I would have no objections to literally spray painting that lower screen Tremclad Black. Is that all the tv can do though? I would imagine it's also stealing as much data of yours as it can and possibly even listening in. Also what if there's ad sound...?

The thing is, screens are cheap and there's no real reason to replace unless you're chasing top of the line which this isn't.

Save ~$100 now to always have an ad playing isn't a great deal

I read their TOS when this first was announced and they had something like they'll bill you the full cost of the TV if you tamper or obscure it and they deemed the cost of the TV as $1k USD.

if there was a way of faking presence of lower display, then you have free tv and extra screen

this is some idiocracy level shit tho

So ready for them to become e-waste.

Can you imagine the possibilities on re-purposing these if they get cheap enough to experiment with after the company goes bankrupt.

Holy shit this eerie

It’s free though. As in you can “buy” it to try and hack it or just not use it to make the company lose money.

Or the fuckers claim they couldn't deliver, or it goes on the truck, off the truck, repeat 2x, lost, then found 1 month later, or they back up over your pavers off a driveway that's 7 cars wide, or leave your shit at side of said driveway instead of walking it to the porch 20ft away (one of these happens with every one of my FedEx deliveries) UPS usually does great, except the one moron that left my daughter's $3k medicine by the trashcans down my hill.

they're probably gonna remotely disable them or reclaim them before they ever end up in your hands

There's a Black Mirror episode with TVs just like these

When I heard about it before, they were repurposing old 720p panels.

With how cheap 4K sets are these days, these free TVs are for people who can't even afford that. I'd say they're useful as a secondary use for the heat they generate, in that case.

That said, I'd be fine with always on ads if ads and sponsorships never interrupt my content. Like if I'm watching a YouTube video and it's 4:3, I'm perfectly fine with YouTube filling the sides with ads, as long as they don't make noise, and as long as I can watch the content uninterrupted. If the video is 16:9 and fills my TV (or monitor), I'm fine propping my iPhone up. They can even use Face ID to pause the content if I look away, as long as I don't have to look right at the ad (I'll be watching the content).

Advertising pays for stuff, and if it doesn't get in the way of stuff, I don't hate it. They should try working with people rather than straight up exploiting everyone. That just leads to people turning off the ads using a third-party method (e.g. Firefox with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock). Or I'll just download the video with jdownloader2.

IIRC they contractually get to charge you the price of the TV if the ads are blocked or disabled.

line must go up, when all other avenues of generating revenue have been cornered the only path left to make line go up is ever more intrusive ads and similar rent-seeking/inshittification.

Cheap TVs make for a good business model - more ad revenue for the manufacturers of these pieces of junk. If TVs were more expensive they'd never recover their losses.