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.
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to the Alexa Shows that I also use, every few weeks they'll tweak the ads, making your previous "disable this" settings no longer applicable.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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Skip Skip Skip, you've used up all your skips. Upgrade Now for more skips. No thanks I'll have my mp3s. 1600 fit on a 16G thumb for $3.89/ea. At that price I gift them to friends to hold for backups. I own them. My mp3s will outlive the sun.
I think this will be the last year I’m an Amazon Prime customer. Their music streaming is beyond shitty, all the stuff that interests me on Instant Video isn’t free anyway, and I don’t buy enough Prime-eligible products to make the 100-ish euros worth it.
I find it interesting how they can get away with increasing the costs while reducing the service.
my parents keep buying Amazon FireTV devices and they are so annoying and underpowered. I want them to just buy an HTPC or something, but they wont listen cuz thats more expensive, even tho they've been through multiple Fire TVs cuz they crap out
I noticed this too and will probably switch to something different. I have noch idea where to switch to though. Nvidia is apparently also adding ads. Chinese android boxes are not trustworthy at all. Chromecast also feels a bit icky with all the stuff Google pulled off on YouTube.
I really just want to switch to a Linux bases htpc, but then Netflix will only be 720p and that's not acceptable.
IMHO there currently is no good streaming box
Been working on de-Amazonning and de-googling as much as I can for this exact reason. I have finite time on this earth, I’m tired of using that time consuming ads.
Note, I don’t begrudge companies for serving ads nor even trying to force people to see them. Conversely I will do everything I can to not see them and that is the fair game we play. I’ve abandoned plenty of services that enshittified and thus far I’ve either found replacements for them all or rolled my own.
Damn, from what i read here watching streams with nearly every solution on your tv sucks ass today. i still have my hardware steam link (and have another one in storage) and 2 steam controllers and just stream my desktop. the setup is ancient by now, but as long as the steam link can get updates or at least can sideload moonlight i'll be set