[HN Gopher] Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South Afri...
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Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse
Author : barbacoa
Score : 308 points
Date : 2021-08-24 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.samsung.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.samsung.com)
| cr3ative wrote:
| Got it, don't connect the stolen TV to the internet. Just plug in
| a Fire Stick, Apple TV or what have you. Fortunately, that's good
| advice in general anyway.
| josephcsible wrote:
| This technology was used for good this time, but there's nothing
| stopping it from being used for evil next time. The fact that
| Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have
| control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| At least they're not scanning your media library against a list
| of hashes yet.
|
| Edit: Ahh, I see from the replies I have had my fill of
| curiosity for the day.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| They are, they're just doing it for advertising, not piracy
| prevention.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-.
| ..
| the-dude wrote:
| > piracy prevention.
|
| privacy prevention.
| netr0ute wrote:
| That's why you never connect any smart TV to your network
| and instead use a standalone device combined with a PiHole.
| BeefySwain wrote:
| This only works until every "smart" device has a cellular
| modem built in.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Who pays for the cellular plans?
| koolba wrote:
| Amazon put a cellular chip in a Kindle over a decade ago.
| And that was for a device that cost less than $100. One
| year of advertising and analytics would easily cover the
| cost in a larger purchase like a TV.
| prepend wrote:
| We do as part of the device cost. 5G makes it pretty
| cheap so a manufacturer adding in a radio ups their cost
| by a dollar or two. The revenue from surveillance is
| marginally profitable including data costs.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| You can come up with other fun conspiracies by realizing
| that the HDMI spec can share internet connections.
| Plugging in your "fire cast", or whatever external
| television device you use, could provide your TV an
| internet connection, but it doesn't seem to be widely
| used yet.
| sgrove wrote:
| This is, it seems, just untrue. It was posted before
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24668736) and I was
| curious about this attack vector so looked it up [0]
|
| Simply put, it seems that this never took off and would
| require the entire hdmi chain to support it (tv, cable,
| and device) - none of which do currently, so for the
| medium future it doesn't seem to be a concern.
|
| Plenty of concern elsewhere, just not necessarily here.
|
| [0]
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/325215/appletv-
| eth...
| joshstrange wrote:
| Which is where things like Amazon Sidewalk or even just a
| 3g/4g sim come in... I'm glad the current state of TVs
| isn't using this (that I know up) but I fear it's right
| around the corner. I just want a dumb TV that I hook my
| Xbox and Apple TV up to.
| netr0ute wrote:
| > Amazon Sidewalk or even just a 3g/4g sim
|
| The fix for these is in this video:
| https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA
| prepend wrote:
| Actually it's kind of odd to me that Samsung isn't doing
| this to block child porn.
|
| Since they are already scanning content to sell to
| marketers it's odd that they aren't also scanning it for CP
| or anything else with a defined set of hashes.
|
| I'd prefer Samsung not do this at all, but if they are
| scanning for making money, they should scan for public
| good.
| josefx wrote:
| About that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition
| mfer wrote:
| Many (most?) smart TVs scan what you watch and send it to the
| manufacturer or one of their partners. Streaming, blu ray,
| home movies, and all of it.
| Razengan wrote:
| Samsung does shit much worse than that, like TVs listening in
| on everything:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21657930
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899491
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor#Security_.
| ..
|
| https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-
| fin...
| 1-6 wrote:
| I've recently purchased the Frame and if you don't connect
| it to the network, you'll get a pesky warning message every
| time. Fortunately I'm using ASUS-Merlin and that firmware
| has intricate controls to control access to the internet.
| itsbits wrote:
| > The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you
| don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it
| legally.
|
| It actually true for any smart device now a days. Apple can do
| same for an iPhone.
| signal11 wrote:
| Samsung's use of ACR is the other big source of discomfort.
| That's some creepy stuff right there. LG has something similar
| too, but it was off by default in mine.
|
| "Samsung Smart TVs have built-in Automated Content Recognition
| (ACR) technology that can understand viewing behavior and usage
| including programs, movies, ads, gaming content and OTT apps in
| real-time."
