\n<\/p>\n
Well this friggin\u2019 sucks. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
If you have a Fire TV product of some kind, you\u2019ve<\/a> probably<\/a> noticed<\/a> in the last few weeks that every time you turn on the device, a full-screen ad plays instead of displaying the homescreen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At first, I thought it was some kind of mistake on my part. That I somehow hit a button during my TV\u2019s startup that triggered the ad to play, but then my husband started noticing this phenomenon on his Fire TV, too. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unfortunately, this is a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As first reported by Cord Cutter News<\/a>, apparently a new update changed the default location of the Fire TV cursor<\/a>. Now, instead of the cursor starting on the navigation menu, it starts on the big-ass banner ad that always takes up half of any Fire TV home menu. Since highlighting a banner ad at any time triggers the ad to play, now the first thing your Fire TV does upon startup is beam you an ad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There doesn\u2019t seem to be a real fix for this. You can disable video ads on the homescreen by heading to the settings menu, selecting preferences, then featured content, then switching off the \u201callow video autoplay\u201d option, but that only replaces the video ads with a static image. (While you\u2019re in those settings, you might also want to disable the audio autoplay as well in case you\u2019ve got kids or pets that might accidentally turn on your TV.) After turning that option off, now when my TV starts up I get a slideshow instead of a video. Thankfully you don\u2019t have to wait for the ad to end, you can quickly hit the Home button or hit down on the cursor to bring up the homescreen. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n I get that as long as there\u2019s been \u201ccontent\u201d there have been ads. I\u2019m okay with that. I accept that it costs money to make the things I want to watch and ads are a way to generate some of that money. But it\u2019s the increasingly disruptive delivery system for these relatively benign pieces of our culture that I have a problem with. Pop-up ads aren\u2019t new, as anyone who remembers dial-up internet can attest. Even pop-up ads on TVs aren\u2019t new<\/a>, but there\u2019s a reason we\u2019ve devoted considerable resources to limit their impact online<\/a> \u2014 we simply don\u2019t want this particular flavor of shit, knock it off<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n