The streaming covenant is broken. The deal was very simple. We happily gave them a very reasonable amount every month, and in return, they didn’t batter us with ads. As part of this deal, we also refrained from setting sail for any Bays of dubious morals.
Then they continually jacked up their prices, while introducing ads. If we wanted that shit, we would have just got cable. As a result, every day entire armadas are setting sail for the horizon. What have they done? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?
They even went one further. Some streaming apps can now trigger advertising whenever you hit pause while watching anything via their service.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Roku may be taking things even further, by triggering ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to their own smart TVs via HDMI. According to a reported patent application, they have the technology.
How does it work? It uses the control signal that sits within an HDMI connection. It means that you could be happily playing your PlayStation, hit pause on a game to go and take a piss, and the Roku TV would know you had paused the game and start to show ads.
Not only that, but the technology they are patenting would know exactly what you had paused, so could trigger appropriate ads.
This is likely to fall foul of Data Protection and Consumer Privacy controls in the UK and Europe, but not in the US.
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