My TV started playing a video in full screen by itself. What happened?
This seems to be more of the same I guess. Choice text from the link above:
Q: Why did I see an ad in Scenic Mode?
A: After Scenic Mode launches to full screen, you may see ads. We offer free, scenic content by supporting it with ads. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.
Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off?
A: No, not at this time. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.
Luckily with TVs you can freeload: just never connect it to the internet and only apply updates via USB. Stick an Apple TV / Chromecast / console into it for playback. This might even become standard operating procedure considering Samsung is getting into the ad game, and LG and Sony likely to follow.
The best solution is commercial displays but those can be quite a bit more expensive and hard to pick out.
Keep in mind that the tv already has ethernet and wifi to ISP controlled networks. Basically almost every consumer ISP offer mandatory includes an ISP managed gateway, that can pre-certify your appliances or operate hidden ssid networks or "public" wifi access point to the ISP's network. So "smart" appliance operators only need deals with a few big ISPs to get this reach, no 5G required.
With less than a dozens deals you would cover most of the US and EU.
Basically almost every consumer ISP offer mandatory includes an ISP managed gateway
Is that really true? I never thought Internet subscriptions would require use of ISP's own device. I for sure have been using my own DSL modem/router/wlan device for my own connections (EU).
Providers are (I believe) required to let you bring your own equipment. Every DSL or cable service I've seen has allowed this.
However, it is also required that the modem you plug into the network accepts and runs firmware provided solely by the network operator. They can update your device at any time and there's nothing you can do about it.
So yeah, you can run your own hardware if you want, but the ISP will run their software on it whether you like it or not.
Market the 5G as "always connected" to the customer. Free 720p streaming, a "plus" OTT platform that costs $10/mo that gives 1080p streaming over cellular (and 4K on traditional internet - advertise the 5g as a backup in this case).
Ads sold at an upcharge to the advertiser to reach the "always targetable" smart TV. Hit 'em hard with the ads to pay it.
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/devices/tcl-and-t-mobile-launc...
T-Mo's already running RedCap in the states, so it's a matter of time...
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already made a deal with Spectrum or XFinity to use those open wifi networks that are open to customers via their account signin.
I’m skeptical an arrangement like this could work. The authentication mechanism would be interesting enough to attract security researchers and likely open anonymous Internet access that may undermine any potential benefit gained from viewer data. I could be wrong but I hope not.
I knew a guy who basically got internet access at his apartment in college via his local DOT. The message signs on the boulevard he worked on were just cellular mifi units with open or default credentials. Not super fast, but the price was right.
I once got a few years of free broadband Internet because I signed up for broadband plus basic cable, but they never put broadband on my bill. They came and did the installation and everything. Then when it eventually shut off, I called them back to complain and they said they had no record of me being a broadband customer, so I was able to sign up for the lower new customer rate.
At the same time, my TV had a built in digital tuner that could tune into the on-demand streams of other people in my neighborhood. I could watch as the paused/rewind/etc. The watching trends were interesting. Late nights you'd see soft-core adult movies, Saturday mornings you'd see lots of kid's shows.
The message signs on the boulevard he worked on were just cellular mifi units with open or default credentials. Not super fast, but the price was right.
That's more clever than my reuse story. I repurposed an outdoor AP into a client bridge and pointed at the nearby walmart. I had it feeding an unlocked AP and a yagi pointing into the neighborhood.
I ran it for a year without getting my door kicked in.
I don’t know how much longer that will be possible with how cheap 5G is getting. Sooner or later they’ll be able to install a $10 part and make a deal with wireless carriers as backhaul for unconnected TVs.
I had a really snarky reply to this, about how I'd just crack it open and remove the sim card, warranty be damned. Then I realized that even sim cards are going away, that's all done in software on the latest phones (no doubt an option soon for everything). Sorta fucked, I wish you were wrong.
If said TV won't work without 5G connectivity, it goes on my "Do Not Buy" list.
Sure we could all try to ignore the horrors of modern society and move to a cabin in the woods (and then get to know our local mailmen when we find out that even that isn't enough) but perhaps it would be better and take a stand now while we can.
Luckily with TVs you can freeload: just never connect it to the internet and only apply updates via USB. Stick an Apple TV / Chromecast / console into it for playback
With things like Amazon sidewalk, Samsung smartthings network, etc. it can still get data out
To be honest, this is part of why TVs can be offered for so cheap these days
I spent $3,000 on a Samsung Smart TV -- and all I got were ads and unwanted content - https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/i-s...
