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Amazon is now automatically playing fullscreen video ads on Fire TV (9to5google.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 107 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That's why piracy is back on the menu.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    That has nothing to do with piracy or not. Its just a device to play media. You can use a firetv to 100% stream pirated content via kodi or plex and still have to see this shit.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don’t see it. I have mine blocked from dialing home, receiving updates and autoplays have long been turned off.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Good for you. It does not change my point though that a device which can stream media having ads not really has anything to do with more piracy.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

    Sure it does. As a pirate I’ve chosen to disable the device’s ability to connect to Amazon to annoy me with ads, and pirate the content they’d usually serve me instead of subscribing to anything. Not that hard to understand. If I could find a way to uninstall all the Amazon apps, I would.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Did you pirate the TV? No, this actually has nothing to do with piracy. What's hard to understand.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Evidently it’s too complicated for you.

    I didn’t pirate my computer either, but almost all the content on it is.

    Also, the original comment I responded to said “and still have to see this shit.” I don’t, because of piracy strats.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I disagree. I will not under any circumstances be advertised to in my own home.

    I'm happy to pay for your goods and services, but if you break that agreement our relationship is immediately concluded. The penalty for breaking the original terms of our agreement is that I will take what I originally paid for in perpetuity. You had your chance.

    Same rules apply for attempting to renegotiate the rules whilst the ball is in play: see Amazon's new trend of attempting to charge an additional monthly fee of the same amount as the initial service to access documentaries etc. They're finished.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Or you know have the sense god gave goats and be able to see the neon sign as they have been blowing out Amazon home devices for years. Now they need to recoup that half decade of losses. Buckle up.

    Honestly, this is why we are here. I get it if you use their delivery because getting stuff can be hard depending on the area. But this stuff, where there are half dozen competing options… come on.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    It's unbelievable. The dumb fuckers literally figured out a way to beat piracy. High quantity, easily accessible content at an appetizable price. Even one for TV, one for music, $10-15 a month, I had no issue. Everyone made out like a bandit, I was satisfied, and they all made billions.

    Now you can't even use YouTube without being bombarded with ads, and streaming is quickly becoming worse than cable was. Piracy is definitely back on the table, and the fuckers don't have license to whine about it this time. They literally had it licked, but then got too greedy, so fuck them.

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    • [+] 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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    • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Which OS is good for this? Which remote can be used? I use my Stick to launch several apps like Plex, Smarttube Next, ARD Mediathek (German TV series). Not needing anything more. But a snappy remote and support for various audio and video codecs is key.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I run CoreELEC/LibreELEC on all my streaming devices. It only runs Kodi but since Kodi has tons of addons it is fairly easy to customize. Kodi also plays pretty much any codec in existence and has support for various remotes.

    https://coreelec.org/

    https://libreelec.tv/

    If you're planning to play 4k content you will want something with a little bit more power than a Raspberry Pi 4. For Dolby Vision you need one of the few supported devices.

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    [–] 29 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Why do people still use those?

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I use a fire stick because I'm familiar with them and they are much better than the shitty OS built into my TVs. Is there an alternative you recommend? I'm open to changing, especially with how theyve been pushing ads and paid rentals lately

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I got a 4K Max one because it was only 35€. I want to upgrade to a shield pro successor which is overdue by now.

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    [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The Fire TV Sticks are getting more unusable with every update.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    don't update them

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    • [+] 15 points 2 years ago (7 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Roku

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Roku has tons of Home Screen ads what are you talking about? It was so bad I spent about 5 minutes using it until I went and bought an Apple TV.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Are you talking about the static city scape that scrolls while occasionally showing still ads every once in a while? That doesn't feel like the same thing at all. Of course I haven't used my Roku since I hooked up a PS5 so maybe they've made it worse.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago*

    Pretty much unfortunately. The good thing is its trivially easy to change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield or Google TV devices, plus you can even go a step forward and debloat them entirely with ADB. Amazon's really the only manufacturer I'd say that forces home screen ads with no choice around it, since they actively prevent changing launchers and such. But Apple is probably the only one out of the box with no advertising.

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    [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    I complained about this to "support" a few days ago. A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.

    Straight up told them I will pick another manufacturer this weekend.

    I'm burned out on protecting myself from smart devices. Maybe just a dumb screen this round.

    Edit: I have every single privacy setting set to off, but some update added a new category and defaults to on. Don't know how long Amazon has been spying on me or what they took.

    My device has autoplay off already. It may have stopped a full screen video ad, but there is a full screen picture ad instead.

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    [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Which is why I just bought an nVidia Shield Pro. Custom launcher coming tomorrow. Time to start torrenting again.

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    [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Glad I don't really watch content anymore. Though, between the Roku TV my kid has, and the big Samsung TV in our living room...my pihole is constantly hammered by both of them.

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    [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Isn't a firestick basically a chromecast? I mean, google is a shitty company in matters about privacy or ethics, but amazon isn't much better

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    I can cast to my internet-disabled TV anything to it, including pirate streaming sites with no ads. 20 years ago I ran a hdmi from my desktop and used a wireless touchpad to load downloaded stuff. It truly is the golden age of piracy

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