Samsung Smart TVs Injected Ads Into Streamed Video

mpicpp sends this news from CNET: Reports are emerging that Samsung smart TVs have begun inserting short advertisements directly into video streaming apps, with no influence from the third-party app providers. The news comes just days after Samsung made headlines for another incursion into users' lounge rooms, when it was revealed that its TV voice recognition software is capable of capturing personal information and transmitting it to third parties. ... The issue has been reported on the Plex streaming service — a brand of media player that allows users to stream their own video from a personal library or hard drive and push it to a smart TV. Samsung says this was not intentional, and that they've fixed it so the ads should no longer show up.

Comments

Place The Blame Where It Lies

[Jane Q. Public]

I warned about this when HDMI was still just a plan in the works. People should never have accepted it as a standard. That's like inviting the foreign troops to live in your homes, then only complaining about it later when it becomes unbearable.

Of course, DVI supports HDCP too, which is what I'm really talking about here. Allowing others to control the content you watch was always a bad idea, and you only had to look at who were pushing the standard (the copyright trolls), to know what would come of it. People should have balked at buying THEN.

But people bought into it anyway. Now if you want to get control of your hardware back, you have to modify it, which not only voids the warranty, but is now illegal in the U.S. I hate to say "I told you so", but I told you so.

Consumers should demand full control of the hardware they own. Nothing else is acceptable. We have been seeing the abuses that are possible over the last 10 years, regardless of whether some of them were mistakes.

Do you really want to continue down that same road?