It'll be a cold day in hell when I believe corporate lies that they're doing all of this for my benefit. Especially when they neither clearly disclose all the ads and spying before purchase, nor offer an option without it at any price.
Like how would it be received if the builder of your house could come in and put up ad murals on your walls without asking? Would we accept "it subsidizes costs" as an answer?
Ironically they also provided a button where I could "adjust what you see on the home screen", but it turned out I could only add more crap. Not take anything away.
It's annoying, because it is not the same product I bought. It's worse.
For real, I haven't seen an "Open" Wifi network that wasn't a Coffee shop or Airport in over 10 years.
Yes, it's insidious and evil, but I'd argue the attack surface is almost nonexistent in 2025.
Additionally they could start producing them without HDMI or other ports to prevent Apple TV or other similar devices from connecting.
What I’m trying to say is that corporate greed is limitless and the only thing that can prevent abuse will be strict regulations at the end of day.
When a company treats its customers like crap, that opens an opportunity for someone else to come along and do better.
Corporations are copying each other's bad habits right now, the kind of behavior you've described is a trend and the ones partaking in this race to the bottom will fail. I'm looking forward to a "revolution" when one rediscovers there's actually a market for quality consumer electronics that treat you decently and are a joy to use (think Apple's earlier iPhone models, auto manufacturers going back to knobs and buttons, etc) and might pursue this myself if nobody else does.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to legislation enforcing some basic, much-needed principles (like privacy preservation, requiring opt-in consent, attaching more liability to collected user data even to the point of establishing fiduciary-like duty on the sensitive stuff, stricter transparency and better user controls promoting consumer choice). I just think you need to be careful about getting too prescriptive on the "how".
If they do that, they’re not going to be very upfront about it.
My newer 4K controller started acting up recently and I had to ifixit.
And how usable are they if you're outside of the Apple ecosystem (i think I saw an article recently that someone was stuck and needed to use a mac or an iPhone to get unstuck).
But, as far as Roku they are subsidized by selling your data and pushing ads as you call out above. Not really a fair comparison. Just like you have to pay more everywhere for the ad free tier you end up paying more for Apple TV.
I will say though that the Apple TV handles 4K flawlessly. I am willing to bet that it has quite a bit more power than any of roku’s offerings.
You can run your own linux HPC, but those get locked to 720p quality.
That is demonstrably not true.
If you run Jellyfin and pirate using thepiratebay and yandex searches, you can get 4k 7.1 audio shows.
Why would I pay to be abused and treated like a potential theif if I pay for services, but if I pirate I do get the best quality and experience?
If the company's paid experiences were top notch, I'd have stayed.
But it turns out 40TB, 20 cores, and an Intel Arc for high speed transcoding easily handles 200 shows, 3000 movies, and more. And the big upside? No more 'killed by Netflix' or trying to figure out what streaming platform has THIS show today.
If you go to the trouble of setting up a media server and Kodi/Plex on the TV, and install a barebones launcher that avoids all the ads on the official launcher, the remote still works well. I don't know whether to blame Sony or Google but every system update brought bigger and bigger ads to the point that I took an afternoon off to sideload an extremely plain ad-free launcher.
They even have a habit of blatting miscellaneous user preferences in updates by accident just because they’re careless.
It never got hooked to the internet, and it never will. Hopefully network over hdmi doesn’t become a thing lol.
I am paranoid about these things starting to…(oh, wait, there is a great y combinator-able business idea in there that will make life suck a little bit more, never mind)
The inevitable wave of enshitification is real. We need to learn to surf.
when it turned out they were monitoring your watching habit
I think every single smart tv manufacturer does this today.
At least I know LG, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, Philips, Sharp and Vizio does.
Since your smart TV is on your same domestic IP, there's a market for getting data on your watching habits to combine with your browser habits collected elsewhere.
The advertisers know more about you by now than you do.
That's why AppleTV is the best option for the moment.
The time you spend installing apps is minuscule compared to using them. And after that it is Netflix or google tracking you. Not Apple.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/how...
"I left the tv idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over.
I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips."
https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123166
(the actual Verge link needs to have mobile. removed or changed to www.)
We’re prey for their bottom line as they can’t sell TV’s for a profit without running ads all over it. I’m done. I’m out. Back to books, vinyl, fresh press, gnu, board games, and going outside.
