this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 203 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Frog: "Hey, did any of you guys notice the water get a couple degrees hotter?"

Other Frogs: Already boiled alive

[–] [email protected] 68 points 8 months ago (21 children)

Frog with hacked firestick and a pirate subscription: huh?

Frog who downloads media himself and hosts it on his own server: you guys are in water?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's why I'm struggling really, really hard not to feel to annoyed with the average consumers that still buy this trash instead of supporting less oppressive alternatives.

Like, yeah, people should just be able to buy what they like and not have to concern themselves with the overall market trends they're helping to entrench... But holy shit is it becoming a serious problem. The customers are what drive the direction of the market, but the customers base isn't just tech enthusiasts anymore, it's literally everyone, and they are sleepwalking us all off a god damn cliff. By the time they wake up to start complaining about it, we will already be halfway down.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm still alive.

But only because I ditched Amazon Prime at the end of the month.

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[–] [email protected] 145 points 8 months ago (31 children)

I will absolutely employ a 0 tolerance policy on forced ads.

If I have paid for a service to be ad free and you throw me an ad, I won't pay for your service.

Hell, I'll back-charge through my creditor and say I paid for a service that was not delivered.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Careful of backcharging large companies. They'll remove your account from all their services. Looking at you Google.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago

That product tying is reason #3821 we need to start enforcing anti-trust law again.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They don't delete anything, though. They just deny YOU access to it.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Not your computer, not your data. The cloud is just a buzzword for someone else's computer. Always run local backups.

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[–] [email protected] 131 points 8 months ago (2 children)

"Wow, I can't believe these fire sticks are so cheap"

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Bought an early one. Used it for less than a year.

I still have it. Can they be flashed with Lineage or something?

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 8 months ago (16 children)

A great solution is just to stop buying from Amazon. Like, anything.

Chances are you did survive before Amazon was a thing. It’s possible.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I gave them 1 star and left a bad review for each of the fire tvs...they called me about the revie and then did nothing...buy a roku and throw out your $800 fire tv...it is worth it to take the loss for your own sanity

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I recently bought a Roku and was surprised to find they force ads on their home screen. It's obviously not as terrible as a fullscreen ad but its still very annoying.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

Roku also does not work well with Crunchyroll at all.

You can't get any dubs, and if you get subtitles - they only seem to be in the language the show is. E. G. Japanese subtitles only for Japanese Audio.

It's so dumb that neither Crunchyroll nor Roku will budge.

If you don't care about anime. Roku is better than the alternatives.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (6 children)

buy a roku

Wait, what? A Roku has more ads than a fire TV. 1/3 of the screen is always an ad. For new releases they'll sell the entire screen as an ad. ( Disney's Seeing Red was a full screen splash ad on my Roku.)

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You pay the Amazon tax indirectly often enough regardless. Huge chunks of the Internet run on AWS. And if it's not AWS, then it's Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Shareholders win again.

As for not buying shitty products, returning them when you realise how shitty they are, cancelling contracts when services turn shitty, etc. Yes, do that.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Experienced this for the first time yesterday. It’s my dad paying for Amazon, and we mutually discovered we couldn’t skip the ad. Asked him, “aren’t you gonna boycott it now?”, and he told me no. “Not too much of an issue”, he said. This is the attitude that enables enshittification.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

Fuck that. High seas it is, they can kiss my ass. I will not pay to watch advertisements.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Probably because one ad is like nothing compared to what we used to have to deal with on broadcast TV. Sadly the general public who have only just recently gotten into streaming in the last few years still have those kinds of ad breaks fresh in memory.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 8 months ago (4 children)

You can update the TVs settings to block these new large video ads. However, Amazon is getting more and more intrusive with its ads. I imagine that, similar to the Alexa Shows that I also use, every few weeks they'll tweak the ads, making your previous "disable this" settings no longer applicable. It's technically a new ad type, so they can auto enable it again. Super frustrating.

Largely in response to these new autoplay ads, I replaced my Fire TV with an LG TV. I've got another LG TV from only a few years ago that doesn't really have ads. This one.. does. Damn it. Don't get me wrong, they're much less in-your-face when compared to Amazon's ads. But, damn, does everything just have to be ads now?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (11 children)

For all of Apple’s faults, their Apple TV is pretty decent. A home screen with apps on them; no ads. It’s great

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

God, if I could just install SmartTube and Kodi/Stremio on an Apple TV, I’d convert in a heartbeat. Until then, I’ll keep my Shield TV Pro.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

Install libreelec onto a raspberry pi 4. Its a Linux OS that automatically boots into Kodi.

