I diligently mute them, I’m a freak I cannot stand them. But from the nature of many people’s complaints about ads, it seems like they listen to them and want to retain the words they’ve said?

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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    9 days ago

    I found a cool way of ad-blocking back when I watched TV. Probably does not work anymore, and relies on Teletext page 888 (closed captions, the number varies by country) not being updated during ads.

    1. Mute
    2. Switch to another channel and back to clear Teletext cache
    3. Turn on fullscreen Teletext, any page (I like the 89x test patterns)
    4. Type “888” as the page you want to go to
    5. The TV will now wait for 888 to be broadcast, which only happens after ads and trailers
    6. The program is now running with captions. Disable Teletext and unmute if you want sound instead.
      • ChaoticNeutralCzech
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        8 days ago

        It definitely still works in the Czech Republic and Germany. Our pre-2023 president was an avid user. Public TV stations hand-format their own and syndicated news for 39 columns and pick monthly poetry. Commercial stations just automatically jam syndicated news into the format, sometimes overflowing to another subpage just by 1 word, and host huge amounts of banner and fullscreen ads with meh graphics by Teletext standards, mostly for dodgy phone services like tarot and erotic hotlines. They also host “chat24”, probably the worst message board ever: imagine a public IRC room but $0.50 per message (by SMS) including setting your nickname and color.

        Pics: https://imgur.com/a/JF3wN6L