And even if you don't connect it to your wifi, do you trust that everyone who uses your TV will remember to not do that?
There's also speculation that some manufacturers were looking into ways to piggyback ads and tracking onto public Wifi. For example, if you're in the US and you're near anyone who has Xfinity/Comcast service and haven't disabled the open hotspot, if that is even possible nowadays, there's a possibility that the TV might try to connect to the open hotspot. I don't know what the state of this is, but it's not that far-fetched that smart TVs could do that.
For the latter problem, you could potentially open up the TV, disconnect the wifi module if it's discrete, but then you're hoping that it is discrete, and that the TV will still function without that module.
Well, when I got the Xbox, it worked. But a few months after, it wouldn't receive any signal on my TV. After some googling, it turned out that the Xbox had a firmware update which now made them incompatible. Incompatible, yes. HDMI. And incompatible.
So I updated the firmware on the TV for the first time and it worked again. A few months later, the same happened again and I was forced to update another time.
So, just as a cautionary message: if your TV has appliances which need to be updated connected to it they might become unusable/essentially bricked if you decide to do that.
This is because some idiot introduced KPIs like “minutes streamed”. Can’t you just be a dumb device?
I imagine that in ten years, every electric appliance is infested with chatbot-level sentience and constantly wants to engage in conversation. EU will introduce laws that force electronics to STFU.
Then my renter updated the firmware because of a popup.
And this is why all of those people who say "just don't connect it to the Internet" are wrong.
You can decide not to connect, but are you going to tell every single guest not to, and have them think you're a crazy person because they don't understand the problem?
For those that say, I just won't tell them the WiFi password. I have news for you: many phones have hotspot and data plans where streaming to the TV won't be an issue.
I recall that when I was doing console gamedev stuff, some monitors would not work if you set the console devkits into 'retail' mode, especially some of the old cheap LCDs that IT had stashed away to use as temporary loaners if someone's monitor was broken.
What’s the PC app please?
https://github.com/JPersson77/LGTVCompanion
I have a few extra buttons on my gayming keyboard that I pretty much never use, so I assigned three of them to a script that uses the above app to change brightness between 30/50/100.
It used to happen between 3 and 4 am, if I remember correctly, and was very annoying because the TV is in the same room I sleep in.
I guessed that it might be the Flex box doing it after I remembered that the Flex box was scheduled do to automatic updates between 3 and 4 am. My guess was that sometimes when it reboots after an update it turned on the TV.
To check that I changed the update schedule to do them between 2 and 3 pm. Sure enough the unexpected turn ons then started happening between 2 and 3 pm which is pretty good evidence my guess about the Flex being responsible was right.
1st night - disable CEC on the TV
2nd night - to hell with you, into the garbage it goes
If any of my devices turn on in the middle of the night, they get the business end of a 48" crowbar that weighs too damned much. They all saw what happened to the printer when it refused to print a black and white document without yellow ink. I think their fear will keep them in line.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
Those idle tv moments are probably bought as an ad slot
Sure, we don't have billboards that scan the biometrics of whoever's walking past in order to deliver customized ads, but instead we have conditioned everyone to glue themselves to their own personal miniaturized billboards.
Instead they do so, so that they'd be the broker for that info. It's trivial to get that static info via apps, build a database, and setup scanners.
However Google has all randomized identifiers, and can link you to the same for the right price. I wonder how much they make on this front.
Knowing Google it's probably just stats, eg age, income, schooling, upcoming and past purchases, etc.
Detroit Metropolitan Airport is now home to a first-of-its-kind departure board that uses facial recognition tech to show travelers customized info about their flight.
Meanwhile half the posters here work for Google or other ad-surveillance purveyors. I watched a short YouTube video today with half a dozen unskippable ads. If you had a hand in normalizing this then you can't claim to be upset by it.
What is the problem?
Consent. The user didn’t consent to the feature, and now is expected to opt-OUT
Not sure how relevant that is today, but likely still something to watch out for especially if you're looking for a cheaper dumb TV. Also, if you're getting a used digital signage TV, if you can try to run through some basic color and motion video tests on it before you buy it; mostly to check for burn-in and backlight quality.
Also, are there decent OLED dumb TV options available yet? I rarely watch anything on my TV, so when I do it's generally something more 'special' and I rather like the gamut that OLEDs offer for those occasions.