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...
|
| For context, see
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...
| akira2501 wrote:
| What good was served here? The products are still stolen and
| are still going on the books as a loss. Since they can't be
| used, they're likely going in a dumpster. And none of this
| apparently led the arrest of any perpetrators.
|
| Hard to imagine what purpose was served here, other than
| Samsung broadcasting what kind of power they have over devices
| you own.
| golergka wrote:
| Game theory. This is not an isolated interaction; actors who
| might repeat it hear these news and take notes.
| pcurve wrote:
| I think it's more about prevention going forward, and
| devaluing its worth in secondary market. Sure, it might still
| be worth something, but only in parts. Given how rapidly TV
| models change, parts = basically worthless.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Apple has done this fairly successfully for years. The simple
| answer is, they'd rather deprive someone else of a good than
| have it themselves. Same goes for Samsung, and pretty much
| any other company that weighs their bottom line over general
| benevolence.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Since they can't be used, they're likely going in a
| dumpster.
|
| And thus can't be sold by the looters for a profit.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Same good as phone kill switches -- they reduce the incentive
| for future thefts.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-
| lea...
| josephcsible wrote:
| It reduced the criminals' ability to profit from their
| crimes.
| YinLuck- wrote:
| It makes the theft of TVs less likely in the future. All
| those looters paid an opportunity cost by stealing those
| large TVs rather than other items. Next time they loot, they
| won't go for the TVs.
| mminer237 wrote:
| This is generally the purpose of the law. It's not like this is
| some life-or-death thing that can't be rectified. Samsung has
| no legal authority to disable a legally-purchased TV, and they
| would be sued to death if they used if for evil.
| pickledcods wrote:
| Wait till your TV license expires
| qweqwweqwe-90i wrote:
| Cars and phones both can be remotely disabled. This will reduce
| help crime in the long run.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| When I was young, you could steal a TV, or a VHS or CD or DVD
| collection, or a phone or (a little later) a GPS or media unit in
| a car or books.
|
| Now almost everything can be remotely disabled, and nobody really
| owns anything anyway, they just pay for subscriptions to things.
|
| I wonder what it does to society if crime becomes effectively
| impossible. A lot of writers have suggested that some level of
| deviance is essential for a healthy society.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| I am quite ambivalent to this feature. On one hand, if someone
| steals your TV, you can deactivate it. But now there is also a
| benefit to having a dumb TV. Imagine if you have too old of a
| model, so Samsung decides to remotely disable your TV.
| [deleted]
| polskibus wrote:
| While not the same, crippling of Smart TVs already exists -
| their apps become incompatible with latest youtube, netflix,
| etc. APIs and therefore become less usable. You can get away
| from that with a smart stick, but then, you could've bought
| dumb tv instead.
| post_break wrote:
| My samsung TV was never connected to the internet. I didnt even
| accept the user agreement, it still works just fine.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I loathe the day where manufacturers start requiring Internet
| access because you know that most people won't think twice
| about it. And they'll also all do it within a couple years of
| each other.
| CedarMadness wrote:
| Just wait until they include Amazon Sidewalk, so the TV can
| connect using your neighbor's internet connection to download
| the latest ads.
| piyh wrote:
| There's the missing link to make the living room mounted
| telescreen a reality.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Physically eliminating the RF capabilities of a device
| without impacting the rest of its functions is usually
| feasible with enough patience. Your options include
| blocking external radiation (add copper mesh/foil), or
| destroying the device's antennas.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A user agreement of a TV is hilarious now that I think about
| it. It's surely a load of disclaimers and agreements that
| they can violate various privacy laws, but made after you
| have handed over the money.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Then the millions of old TV owners sue Samsung for trespass to
| chattels? That would be a horrible decision both financially
| and publicity-wise.
|
| The benefit this gives to having a dumb TV is that it makes it
| more attractive to thieves.
| lstepnio wrote:
| I suspect _you_ can not block your TV, if someone steals it.
| This is bad idea and a slippery slope towards various versions
| of nonsense.
