Here's another case for not owning a Samsung Smart TV. Mine, which I bought for approximately £1.3k in late 2016 received a firmware "upgrade" in mid-2017 that inserted advertising into the TV's UI.
Upon contacting Samsung to complain they informed me that it was my fault that they were appearing due to applications that I have installed. The ads all originated from applications that were pre-installed that were locked and un-removable.
In the end I had to work out how to block the TV from contacting Samsung's ad servers at the DNS level, although now a PiHole is an easier solution to this problem.
https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
LG TVs also contain ads in the home menu and other places, and there is no official way to opt out. Sony TVs appear to be the most user friendly options if you'd rather not see ads on a premium device.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/ads-in-smart-tv
I swore off Sony when my TV got an update to add advertising to the volume slider on the screen, which was the last straw. Weirdly enough, I replaced it with a Samsung, which appears to have ads if configured into any North American country, but if you select any GDPR-included territory, the ads don't appear at all
Thank God for GDPR, then. My Samsung smart TV hasn't shown me any ads yet. Except in the Youtube app I think, but that's probably not Samsung's fault.
Serious question, has having a smart fridge really helped you in any meaningful way? I'm not sure if I'm just missing something because I've never owned one but they seem useless.
I had one. It was junk. Terrible touchscreen, rebooting several times a day, no compelling reason to even use it. I use a tablet on the counter for recipes and music, much more efficient and a better system.
Thank you Europeans for the GDPR law. The need to click to accept cookies in each site looks like a useless bureaucracy, but now we see the real advantages of the law.
And in theory GDPR should reduce the number of cookie warnings, because it makes it much clearer what can be opt-out.
I've also tried my best to avoid purchasing any Sony products...ever since around 2005 [0]. While i do acknowledged that some of their products historically have been good quality...I've tried my best to use my wallet to vote my conscience.
[0] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I'm on the same boat, also fueled by the way Sony handled PS3 OtherOS [1] and Homebrew [2].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS#History
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
Thus, the problem with Adam Smith's Invisible Hand in the modern world. I salute you for sticking to your guns, but I think we all could have predicted that Sony wasn't going to suffer any significant consequences from that.
There's 10 major brands of TVs, and 10 attributes by which consumers decide what to buy. Even if you could got 95% of consumers to agree (ha) that one brand is the absolute worst at the most important attribute, it's still going to be the best at something else.
There simply aren't a sufficient number of axes of control here to influence change.
I have an LG, it has no ads. It's easy to opt-out- I never connected it to WiFi.
It is possible to disable this behavior unofficially via the service menu if you are brave enough (its kinda easy to break stuff). Not sure what happens to your warranty though. On mine it is also possible to disable OTA updates there.
Besides the dangers of the service menu, newer Samsung Smart TVs have the newer "smart remotes" that don't have the buttons access those functions. I had to purchase an older BN59-01198Q[0] remote just to get at the service menu.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=BN59-01198Q
Samsung does some odd things. I have a 2017ish model...when you turn it on it was silent, until I chose an app. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, there was a new live tv app of sorts in the first position, and the default behavior was that app when you turn the tv on. So now you get some awful commercial blasting every time you turn on the tv...