The bad news: like many modern products, and as freely confessed in the linked article, you don't own the TV, it owns you.
The remedy: Connect the TV to your computer as a dumb monitor -- make it show only content you directly control. And disable the TV's network connection -- without that connection, it can't show ads.
My large-panel TV serves only as a computer monitor. My Linux computer runs the Brave browser and has a frequently updated ad-block list in /etc/hosts. This means no "Scenic Mode" ads and no YouTube corporate ads, only ads embedded by video content creators, which I skip over with a pointing device because the video is being controlled by a browser, not a TV.
The FBI recommends use of ad blockers to guard against fraud and malware (https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-recommends-installing-an-ad-b...). On the other hand, some sites refuse to function if an ad blocker is in use. Those sites don't deserve access to my eyeballs.
If all this fails, I pick up a book. Books don't have ads ... so far.
This means no "Scenic Mode" ads and no YouTube corporate ads, only ads embedded by video content creators, which I skip over with a pointing device because the video is being controlled by a browser, not a TV.
You skip over the ones that are obvious, but not the ones that are more stealthily integrated into the content. IMO if a video creator sells out and adds sponsored content of any kind they are no longer to be trusted to not be manipulative in other ways.
- TVs are cheaper here in the US than they are in China (or at least they were when I lived in China), and these revenue opportunities are likely the reason
Vizio kind of has a lot of dark pattern messaging. As an example, they make it seem like you HAVE to enable the microphone on the remote or install an app to change the TV volume. They don't provide a diagram of the remote, so if you don't notice the volume rocker on the side, it seems like you only have two rather invasive options.
Another example is they use wording that makes it seem like you can't use the TV if you don't agree to the terms, but if you do select the disagree button (and after confirming you really want to disagree lol), it just reverts to a dumb TV.
On more than a couple occasions in the middle of the night I've heard people talking. On working up the courage and getting out of bed I've found the TV tuned in my daughter's room to one of those Samsung Internet TV channels.
My wife and I never use those, so it's absolutely bizarre.
It starts slowly playing anodyne ads that get progressively more and more accurate, eventually turning to prescient ads about the future--maybe an ad for a divorce you didn't see coming, an illness etc
The owner throws the TV out but then starts seeing other prescient ads in storefronts, kiosks...
The Apple TV is the only thing connected, and it will auto turn the TV on/off by itself(thanks HDCP).
So I guess someone could go really far out of their way to make the Smart TV parts work again, it doesn't seem very likely.
We use Plex almost exclusively, it provides the Live TV.
It is currently the portable air conditioner season in Arizona. Home Depots now have them stocked in the front of the store.
All Wi-Fi enabled Toshiba models (which are white-label rebranded Midea units,) their overwhelming predominate stock, are susceptible to a bug where your unit can be remotely turned on or off randomly, without your input. Presumably mismatched accounts on their back-end.
Separately, but related, they also have universally paired remote controls, so your next door neighbor who also has a very popular Toshiba portable AC unit model can accidentally turn yours on and off without your input, and adjust your temperature any time, too. And you can accidentally do the same to them.
Oh, and their remote controls work across all unit models, so it doesn't matter if you have a window unit instead, either.
Whoops!
Never buy them.
Ha, that's a good one!
Gotta have regular updates to my videos of forests, waterfalls, lapping waves and crackling log fires. You never know when they're going to launch a new version of trees.
Q: My TV started playing a video in full screen by itself. What happened? A: Your TV launched Scenic Mode, a FREE, new feature that displays relaxing, ambient content when your TV is idle for a period of time. Scenic Mode delivers an experience that adds to the environment of your home or office.
It's relaxing, so you need to RELAX rather than getting in a huff over blaring ads. What, you're not relaxed and going to pull the plug?
It also warns me it will auto-updates the software 1-2 times a month. My TV was perfect out of the box--it doesn't need an update. When I disable Wi-Fi, I get notifications that my TV is disconnected. Can't win.
Have a dedicated AP just for the tv and it has only LAN access to stream content through dlna or mirror phone screen using miracast.
My favourite development in this regard is the lying timers on those ads. More than one streaming app I've caught resetting the overall timer on every ad. So it will say that there's 90s of ads, play through a 15s ad counting down to 75s, and as soon as the next ad plays, the timer resets to 90s again. Eventually after a few minutes of ads something must realize that it's actually been more than 90s, and just cuts off the current ad in the middle. Or even more fun is when it says you can skip in X seconds, but every ad it plays is Y seconds, where Y < X, and the skip timer resets with every ad. Looking at you Youtube.
