Not even a secret. A TV manufacturer publicly said a while ago that a TV without "smart" features is more expensive for the company (even if sold at the same retail price) because they cannot make any money from selling usage data.
As long as I can keep the TV offline to operate it I'm fine with it. The day it needs to be online to work is where I'll be seriously pissed enough that I'll return it without hesitation.
How? By putting in cellular or sat connections in secret? Because the FCC would be very interested in someone selling unlabeled and unlicensed radio containing equipment.
Don't worry, in a few years they will have their own sim card and network.
This behavior is despicable and we must not accept it just because "I wouldn't connect the network cable/wifi anyway". Because one day that isn't an option and by then it is already too late.
Aren’t Xfinity APs only for Xfinity subscribers? I doubt they’re just wide open. Now if a TV manufacturer struck a deal with an ISP and gave it its own access point to join...
Sonos needs to be called out for the dramatic disparity between how they present their products and what those products actually do.
Their userbase is almost universally clueless as to what it is these devices are doing and what the goals of Sonos, as a company, must be.
They should have been one of the good ones - and I had such enthusiasm for their products - but they have proven to be very, very antagonistic towards their users.
How much do they make per user? I would have have thought it was in the $10-$20 range and not enough to trigger any price sensitivity. I'm a tightass with an aldi TV but wouldn't have cared if it cost $10 more.
Not entirely related, but I remember thinking when Hulu was talking about an ad-free version of their streaming library that “this will clearly cost a lot more per month because my eyeballs are worth A LOT!!”
Imagine my surprise when it turned out only being $4 a month to remove commercials. It almost hurts my feelings knowing how little I’m worth to advertisers...
Paying to have commercials removed may not imply that your activity is not spied on, then the corresponding data not sold to third parties. You "locally" (on the site you paid) escape from advertising, indeed, but for the rest...
It's not only about allowing customers to pay for their share of ad revenue in order to remove it the ads. But to also enter new markets of customers.
For example I would never subscribe to a service with ads, regardless of price. The Hulu tier that includes ads would have to pay me about $30/mo before I would consider switching from the ad free tier.
The number might be unrelated to ad revenue at all and they figured that was the perfect threshold between capturing the highest number of "cheaper" subscribers while also maximizing new ad-free subscribers.
How is this even a question? One persons data is useless. They don’t care what you’re watching specifically, they care what everybody in a region is watching. They have to track individuals to get the profile data to categorize them in the first place.
Services revenue in general is where all devices are going. If you subscribe to Netflix on your smart TV, the TV maker gets comms. Again, this referral/conversion model is pretty dated. Otherwise TV maker has no incentive to pre-bundle your app (same as Windows, some Android phones, Lenovo laptops, etc).
