Who even buys hardware like this?
1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less.
2. Most people are largely uncaring about seeing advertising on their devices. It's why less than 30% of US residents block ads on the web.
Surely there's a market outside of grumpy HN readers who know how the sausage is made for this kind of thing? Older people spring to mind, but also people living in areas of poor internet connectivity, people who value DIY repairability, and of course the ecological angle of avoiding the inevitable e-waste of the modern throwaway approach to consumer goods.
" here we, are opening the tomb of the lost king for the first time, what do you see howard?" " i see wonderfull things!"
except i instead see a big banner, and a logo and a popup from the side, and they have zero to do with archeology or science and the whole point of the program has been obliterated.
Is this actually true though? I'd love to see an analysis of pricing in relation to the amount of adware a TV has. My gut instinct is that you would not see a significant price decrease for more adware-laden models.
365 days in a year, 5 year lifetime -> 1825 days, our consumer watches TV 16 hours a day -> 29200 hours watched, 6 commercials/hour -> 175200 commercials watched. Youtube pays ~4$ per 1000 views, giving us 700.8$ lifetime ad revenue for a very exaggerated viewer.
A more normal viewer that watches say 4 hours/day, 6 days a week will give us a more modest ad revenue of 187.71$.
Assuming the "normal viewer" is actually representative, the statement that ad-supported hardware is cheaper on the scale of 2000$ TVs is bullshit.