Do you own or are considering buying a Vizio smart TV? You might reconsider after reading this.

[thewayne]

According to this Reuter's article, "Smart TV manufacturer Vizio has formed a partnership with nine media and advertising companies to develop an industry standard that will allow smart TVs to target advertisements to specific households, the companies said Tuesday.

The consortium includes major TV networks like Comcast Corp’s NBCUniversal and CBS Corp, as well as advertising technology companies like AT&T Inc’s Xandr.

Addressable advertising, or targeting viewers on the household level based on their interests, has long been the goal of TV marketers. But TVs lack cookies that internet browsers use to allow ads to follow people around the web. And TV manufacturers have so far used different technology and standards to enable addressable advertising, hindering the industry’s growth, said Jodie McAfee, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Inscape, a subsidiary of Vizio."

Myself, I refuse to own a smart TV, likewise I won't own an Alexa or similar device. The only thing connected to my router is my Apple TV. There are too many things tracking my life already that I can at least eliminate what I can, and smart TVs are one such category. When I bought my latest TV last year, I purposely chose a dumb TV: I wanted all of the control to come through my Apple TV and DVD/BR player, which also makes the TV less expensive. I've always had an inherent distrust of all-in-one devices, I've especially been burned by multifunction printers where the scanner doesn't work if the ink cartridges are empty.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vizio-advertising/vizio-wants-next-generation-smart-tvs-to-target-ads-to-households-idUSKBN1QT16V

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/19/03/13/216213/vizio-wants-next-generation-smart-tvs-to-target-ads-to-households

Comments

[silveradept]

We already have advertisements on our content, why should we let them be on our televisions as well? Blech. Yet another platform someone will have to write an adblocker for.

[thewayne]

It'll be interesting to see if they have a downturn of sales because of this.  My first hi-def TV was Vizio, it's sidelined because of a power supply problem, now I don't know if I will bother getting it repaired even though it isn't a smart TV.  I certainly won't be making Vizio a purchase destination when alternatives are available for any sort of product.

[moxie_man]

Simple solution: Don't connect it to your router. As I use an antenna, I don't have to worry about them using a "backdoor" through the coax cable either.

[dewline]

For now.

[thewayne]

Yup.  I always wondered how much it would complain about not being connected.  My DVD/BR player can do Netflix, but when we got it we never bought NF, so we never plugged it in.

[moxie_man]

My spare TV is a Vizio. It wanted to connect to wifi. I said no and that was that. Personally, I prefer my older Sanyo. I had bought the Vizio on sale while brother was working on getting parts for the Sanyo. It's a cheap set compared to the older Sanyo and shows.

The Vizio isn't as good a TV in one aspect: It automatically searches for channels when you first plug it in. That's great if you live in a city with strong broadcast signals. That's not so great if you live in a fringe area where roughly half-the signals are in one direction (southwest) and the other half in the other direction (northeast) and your antenna router is too slow to keep up with the tv's channel scan. With the Vizio I was missing half my stations. There is no override to this on the Vizio. Sure, you can turn the antenna and rescan, but you'll lose the other stations it previously found. And it won't let you go to any station it thinks isn't there. Very annoying. The Sanyo after it does it's scan, will let you go to stations that "aren't there" and if you find a signal, it adds it to your stations and doesn't drop the ones previously found, even if there's no signal the second time around.

When the Sanyo becomes unrepairable, I'll pay the extra $$$ for another one if they still make TVs at that time. Then again, I didn't pay a cent for this one. Brother obtained it under the salvage rights clause of his contract with the local muckymuck college. They replaced that 54 inch flat panel with a 70 inch one.