| sschueller wrote:
| Samsung should be permitted to have something like this until the
| unit is sold.
|
| Once it is sold it is no longer theirs and any of these blocking
| features should be removed unless explicitly re-added buy the new
| owner. In fact why don't they charge extra for such a feature?
| kbos87 wrote:
| This reminds me of a thread here recently about certain power
| tools being sold in Home Depot stores that will need to be
| "activated" or they won't work as an anti-theft measure.
|
| These particular situations aside, I don't see a problem with
| this kind of tech, as long as the manufacturer either ends their
| use or hands the "keys" (whatever they may be) to the buyer after
| the legitimate sale.
|
| The slippery slope argument that "DRM-for-X" tech will be abused
| by manufacturers who want to charge subscriptions or will brick
| devices if they close down doesn't resonate with me, I don't
| think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
| thenayr wrote:
| I own a (legitimately) purchased Samsung TV (upwards of $3k) from
| ~2016 or so. It's been a fantastic television up until it
| suddenly stopped working about a month ago. I figured it would be
| easy enough to get it serviced and first tried purchasing the
| suspected bad part (the external HDMI "smart connect" box)
| directly through Samsung. Discontinued. Ok....I tried the
| manufacturer service center which routed me to a local repair
| shop with literally 2 stars on yelp and absolutely terrible
| reviews.
|
| I ended up contacting a 3rd party repair company that specializes
| in Samsung TV's in San Francisco. I told him the model and he
| basically laughed and said the part is completely discontinued
| and he can't purchase it from any of his suppliers and that I was
| basically SOOL.
|
| Spent about two weeks searching online and finally came across a
| SINGLE listing on EBAY for the model I needed. It seems to
| possibly be the last of its kind in existence.
|
| The TV works again...until this part or another fails. So yeah,
| that's my Samsung anecdote.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble?
|
| Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular?
|
| Being able to just turn on your TV and open Netflix without
| messing around with inputs/other devices is a huge benefit for
| non-technological people.
|
| And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include
| whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| We're not confused by their popularity. We understand perfectly
| why the average person would want technology that is perfectly
| converged and easy to use.
|
| We're frustrated because our screens went from dumb panels that
| displayed signals to proprietary computing platforms with DRM,
| ads and a full surveillance capitalism suite complete with
| microphones and maybe even cameras, all of which do nothing but
| serve the business interests of corporate giants.
|
| All that nice stuff that the average person wants? We want it
| as well. But we want it _on our terms_. I want to do things
| that will no doubt cost the manufacturer thousands of dollars:
| kill their ads, deny them any and all data, etc. The TV should
| obey.
| ccheney wrote:
| Can you even purchase a dumb but modern TV set? e.g. a dumb 4K
| OLED?
| dawnerd wrote:
| You can but they're really expensive and not designed for
| regular home users.
| echlebek wrote:
| Gigabyte have a 48" 'monitor' now (an LG panel with
| Displayport 1.4 and no smart features)
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes, but TVs and monitors have different purposes and it
| shows. A quick summary at https://thewiredshopper.com/tv-
| vs-monitor/
| Beldin wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| - If you want a certain display tech (qled, oled, ...),
| you don't need this guide.
|
| - otherwise: there is no difference. pick whatever screen
| has the size and ports you care about.
|
| I expected something like distance (several m for tv, .5m
| for monitor), but that goes unmentioned. I guess
| size+resolution already cover this.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular?
|
| Also the real reason that they're popular: there are no non-
| smart TVs available.
| risho wrote:
| the next logical question is why are they the only tv's
| available? the reason is the same reason that phones are
| getting bigger and laptops are getting thinner. (hint it's
| not some grand conspiracy to ruin your life or to fuck the
| consumer) the answer is because that's what people buy.
