Apple (so far) has been very reliable about letting you give them extra cash for a mostly user-respecting experience, and that's the main reason I buy from them (and has made me happy with my Apple TV purchase)

So as long as these built-in ads on the display can be disabled by disconnecting the thing from the internet, I can live with it. If they ever decide to make them work offline, or start embedding a cell antenna in the TV set, that's when I'll throw a real fit

I think they are planning to pay comcast/xfinity and others for bandwidth off the home router hotspots in an automated way.

So if your neighbor is on that type of program the TV can piggyback on your or their hotspot and push back the analytics / get the ads. That's probably a pretty low cost way to solve the not plugged in or piholed issues.

Isn't that where legislation is supposed to help?

Apple isn’t blocking ads here. They make their money through the hardware and additional devices, without the need to inject ads everywhere.

If you use an ad supported service like Peacock or Hulu you’ll still see ads in the streams.

Ahh - very nice.

I don't use hulu. I license movies I like on the itunes store if I'll be watching them a few times. And stream very lightly.

I would not take it well to have to deal with ads on an expensive device, or even be forced to jump through hoops to turn them off. I'm sure Apple is leaving money on the table, but I'm very willing to pay the apple premium to have to worry a lot less about this type of total jerk behavior.

Doesn't Apple do sponsored app search placement on the Apple TV?

https://searchads.apple.com/

Or is that only on their other devices?

I just wish Apple also made/sold a great quality, guaranteed-ad-free screen.

Imagine that connected to (or with an in-built) AppleTV unit, and the sound from four Apple HomePods.