Samsung Smart TV Glitch Added Pepsi Ads To Home Movies

Earlier this week, alarms were sounded when Samsung's privacy policy for their Smart TVs eluded to what amounted to an always-on listening device. In an attempt to drown out the confusion, Samsung changed the language of their policy to clarify. Still, it highlighted that when you're using voice control for any purpose, your words travel elsewhere, so be careful out there. In the wake of that mini scandal, Samsung has been faced with another. This time, users are finding ads in their locally stored videos — even home movies.

The problem even exists on third-party apps. People using Plex and Australian video service Foxtel are noting that their videos have ads, with most pointing to Pepsi ads as the main offender. It's not even a cute banner ad, either.

Here's how one Samsung Smart TV owner (and Foxtel user) phrased it:

After about 15 minutes of watching live TV, the screen goes blank, and then a 16:9 sized Pepsi ad (taking up about half the screen) pops up. It's as if there is a popup ad on the TV. I have not installed any other software or apps – I just factory reset and loaded up Foxtel.

A bit further down in the forum, another user said they were experiencing the issue without Foxtel running. Foxtel, for their part, addressed customers complaints and worked with Samsung to rectify the issue.

Samsung says it was a bug in their software, which has since been fixed. They also admit it was a Pepsi advert that was to blame, but claim it was all "an error that occurred as part of a recent software update that was not intended for the Australian market."

Fixed, but not without raising red flags. Why would Pepsi have dedicated advertising on a TV? What market was this meant for? Why is locally stored content run through a third-party app seeing ads, ever, at all?

Via: CNET