Kodi has an ad free youtube addon, which you can augment with a sponsorblock addon to skip in video ads.

If you have plex or jellyfin they intergrate really well with kodi. For plex, use plexkodiconnect, for jellyfin, use the jellyfin kodi app.

Flirc has a great remote if you go with the above called the skip.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (19 children)

Currently using a Roku Streambar for all of our streaming needs but if they pull this crap, everything we consume will be downloaded, served on my Plex server and streamed using the gaming PC I have under our TV.

Getting beyond sick of these companies using every measure and device they can to shit ads into our eyes.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (20 children)

My Roku is pie holed, I don't Even get the main screen ads anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Its sad so many people seem to lack pattern recognition and don't appreciate that Plex is no different than any of these companies, they're just not as far along on the enshitification cycle.

They're for-profit, providing a "free" service. They will fuck you and the platform. It's not an if, it's a when. They're already moving in that direction. They've made many decisions in recent years that are very obviously stepped in trying warp the product into something more profitable. That will not stop, it only gets worse.

Why not get started on the move to Jellyfin now? You will have to in a few years to avoid bullshit, I promise you.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

awesome! i love unskippable ads! especially when i pay monthly to even use the service! bezos always getting W's!!!

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago

this is just a smidgen of the first-world's self-inflicted punishment. very excited to see what happens next.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (9 children)

The day nvidia shield start doing that shit i'm going straight for Kodi in a mini-pc

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (3 children)

To late.

Nvidia Shield is getting Auro 3D audio support, full-screen ads

Source: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1700478955

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Don't give them ideas!! But I've blocked any update for my shield maybe two years ago, so it's locked in a older version of Android, it works fine and I hope this doesn't change 😬

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

That shit is annoying, Shit starts to blast out loud before I adjusted the audio. It's like going to some old website that would autoplay music obnoxiously.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Well, you get what you pay for. It's very cheap for a reason: you are the product.

I got an Apple TV in 2018 and it's still working perfectly. Yes, it was expensive, but it has no ads, it's still fast and responsive, and it still gets updates.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Ditto, I caved and got an Apple TV around 2020 after getting fed up with Android TV OS being complete garbage and constantly crashing. I'm not even an Apple fan, but the user experience was a night and day difference. Siri ended up actually being really useful in a TV remote, no more typing in passwords manually or typing in search bars.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

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I've been playing PAID Shadow Legends ever since they sent me $20,000, and now I have an unmitigated addiction to laxatives, so I can escape from my wife and kids on the porcelain gaming throne, and spend time with my favorite hero, WHICHEVER ONE WAS JUST ADDED THIS WEEK. Get that limited time premium champion with the link in my bio.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

This is so annoying. It goes into a full screen ad as soon as you turn it on, so I babysit the remote and navigate to an app as soon as it turns on, in order to avoid ads. It also does this if you let the TV idle, which I also hate. I might just throw it away and go back to hooking up a laptop to the TV instead. I paid $70-ish bucks for this stupid thing.

Edit: I just remembered that you can hack these fire sticks, so i’ll probably try that first.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Isn’t there some consumer protection law against this, I mean this is really invasive and not doing what you expected it to do when you bought it.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We stopped getting consumer protection laws in the 50s when they were deemed communism.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Anything less than allowing every corporation to plunge their tentacles into the inner depths of your anus is 100% communism.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Ever since getting a fire stick I've been hooking my laptop up to the tv instead. Now I can play games, watch movies, shows, etc

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (9 children)

These devices were annoying a decade ago. Comical that people still buy these when Roku and Android TV are so much nicer.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Our household completely ditched all Amazon products and services 4 or so years ago and never looked back. I shop local and on alternative sites for everything, it took a little adjusting at first. I think we have had to buy something from Amazon maybe once or twice in the last 4 years because I we couldn't get it anywhere else. A few months ago I switched the 1 Amazon product we had owned forever, a Fire Stick to a Roku the first company I had ever used a streaming device from 10-15 years ago, I thought briefly about wiping the Fire Stick and donating it, but decided to toss it with the thought of adding someone else's user data to the Bezos empire.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (5 children)

My Chromecast is doing it's job fine with app only mode but the day they change it or take away that mode I've got some mini PCs ready to have libreelec thrown up on them.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago
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