Some Roku smart TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV

That's a real shame. It is so frustrating that every entrant into the smart TV market has decided to go the route of subsidizing hardware with advertising; its like everyone saw Amazon pull it off on kindle/tablets and decided it was gospel.

I think the HN community is a little more insulated from this because we have the knowledge, desire, and initiative to try modding, or investigating other options.

For people like my parents, however, this just becomes another piece of mental friction they have getting in the way of their content.

If the entertainment industry isn't wise, they may see a lot of people just using big-format smart products less and less. Think cordcutting, part deux: internet blocking (at least, on non-PC hardware).

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Edit: it seems this is apparently more on the shoulders of TV manufacturers, who make deals with roku to enable this on integrated roku products (i.e. roku TVs): https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/comments/s5ik5y/welp_th...

"If it's free, then you're the product" has long been obsolete. Time to replace it with "If you can't control it, then you're the product".

I keep hoping for something like OpenWRT for smart TVs. I have a Roku TV that I'd love to de-Roku even just so it would switch between inputs more quickly.

I wouldn't mind this if this was clearly advertised as a "ad-supported" TV to lower the price, (similar to a ad-supported Kindle) but sadly this does not appear to be the case.

Is it possible to avoid this, and similar crap, by never allowing the TV to connect to the internet? Or will they refuse to work at all?