Amazon is adding full-screen video ads that will play when you start your Fire TV unless you quickly perform an action on it.
This new update will be rolling out to all Fire TVs made in 2016 or newer. With this update, the ad at the top of your Fire TV will now start playing full-screen, often promoting a movie or TV show. By hitting the home button, you can quickly exit the ad or if you quickly perform an action on the Fire TV once it finishes, you will avoid the video ad, but you only have a few seconds.
In a way, this isn’t as crazy as it sounds because turning on a TV has historically shown full screen content that you weren’t expecting to see. But Amazon is not offering this as a Special Offers discount, and it sounds like there’s no way to turn it off. They are altering the implicit deal with customers, notwithstanding the attempt to spin this as an “immersive experience” feature.
Via John Gruber:
I really don’t understand how anyone uses anything but an Apple TV box. Apple TV is far from perfect but holy hell, it really does start from the perspective of respecting you, the user.
It sure doesn’t feel like that if you don’t subscribe to Apple TV+. And the Netflix app, especially, constantly shows unsolicited partial-screen previews when all I want is a static menu with no sound when nothing’s playing. But, yeah, the grass is not always greener.
The people at Apple who make it are obviously trying to create the experience that they themselves want when they’re watching TV at home.
To me, this is not at all obvious when using the product. Who wants wants a multi-step process to toggle subtitles? It feels like it was designed by people who don’t watch TV. And that don’t respect me to choose for myself what I want to watch.
Previously: