“Telly – The TV That Pays You: A New Advertising-Powered Television”

I had to see if it was April Fools. There will be a TV available in the US that people won’t pay for. His name is Telly and he makes money for himself by running advertisements all the time. Literally always, because under the classic 55″ screen there is a second narrow display for widgets with news, weather, etc., the right part of which is reserved for advertisers. According to the images, it looks like companies such as Kia, Pepsi or Pizza Hut have applied for the space .

The TV runs the new TellyOS operating system, which does not yet support third-party applications (i.e. no Netflix, Disney+, etc.), but it recognizes that you are no longer watching a movie, so it can also display advertising on the main screen.

TellyOS has voice control, a webcam for video calls (only Zoom is supported so far) and a sensor for gesture control or various fitness video games. There is a soundbar between the two displays, we also know of three HDMI, two USB and a TV tuner from the available equipment.

Behind Telly is Ilya Pozin, the founder of Pluto TV, an online television that also lives only on advertisements. This spring, it already had 80 million active users and is expanding all over the world (not yet in the Czech Republic). Four years ago, Viacom (now Paramount Global) bought it for $340 million.

Pozin definitely knows that the advertising business can pay for a purely Internet service. But can he sell a TV with high production costs like this? Plus, a smart TV that someone will surely hack the firmware to get rid of the ad? We will see that sometime in the summer, when Telly reaches the first users. The manufacturer will “give away” half a million TVs.

Source: The Verge