Netflix bought the original drama “House of Cards” in 2011, committing to two seasons of the then not-yet-filmed show directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. The purchase also earned the streaming company headlines as it placed Netflix into a high profile role typically occupied by the likes of HBO. But while Netflix claims its online programming to be commercial free, it is not without advertising.

While the official price tag remains unknown, rumors suggest Netflix purchased “House of Cards” for up to $100 million. Other sources say it’s “far less” than that. But no matter the total, the show is “chock full of commercial content — far more than I can recall seeing in any recent, or not-so-recent, TV show,” writes Natasha Lomas for TechCrunch.

“For Netflix to claim that Internet TV lacks commercials is, when it comes to this particular slice of original programming, disingenuous at best,” writes Lomas. The show goes well beyond occasional product placement. Instead, products are “a constant frame around the action and a deflecting focus for the director’s lens. And worse: At times brand interests clearly hijack portions of the plot, character arcs, scripting — the works.”

Apple products show up heavily, as well as BlackBerry, Canon, Dell and Sony products. According to Lomas, this “suggests that Internet TV-funded original programming, at least on this grand scale, may not be quite so revolutionary after all. Not in a commercial-free sense, in any case.”

Lomas provides numerous examples of product placement throughout the show’s first season, including ones in which “whole plot points… hinge on technology — in a way that makes you suspect a portion of the action is being dictated by the commercial interests of the brands in play,” as evidenced in a scene in which “a grieving mother from a town in the deep south of the U.S. who has just lost her daughter in a driving accident is depicted using an iPhone to show photos of her (now dead) daughter. Here, the iPhone sticks out a mile — perhaps because grief is such an odd context for an advert.”