“My cat stepped on the controller, your honor. I never actually saw or agreed to those terms.”

Commercial displays cost more because backlight testing and ratings double or triple. You’re paying more for longer uptime since your display is likely to run 12+ hours a day straight and not for 1-2 hours a day with an occasional 8+ hour usage. You’re also paying actual cost, but a lot of it really has to do with testing and materials that are built to survive consistent and frequent usage, plus centralized management. Lots of people assume it’s the same shit, but it’s completely different and it shows when you buy a consumer off the shelf display and put it in production.

Computer monitors are dumb tv

I’ve heard that if you want a dumb TV, you buy a smart TV with input priority on the hdmi and never connect to the internet.

How accurate is that?

I wouldn’t know, as I’ve been blessed with a couple of dumb tvs from the golden age of dumb tvs for the last 10 years.

I have no experience with them, but FYI a bunch of people were recommending sceptre for dumb TVs in other threads.

Sceptre makes dumb TVs.

What I don’t get about smart TVs is why you can’t use it with your phone. That’s one of Kodi’s best features. You can just type using your phone keyboard. Typing with a TV remote is a fucking NIGHTMARE.

Can’t you plug in your computer into an HDMI port and simply not use the “smart” features?

They’re also brighter and don’t burn in as easily

You can (or at least could) put Bravia TVs into “pro mode” and turn off all the shit.

Any tv without internet access is a DumbTV™️, no?

So anybody who doesn’t have A FUCKING DESKTOP PC near their TV is a Neanderthal?

I have a smart TV from 2019 and it runs perfectly fine, it’s snappy and convenient. Switching inputs requires 2 button presses (3 if you don’t want to wait 3 seconds to auto-switch to the selected one) or I can automate it with home assistant for a “movie watching” scene for instance, for 0 button presses.

Plus you seem to completely misunderstand what digital signage TV are.

I haven’t looked into it, but there’s got to be some open source firmware for a lot of these TVs, right? To improve the UI and remove all spyware and bloatware?

The GPL ensures user software freedom for us to remove this crap by requiring them to share their source code. Using Linux doesn’t mean they have to follow the GPL unless they make modifications to it.

You need every software contributors to agree to a license change unless the license gives an upgrade option. Most contributors had no choice but to use GPLv2 as it wasn’t “GPLv2-or-later” to start with, maybe it was posdible at one point but they didn’t want to anyway.

Those displays are not televisions - they are for menus at restaurants. They cost a fortune because they are low volume, high reliability devices that come with service contracts and repairable components.

Similar things have worked in countries that aren’t so under the thrall of the mighty corporation. I recall some guy in … Russia? who struck out and reworded a bunch of penalty clauses for a credit card offer he got and mailed it back to the bank, which accepted it and issued the card. Cue much hilarity as he racked up a bunch of charges and then got it thrown out in court. (Actually, here’s a link.. They eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.)

Anyway, I live in Australia so my response to all these kinds of attempts at removal of my consumer rights is a drawn out “yeah, nahhhh”

That sounds like fun though!

Urgh.

I’ve requested confirmation and have only gotten it once or twice.

What I’ve started doing is actually just sending them their same exact terms via their corporate registered address (regardless of their instructions) with the arbitration clause and jury trial waiver and just about anything I don’t agree to removed. I tell them so long as they continue to provide the services to me, that they implicitly agree to the terms I’m sending them, with any further updates requiring them to send a registered (not certified) letter.

I intentionally do not provide any way for them to identify my account except for the return address.

I figured if I ever had to go to court, one of these things would happen:

• judge finds that the original terms are enforceable, which means I’m no worse off
• judge finds that my amended terms are enforceable, which means it worked
• judge finds both terms unenforceable and I can continue to sue them

So far, no company has ever written me back or turned off my access to the site.

I suggest everyone do this because these forced arbitration clauses are very anti-consumer and we need to start clawing back our rights.

I’m definitely doing it. Worth the cost of a stamp.

I don’t even have a Roku TV just an Ultra hooked up to a monitor so not a lot to lose but it’s the principal of the thing.

It’s enraging because information like the account email and TV model are sitting there available to the Roku OS. These could easily be appended to an email at the touch of a button, or transmitted to Roku Legal in an even more efficient programmatic way.

But noooooo, they need to force you to write the shit down with a pen because they know you won’t bother. Next time they want to sell you something, though? That’ll be one click.

I’d love to see a judge throw the book at some company for this kind of horseshit. Last time I refinanced my house I saw the page about opting out of marketing somewhere in the cloud of papers I signed, and meant to go back to it. I did, but it had such a complex table of options that I said to myself “I need to look at this with my glasses.” And then of course I forgot to do that and of course they sold my information everywhere. This is my own credit union that I’ve been with for 12 years, too.

Which is the law in countries with consumer protections.

What an episode (Piped)

Got that letter?

Before I even finished reading that comment I thought, “Fuck. Ken Paxton would probably just take it as inspiration to accept money from Roku.”

Congrats to those in other states though. I am envious.

Yeah, that’s some dystopian neo-feudalist horseshit I’d only expect to fly in a bunch of the world’s most corrupt shit holes, including the USA.

