Reddit users thevincentasteroid and MMD3_ posted about an auto-playing video ad (with sound) on the home screen. The ad is for Chicken Tender Wraps from Carl’s Jr. When it begins auto-playing, it pushes all the other UI elements out of focus and goes almost full-screen, returning to the home screen after it has played through once.
You have to cursor over it for several seconds and click nothing before it plays, you have to intentionally opt into triggering it.
I have a Samsung TV and it’s kind of irritating that it does this same thing. Any option you leave selected for a few seconds will start playing a sample
It’s frustrating to have to go hunt for a safe place to put my cursor so my TV doesn’t start playing something I don’t want it to.
I use a Chromecast with Google TV everyday and I do not receive autoplay ads on the home screen. You are free to disable ads on the home screen in the settings and you are free to install third party home screens.
In fact, the only interaction with the home screen that is required is when I see it briefly before pressing the Netflix button on the remote which I have remapped to Plex or jellyfin using the button mapper app.
Even with the default home screen you do not see auto play ads unless you select them and continue watching.
Wait you can remap those buttons too? Damn I gotta look into this!
Yes, there is an app called Button Mapper that allows you to map any button to any app, even special functions and utilities. It also allows for special behavior when double clicking or long pressing.
This sounds like opting in to me. 🤷♂️
Well the issue with what the above poster described is Samsung TV litters the autoplay on everything, so you feel like you are playing minesweeper trying to find somewhere you can leave the cursor without triggering an autoplay.
At least on the CCwGTV there’s just the one big ad at the top, but everything else is a “safe” zone to leave the cursor, abd the cursor starts out default on the app row.
Also, CCwGTV allows you to just switch to a different launcher (without ads) entirely if you wish.
I have this issue with Netflix’s app, pretty much every tile will loudly autoplay if you don’t touch the cursor for a second, taking over the screen. You have to hit the back button to pop-up the settings menu to stop that from happening otherwise you’ll walk away from your TV with some random 10s trailer playing on loop forever while you deal with something.