Technology

Have an Insignia tv and having to click out of a full screen ad after boot up will never not annoy me

Yet another justification for piracy

When our last TV which was 'smart' died, we just bought a big lcd monitor at the pawn shop. We already were only using Kodi on an Android box, so a monitor with external speaker is fine. (Seemed spyware free last time I checked, but beware no-name android media boxes on=from eBay etc., use a tiny or old spare PC instead if you wish).

One must 'sail the high seas' tovget content, of course...

Disconnected my TV from the Internet. I stream media from a PC on my lan to Kodi running on a fire stick. Setup openwrt to drop all packets to wan from the fire stick. These companies can get fucked and if they ever figure out a way to stop me from owning my devices, I'll just take up some new hobbies and be done with it all.

The cheapest 40" Bestbuy TV is a solid "dumb" TV. No software at all.

That's one reason I ditched cable years ago. Why the hell should I pay Comcast for the "privilege" of watching commercials?

Fun fact, Mythbusters episodes have a longer international edit length because America has substantially longer commercial breaks.

There is a certain unfortunate irony in the realization that one of the easiest ways to avoid this kind of thing is to buy a commercial digital signage panel intended for advertising instead of a consumer TV.

First thing I thought of, Idiocracy, love that movie.

I only connect to internet if my tv needs an update. Generally hardware inside TVs are super slow too.

Do I have Nvidia shield connected that been debloated with a simple launcher, which is connected to my router that's running a VPN + DNS filter.

I don't have a TV. I have a beamer as a screen for my PC, playing media with Kodi from my NAS, which runs Radarr (for movies) and Sonarr (for series) to download using usenet. I don't have to give consent for the stupid agreements from streaming services, I'm not limited by them either, I don't have to pay 10 different services to see everything I want. I pay for usenet, VPN and indexers. My VPN (Proton) blocks ads, trackers and malware. I watch YouTube using the Grayjay app (including sponsor block). I live ad free. I have more rights, freedom and access by piracy then I would have by paying those fucked up companies.

I don't want to pirate, I want an honest transaction where I pay just money so I would own the content I bought. Instead I have to pay money, agree to have no rights, give all my personal information which they are free to sell, all for limited access to watch content I do not own. Fuck that. Piracy it is.

Whenever I see an honest company providing a decent service, I gladly give them my money. Even if it's kind of expensive. They deserve to exist. I gladly pay for quality. Like Proton for example. Larian studios, I wish I could give them more money. They deserve every penny I payed for baldur's gate 3, I even bought the useless deluxe pack just because they deserve it. It Takes Two is a game I pirated. It is so good, I wanted to purchase it to support the devs. It was on sale, so I waited for the sale to end before purchasing it. Sadly it's not on GoG so I still do not own it, because with Steam you just pay for access to a game you do not own.

I only pirate to avoid asshole companies and ads. I do not wish to pirate, I feel forced to do so.

imho adb works wonders debloating many smartTVs. mine shows zero ads outside of commercial tv breaks. not even suggestions for amazon shows or anything in the dashboard. smarttube,kodi etc are just great!