Yeah, because everyone is asking for that. They will force ads into everything they can, because Google is an Ad company.
Hell.
This is incredible, I’ve been annoyed at the home screen ads for years but I never thought to look at the chromecast app store. Super easy to set up and it looks really clean, thanks for the recommendation!
Upvote this to heaven
FLauncher is another great option — and open source!
Last commit is 11 months old. That’s a lot in dog years.
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God damn it Google.
When I turn on the TV, it’s fine if the masthead is a banner advertising a new show. I’m literally using the product to find things to watch.
But fast food? That can fuck right off.
I’ve had an Nvidia Shield since they came out, about 6 months ago when I started seeing a car ad I was like “it’s time to switch to something else…”
Or just install a new launcher
There are other issues with it, so I just decided to ditch it completely. I mainly use it for Kodi.
Google and Roku primarily make money from ads.
Apple does some stuff that isn’t great, but the Apple TV doesn’t have ads like their competitors. Apps can advertise what’s inside of them when they’re selected, but that’s it on the Home Screen.
If you have a CCwGTV, you should be using Apps Only mode. Sucks that Google hides this, because I’ve found that this is the best streaming device for my needs, but they just keep pushing ads like this. Makes me want to do a homebrew chromecast device.
But switching to Apps Only mode is a decent workaround… for now. https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10070784?hl=en
Can’t you install a custom launcher?
There are now food ads in Apps Only mode on my TCL Google TV.
Has there been a company that has experienced such a fast fall from grace as Google?
Mere years ago they were viewed as the bastion of intellectuals in tech. They worked on stuff that was deemed “not evil”, people that worked there were deemed the best and brightest, and their culture was celebrated so highly that literal movies have been made about working there.
Obviously, the reality is different from the vision, but in a short amount of time they’ve implemented URA, have had multiple mass layoffs where people were locked out overnight with no more than a sentence in an email after a decade of work, have doubled-down on enshitification of their services, and have alienated a significant chunk of their workers through RTO and cost cutting.
Anyone who bought into the don’t be evil story / marketing is being willfully naive. Like all the big tech companies they’re basically intelligence fronts. Big tech is big brother. You don’t even have to look hard to see how intertwined with the CIA / NSA Google had been from the beginning. Furthermore, Snowden’s exposure of PRISM made it clear that it wasn’t just a few grants early on, it was setup by design to limit govt liability yet allow mass surveillance to go on unabated and the entire launch of Gmail is yet a single token example. Don’t trust big tech.
Maybe, but I do believe at least then being aspirationaly not evil made it a much different company. It made people try to be better both in and outside google even if at some level it was still a big corp doing big corp things.
Whatever it is now is a boring husk of what it was and I think you can draw a line from that to those naive people and their belief in that principle trying to make awesome things and a better world.
Maybe that’s just me looking back with rose colored glasses though.
URA? Ironically, Google doesn’t define it in regards to themselves.
Unregretted Attrition. It’s basically stack ranking, where the company plans to fire a percentage of its staff every year.
I almost completely stopped going to the movies once the pre-roll stuff was ads for cars, food, etc instead of just movie trailers.
The more inconvenient Google makes avoiding ads on their platforms and services, the less of Googles platforms and services I will use.
For now I have a third party launcher setup on my CCwGTV in my living room, but the Apple TV 4k I have in my bedroom sure is looking nice these days with how well it performs and how much less trouble it is to setup and reset should I need/want to do that.
Going the HTPC route is less desirable to me since services like Amazon and Netflix go out of their way to restrict resolutions offered to things like a Debian box running Firefox. I could use Windows and Edge, but that would mean hitching myself to another company that seems more interested in selling me to advertisers than selling things to me.
pats his Apple TV good boy
If you have a pi-hole or other way to block access to your network, I’ve found these useful to block:
androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com
Google is, and always has been, an advertising company. Thats their bread and butter
I understand putting ads on a free service like Google search or YouTube. But I bought this fucking Chromecast. I even suggested it to friends and family.
Another case that pisses me off is having bought a pixel watch at premium price and they want me to pay a monthly shitty Fitbit subscription to provide me with some trivial computations.
Same thing with their Google home screen. You pay a good price and you need a subscription to use the fucking sleep sensor that you paid for.
Another one is having a premium pixel pro and they still want me to buy a Google one subscription to get useless photos filters with Google photos.
I love that Android is open source (mainly) but fuck you Google you are an embarrassment to your former self.
There is a reason why these things are under $50, and the boxes without ads cost 3x more. This is always Google’s playbook. Start with limited ads on a free or cheap service, then open things up to a monetization team to milk it.
That’s how they started. Small, tasteful, text only ads. It’s how they got all their market share. Everyone loved them because at the time the internet was a nightmare of pop up ads, toolbars, and seizure inducing flashing boxes.
It’s like when the big box stores come in with lower prices to drive smaller shops out of business then jack up their prices once they’re the only game in the area. It happens less now because they used those tactics years ago to push out Main Street, but you can still see it from time to time.
Tbh I don’t know if they would cost 3x as much without ads. The hardware is kinda shit. It’s slow are barely working.
Start with limited ads on a free or cheap service, then open things up to a monetization team milk it.
Yeah that is probably they plan all along to lock us in and then enshitify it as time go on but even if they sell them at loss, we consume a lot of YouTube (I even rent movies from Google). They can make their money without ads, if they actually cared about having a great product and not just milk us.
The Fitbit subscription also includes
Emergency Sharing, Fall Detection, Safety Check, and reach emergency services and contacts
So some safety features don’t work without it!
Wow!
The best kind of sleep.
I hope Flauncher or other alternatives are here to stay…
I guess it needs to be said again: “smart TVs” are cheap because of post-purchase monetization. That is: they gather your viewing and UI interaction behaviors (and, in some cases, ambient sound) for analysis and sale by the manufacturer.
The TV is a product, sure, but so are you when you use a “smart TV” like that without mitigating its connectivity by not letting it on your network and just using a discrete streaming peripheral of some sort instead.
Signage TVs are basically as cheap but without the slow as balls UI filled to the brim with ads.
Cheap? I must have missed that part.
Dude, do you remember how expensive a 65” 4k TV was when the technology debuted? Paying $1000 nowadays for what’s basically cutting-edge display tech is nothing - they were in the neighborhood of $10k or more when they were first produced. And you can get one with older tech from TCL or whatever for like $3-400 now, which is embarrassingly cheap for a 65” 4k.
A lot of technology is expensive when it’s first introduced and it has not reached mass market yet. Bigger TVs were already gaining popularity before Smart TVs. Getting cutting-edge display tech from a couple decades ago ain’t all that.
Nah, this stuff is not nearly cheap enough to justify all the spyware and ads.
Pre-purchase is monetized as well. Those streaming services that are featured on the box, and on the remote featured on the box, those are also paid placements.
I thought fast food TV adverts were illegal in the UK?
Not until at least October 2025.
looks like it’s time to never buy anything from google ever again!
Might as well just get/make a home theater pc
My MCPC is a micro PC that’s at least 10 years old. It plays h.265 at 2k just fine. I’m excited to see things move back to media computers.
That’s amazing. I do have an old computer laying around, so I may be able to do that. May I ask what specs your MCPC has?
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