I hate that this is so true

Analysis of how EULAs are reviewed by courts depends primarily on whether the particular EULA is determined to be a contract for the sale of goods, and thus governed by the terms of the UCC, or whether it is a contract for services, and, accordingly, governed by the common law.’ Although it may be of little practical import (because even those contracts governed by the UCC can be modified to waive a consumer’s traditional Article 2 inspection and rejection rights), it is important to understand the framework by which software-and by extension videogames - are analyzed by courts in the United States.

From the document Rated “M” for misleading.

Its more complicated than that, EULA’s can’t require an illegal act, i.e.: If you don’t kill your cat you can’t use our service.

So they’re not perfectly binding if they don’t follow state and local law.

Yup.

Because here’s the thing, lawyers are super expensive and these corporations have in house lawyers for handling anyone that wants to sue. They’ll happily argue the validity of the EULA because they know just getting through the pretrial phase will cost you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Corporations have weaponized this fact at every chance they get.

It’s the exact same reason why companies in California and other states make employees sign noncompetes, even though they are explicitly unenforceable. It’s so the company can financially punish you even if you are in the right.

Dude this is totally how it works.

You have general counsel, firms on retainer, etc and the cost is amortized over all legal needs… And 99.999% of users will never even THINK about legal action nevermind actually pursue it.

It’s the same reason they send C&D letters…an ounce of legal effort (which you likely already have to buy anyway as a corporation) is worth a TON of consumer litigation protection.

They are unenforceable for more reasons than that. They also can not prove that you agreed to it, only that someone did.

Also, they can’t change the terms of your previous purchase after the fact. They can make you agree to something new going forward, but if they make your current device a brick because you don’t agree (which they are doing here), then they need to reimburse you for causing the loss of use of your device that you already purchased and was working under the previous terms.

Surely corporations aren’t being intimidating to take the uneducated for a ride when they dispute it. Surely.

The companies have the burden to provide them to the user. If they forget something, somebody loopholes them in court, they will lose.

The EULA is more of a rolling document, and something like a “We are legally obligated to provide this, so we better cover our asses in the process.” legal doc.

Watched the other day video about always online games being terminated and Ross, guy behind “Freeman’s mind” is starting world wide legal action against Ubisoft and some others. He talked specifically about EULAs in US and they are like promises from god. If you accept them suing the company for anything covered there becomes a nightmare. Here’s a link. It’s a bit longer watch, but worth it. But in short, in USA what can be written in EULA is almost unlimited. Example he gave was that you can accept for game developer to have the right to kill your dog if you buy their game and they would have a complete right to do so, you wouldn’t be able to call the cops on them for animal abuse until you disproved and had EULA brought down on court first.

Document he’s linking to which describes this whole mess in regards to games and pre-orders and similar. But also touches on EULAs.

IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt, but from my understanding, Its legal, though it may be unenforceable. If I want to sue them, they will say I agreed to arbitration in the contract, I will ignore that and continue to file. They will counter-file that I agreed to arbitration by accepting the EULA and that the case should be dropped, I will counter-file that I only agreed to it under duress because it was either agree or throw away my TV and that the arbitration clause is invalid because of X, Y or Z. At this point either the Judge will decide to listen to arguments from both sides then make a decision or will decide based on the undisputed facts presented by both sides and will either invalidate the EULA and allow the lawsuit to continue, or will uphold the EULA and drop the case with prejudice, or will allow me to make another argument and drop the case without prejudice allowing me to re-file with a better case.

The issue is, is it worth it to spend that kind of time and money for it in the first place? If you don’t have an open and shut case and can’t file in a state where you can make Roku pay the legal fees, in general whatever you’re trying to accomplish will cost you more than just getting off their ecosystem, which is what they are counting on. Since you would have to sue them just to see if you can sue them, it just adds extra time, money, and effort into suing them that it is more likely to deter people from actually suing and instead choosing to arbitrate under their terms which, depending on the ethical considerations of the company, could be fair or it could be heavily skewed in their favor. At which point you can decide at that point if you should sue and then will also have any evidence acquired about an unfair arbitration in the filings as well.

Either way, the legality is perfectly legal to be in an EULA, its enforceability though is mostly only backed by how much time, money, and effort it would take to bypass it. Like if there is an open door with a sign saying “Please use next door” and the next door leads to the same place as the open door. Most of us will just use the next door because its not worth the effort to deal with whatever issue might occur if we used the open door. But if the “next” door is locked, we’d just go in the open door because its no longer worth the effort to deal with procedures the company wants.

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and by the time the court throws it out the TV I paid for has been disabled for months and I’m out a ton of money and time. A lot of people will just agree because defending your rights in this country is very expensive and cumbersome. They’re counting on this idea.

There’s a nonzero chance the SCOTUS would.

I still can’t comprehend why American just accepting that “lobbyists” are a normal thing.

Isn’t that literally bribery in broad daylight to influence laws making decisions? And the fact that a corporate can “sponsor” politicians. You’re supposed to making those laws to keep the corporate in line, not taking their handout.

Are there any other countries with the same “lobbying” practice?