I one time click an add because I was curious how the scam worked. First they wanted my name and phone number... when I typed the last digit of the phone number into the form my phone rang immediately. They even managed to confuse me for a moment.
Next level would be to use 10, 100 or 1000 phone lines (depending on budget) and call people when they haven't typed their entire number.
Quickly train the sales "person" llm on whatever public personal information can be found using their name ip/location, phone number, anything about their friends, relatives coworkers etc. Mimic the correct accent for the region.
Or howabout a question about the ad to check if they watched it properly. If they get it wrong it seems only fair to give them a new ad. Some question should not have a correct answer.
Or, how would you rate this advertisement? With each rating triggering an unique-seeming follow up question.
Actually anything you do on your internet connected Smart TV is being collected and sold by the TV manufacturer.
Smart TVs should be called Surveillance TVs at this point.
Also this sad excuse for an FAQ:
Q: Is payment required to receive Scenic Mode? A: No. Scenic Mode does not require payment and is part of VIZIO’s mission to continually make your Smart TV better than when you bought it.
Smart TVs are really and truly awful.
Now, it constantly nags me to buy a new remote, aggressively changes to an ad screen the moment you disconnect an input, and runs more slowly than before. Great job, Vizio!
Seriously. I hate these companies with a passion. It's crazy that right now the only alternative is to not use smart features / wifi. There's not even a good Android TV option. The best I can do is just run VLC on a computer connected to the screen (Kodi has an awful UI/UX, in my opinion). Plex used to be good before they became awful. AppleTV is the only semi-decent device, but it requires a iCloud login.
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/12/03/walmart-comple...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YTL25iyHU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM8_kJENdoQ
There are plenty of other videos but the vast majority are not in English - they seem to be some Indian or Russian.
At the beginning, there is an FAQ that says you can't turn off ads in scenic mode.
Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off?
A: No, not at this time...
Q: Can I change any settings for Scenic Mode?
A: Yes. To use Scenic Mode with or without volume, navigate to the left side menu on the VIZIO Home screen, click Settings > Extras > Home Page Settings > Scenic Mode. Once you’re in the Scenic Mode section of Settings, scroll down and select either Volume On or Volume Off. You will see a checkmark appear, noting that you’ve correctly selected your setting. If you want to turn off Scenic Mode completely, follow the same instructions to get to the Scenic Mode section of Settings and select Disable.I don't get why they would try to make themselves sound worse than they are.
Why would they want to make it seem like they are forcing you to watch ads?
Defaults are powerful. They want people to believe that's just how their TV works now, because it's a hassle to buy a new TV.
That's it, that's the entire story.
(Right now, the ad-free Netflix that I pay for is testing limits sometimes, of how much they try to control my experience for their own whims, but it's tolerable, and there's potential obnoxious things that they tastefully haven't done.) (Though they did briefly give me two creepy categories, for about a day, but then maybe someone realized their mistake, or got the Netflix fired-fast.)
They even went so far as to patch the Android System UI to send you notifications nagging you to enable their Taboola Lockscreen video ad things. So even if you uninstall the actual adware app, you still get nagged to use it.
Seems like this might perhaps just be the new-ish idea that got cooked up somewhere and now all suits are copying each other?
A wtf at each paragraph:
- question1: video starting alone to "provide you a relaxing experience". I'm totally so relaxed by that unexpected kind of things...
- question2: suddenly ads can show up in this video to be able to provide you a more relaxing experience. Sure sure, how relaxing to be force fed ads unsolicited on your own tv...
- question3: can I stop that? No you can't because we are forced to impose you these ads for your own good...
As much as I complain a lot about roku for their spying and ads (they deserve it and I'll never buy one) I do give them some credit for not filling that fish show they have with ads. I know people who have had those fish (or some version of them) on their screens for many years and it's a decent little virtual fish tank.
Scenic Mode does not require payment and is part of our mission to continually make your Smart TV better than when you bought it.
That'll teach me to buy a TV from Lumon Industries...
... a FREE, new feature ...
Why are you complaining about this punch in the face? It's a FREE new punch in the face you ingrateful parasite!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...
Scenic mode is an optional feature that will open up a WatchFree+ channel from the Mood and Ambience category when the TV is idling.