How smart is a Panasonic Viera Smart TV? Smart enough to show ads, apparently. Panasonic has slowly been rolling out more aggressive ads on its TVs and has now started to show ads when you change the audio volume.
Ads on Panasonic Smart TVs
It started out with pretty harmless ads for apps in the app interface, but in 2012 Panasonic started showing ads at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds whenever you turned on the TV. And now; banner ads every time you adjust the audio volume on your TV.
Picture credit: CNET, Sarah Tew
This has been confirmed to be the case on 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 “Smart Viera TVs” - both plasma and LCD - from Panasonic. To be clear, you still pay full price for the TV.
The ads only pop up in select countries for now, and we have received confirmation from Panasonic that their TVs will remain free of volume ads in select European countries, including the Nordic countries - at least for now.
How to ban the ads
There is - luckily - a way to disable the ads if you go into the menus, says CNET. This will disable the ads you see during start-up and the when changing volume.
Find the “Setup” menu and navigate to “Advanced Setup”. In here you will find “Viera Connect banner”, which you can disable. You can now start enjoying the TV that you paid full price for again.
If this is the future of Smart TV, then I just want a dumb TV
- Source: CNET & Reddit
