surprised if Netflix buys them, since they are one of the only ones that doesn't own a hardware platform. And as said before, with LG smart TV's it's not as bad yet, I don't ever use the home screen, I simply directly navigate to my streaming services without seeing any ads.
