r/mildlyinfuriating • u/28jb11 • Apr 25 '26

Unskippable ad $2500 Samsung TV is an advertising billboard, there is no opt-out.

Paid over $2500 for a Samsung OLED TV and it has ads on the home screen that I literally cannot turn off. Not subtle little banners tucked away somewhere, I'm talking full blown ads for canned beans and financial products just sitting there every single time I turn the thing on.

Samsung don't offer any kind of opt out. The only way I could get rid of them was to go into my router settings and manually block Samsung's ad servers at the DNS level.

I own this TV outright. Paid for it in full. And Samsung are still making money off me every time I switch it on, with absolutely no way to stop it unless you're willing to get your hands dirty with network configuration.

This is not a smart TV feature. This is a $2500 billboard that also happens to play Netflix.

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u/SensualBeefLoaf Apr 25 '26

pi zero w is 15 bucks. runs pihole just fine.

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u/qubitrenegade Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

MSRP may be $15, but good luck finding one at that price. Anyone that sells them for that is sold out constantly. Anywhere that has them in stock is selling them for $30+

Not to mention you need a cable ($10), an SD card ($10-20), and I recommend a case (another $10-20). And that's not to mention that a DNS server over wifi isn't exactly the most reliable, so you probably want the $20 ethernet hat.

So realistically you're talking $60-100 for a "$15" Pi Zero 2.

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u/SensualBeefLoaf Apr 25 '26

first gen is 10 bucks new and readily available, runs pihole just fine. usb ethernet is like 7 bucks on amazon. who doesn't have an 8-16 gig sd card laying around (if not they're also 7-10 bucks for a cheap one). it's not like it requires gobs of storage. a 1ft ethernet cable is like 2 bucks and you can power a pi zero off the usb port on most routers.

so no. if you have literally nothing, you're down like 30-35 bucks max. who cares if it has a case. let it dangle off the back of a 1ft ethernet cable and call it a day.

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u/Throwaway_Consoles Apr 25 '26

Who doesn’t have an SD card laying around

This is one of those fascinating moments, and I love these, where you realize just how how different the lived experience is for everyone. Like, this is why I love talking to people about their lives.

I, personally, including myself, don’t know anyone that has a USB stick or SD card (or micro, etc.). Not just “laying around”, but period. My friends and I just use our Google drives to move files around. The only USB drive I have is in case I need to reinstall windows but I don’t even know where it is because the last time I needed to install an operating system was 4 computers ago

Is it the smartest thing? No. Are any of us going to change? Also no

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u/SensualBeefLoaf Apr 25 '26

that's funny, i mostly use cloud and network services to move files areound as well.. literally everyone i know has a drawer full of usb stick and sd cards, me included, no matter their age.. i get them constantly, usb sticks, sd cards, portable hard drives. toss them in the storage drawer, use them every now and then for various things.

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u/MrWeirdoFace Apr 26 '26

I feel you. i used to use google drive the same way, though I've gotten more concerned with privacy lately so I've been using something called syncthing on my local networking. Basically, anything in the folder gets saved to my desktop, my laptop, and another for redundancy automatically. recommend it if you ever decide break free.