| powerslacker wrote:
| Wait a minute now. TV manufacturers are mining the frames
| from video played on them in order to detect which shows
| people are watching. They then sell that data to 3rd
| parties (typically advertisers and data brokers). It's
| maybe not some "grand conspiracy", but there is a definite
| profit motive to push smart TVs and only smart TVs. It is
| far more profitable than a one time sale since you can sell
| data over and over. I only personally learned this after
| meeting some engineers working on such a data mining
| project, but its fairly well documented:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-
| adv...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Luckily, you can block them: https://lazyadmin.nl/home-
| network/how-to-block-ads-on-your-s...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Actually, it's because they show you ads. For example:
|
| https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00225587
|
| https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/3/10/22323790/lg-oled-
| tv-...
|
| https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/samsung-pitches-
| advertisers...
| setr wrote:
| Remember 3DTV's? For like 5 years, all TV's being sold had
| 3D support. Not because consumers wanted it -- it was
| because the industry believed consumers would want it.
| Industries don't turn on a dime..
|
| Market forces don't correct small issues in short
| timeframes -- and smart TV's are not problematic enough to
| meet their immediate demise (but sufficiently awful that
| they eventually will -- alongside car infotainment systems)
| rtkwe wrote:
| Sure but they're also juicy extra revenue streams for the
| manufacturers from ads and behavior/watch data even without
| the neigh conspiratorial spying people speculate about.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Like death and taxes are popular.
|
| And now with embedded ads.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It stretches credulity to suggest that the lack of non-smart
| TVs on the market _causes_ the popularity of smart TVs. Would
| you also suggest that the lack of black and white TVs on the
| market causes the popularity of color TVs?
| haunter wrote:
| There are, they are called monitors
| tfigment wrote:
| Monitors generally don't have remote controls or speakers.
| The latter solved with soundbar but former is important use
| case.
| haunter wrote:
| Well depends how do you use it. My DVR set top box has
| one and I control that to change channels, record etc
| enkid wrote:
| Some monitors do have speakers, and not having enough
| functionality for a remote to be needed is exactly why
| someone would get a monitor. A remote for a non-smart tv
| these days would basically be an input control and
| volume. Everything else would be controlled by some other
| piece of equipment that would need its own remote/app on
| your phone.
| beebeepka wrote:
| There are. It's just you can't get the good stuff for
| anywhere near smart TV prices
| tyingq wrote:
| My non-tech extended family members all use separate Roku
| and/or FireTV devices instead of the built-in TV functionality,
| because I've seen the devices. I don't know why, but they do.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Maybe because the Roku interface actually works properly,
| whereas the apps on the smart TV are slow and buggy.
| jcranberry wrote:
| I bought a "premium" Roku box brand new for I believe $90
| so I could have one with an ethernet cable. That was 3
| years ago and it's currently supremely buggy. It goes
| green, black, crashes mid episode, if I skip a few times
| within a few seconds the audio might desync. It was already
| bad but I got a new speaker system and hooked it up to an
| AV receiver and it instantly got several times worse. I
| don't know if my experience is typical but 3 years is a
| disappointing lifetime for something like this IMO.
| Arrath wrote:
| Very much this. I use the Netflix app on my smart TV as it
| _mostly_ works without issue. Hulu stops with a black
| screen every few minutes. I haven 't bothered to look to
| see if it has Disney+ or HBOmax apps, I just use my phone
| and chromecast to do anything other than Netflix.
| mholm wrote:
| Lots of people bought Rokus/FireTVs before they had a smart
| TV, and now simply prefer the interface.
| RKearney wrote:
| > Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular?
|
| Because almost all of them use internet connectivity to show
| you ads on home screens.
| k4rli wrote:
| With LG C9 I haven't seen a single ad in a year since I've
| had it. There are large amounts of tracking being blocked by
| pi.hole however. One LG domain has been blocked 22.5k times
| in past 8.5 months.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| I disconnect from WiFi. It makes my "smart" tv a normal one
| that doesn't serve my shitty ads, lag or turn on some random
| SamsungTV channel.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| Just because you disconnected it from wifi does not mean
| they cannot connect it through lte without your knowledge
| Forbo wrote:
| See previous discussion about this problem here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27701977
|
| TL;DR- TVs are using their own cellular connections
| and/or neighboring open wireless networks.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I guess that's _one_ benefit of not having a usable
| mobile signal at my house.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's Samsung hate, not smart tv hate (although there's that
| too).
|
| (I have a smart tv but honestly I don't want it anymore. I'm
| creeped out by the whole idea of it, and I don't like how it's
| always updating, or complains with blinking lights when it's
| not on the internet. No ads though. For now. It's kinda hard to
| find a dumb TV but I may just go with either a large-ish
| computer monitor or a projector.)
