We’ll give you a 55 inch smart TV for free sounds like an offer that no one in his right mind would refuse. But this one? Hard pass from this guy.
This is the future of TV, according to Telly, a company that offers a free TV in exchange for the privilege of constantly blaring ads in your face. It puts the ads in a 10-inch-wide “smart” display that sits just below a built-in sound bar and runs the entire length of the TV. The screen stays on at all times — while you watch shows, movies, YouTube videos, and play video games. Even when you turn off the TV with a tap of the remote’s power button, the secondary screen remains illuminated. It will only turn off if you hold the power button for three seconds.
Despite my attempts to tune out the lower display, video ads and moving widgets draw my eyes in. Along with displaying the date, time, and current weather conditions, it shows a constant stream of headlines in a news ticker, plus stock prices and even links to news stories from outlets like Fox News, which you can click into and read on the top screen. You can remove or add widgets, but there’s no way to get rid of the ad on the right side that refreshes every so often. Under Telly’s terms of service, you can’t cover up the display. Even if you tried, it just wouldn’t be practical, since you need the secondary screen to navigate to different apps and control inputs.
Ahh yes, those terms of service. Time to get strangled to death by all the attached strings. Just listen to this horseshit.
To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
The TV also comes with a built-in camera with a privacy shutter and a microphone. The company’s terms of service state that it “may collect information about the audio and video content you watch, the channels you view, and the duration of your viewing sessions,” as well as detect the “physical presence of you and any other individuals using the TV at any given time.”
I realize that even regular smart TVs are kind of gross and spy happy, but they also won’t set you back anywhere near $1000 and won’t extort you if you aren’t sufficiently obedient to them. You would have to be a fool to allow this predatory garbage into your home.