Android TV Core Services

Thought the Android TV was pretty slick when I got it. Better than my last smart TV, anyway, with a much better selection of apps to use to view media. Ads are now on my homescreen without any way to turn them off. This is a deal breaker. If the TV had been free or there had been information that there would be homescreen ads it would be one thing. But I bought a device expecting an ad free experience, got it for a while, and then had advertisements trojan their way in after the fact. Completely unacceptable. If there isn't a way to turn these off in preferences soon this will be my last Android TV.

There are now ads that cannot be removed and return right back at the first login to your account without giving you the chance to turn off updates. Never mind the time that takes to do this with on a remote or the horrible Android TV remote app which is worse because it can collect data without improving the situation. I'm using set top boxes, all thrown away because of the egregiously invasive nature of this but I can't even begin to imagine how people who have built-in to their TVs must feel. It's not all bad though, I got 2xAAA rechargeable batteries back per remote. They are much more useful than being invasively marketed to, so... thank you Google?

If you have this app, roll back to the factory version to remove the Ads at the top. Turn off Auto-Updates in the Play Store to prevent it from upgrading to the Ad version. Unfortunately, none of the other apps will auto-update so you'll need to do that manually. Yes- this is the only way to prevent your TV from becoming a Google Ad machine. No- Google has no shame.