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| For a dumb TV to computer a projector is the way to go. I
| haven't darkened everything much so it doesn't work great in
| the daytime, but I tell myself that's a feature not a bug.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The software in the newer LG OLEDs is so good I haven't
| bothered hooking up any of my boxes to my new TVs. I'm sure in
| a few years the UI will start to feel sluggish and it will be
| time to plug something in, but for now its a great experience,
| far better than any smart TV I've used before.
| arenaninja wrote:
| I have a non-OLED LG. Great picture, have not plugged
| anything in but casting from iPhone is buggy (it was added
| remotely via an update years after I bought the TV). It's
| amazing, and with very little bloatware
| beervirus wrote:
| I bought one for my grandmother after reading lots of
| comments like this. She found it baffling, and we went back
| to Apple TV. Honestly, I found the interface a little
| confusing myself.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I'll partly agree there, the OS is generally solid but the
| apps individually can leave a lot to be desired.
|
| My go-to example on LG OLED is Spotify. It's so not OLED
| friendly, it's essentially OLED-hostile. The UI during
| playback is completely static and nearly seems designed to
| cause burn-in.
| k4rli wrote:
| There are so many things wrong with that app's UX. I would
| rather listen to worse quality on Youtube than bother
| opening that app.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| A 'favorite' of mine: The Spotify mobile app will play
| little animations and videos behind the playback display
| for many songs and albums, but not the TV app. It seems
| like the TV platform is generally neglected by Spotify
| engineering.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Agreed, I was shocked that I stopped using my Apple TV and
| that a Smart TV app experience would be even remotely close
| to an Apple one.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Similar for me, but I was using NVIDIA Shield TV before
| (now LG C9).
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| The magic remote kind of ruins my LG TV for me. I like the
| UI, but hate that bumping my remote brings up that darn
| cursor that flies around the screen.
| zepearl wrote:
| It's switched on after powering up the TV, but then I just
| press twice the down-arrow on the remote and then the
| cursor disappears and appears only if I use the scroll
| wheel (which I never do)... .
| jaytaylor wrote:
| It doesn't matter how good it is, LG already got paid and has
| little incentive to keep the software secure in the long-
| term.
|
| I've never hooked mine into the network.
| windexh8er wrote:
| It is good, but it's gotten worse. I have an older LG LED TV
| that had the smart remote, it's about 7-8 years old now and
| I've replaced the main board once and just ordered another
| one as it's gone out again. In the mean time I decided to
| upgrade to a new LG C1 OLED and the picture is stellar in
| comparison - but the UI has gotten much worse. The remote is
| just as good as it's always been, however the amount of
| garbage content on the main screen now is horrendous. It's
| littered with content I don't want but am forced to look at
| given I want to use the native apps so I can move my NVidia
| Shield along with the older LG (since many streaming apps
| aren't available for the older LG units). My old LG I only
| connected to the network when I wanted to check for updates,
| this new one is cordoned off to an IOT device VLAN that only
| has access to the Internet and there are some holes popped
| over to Plex so that I can get content streaming to it
| locally. I also have a specific DNS filtering policy just for
| the LG TV to cut down on the noise it has access to.
|
| I don't honestly think the experience is good, and I've done
| a lot to minimize what it has access to. I didn't pay a
| couple thousand dollars to have a digital billboard in my
| house. I'd pay a small premium if I could buy a unit that was
| stripped down and only ran apps and didn't have any other
| placeholders for content. But... Manufacturers are getting
| out of control with what they deem OK to do with a device
| that they claim I've purchased. If nothing else it feels like
| a prepaid rental at this point - they don't last all that
| long and they can't seem to help themselves from thinking
| it's a platform I'm going to shop directly from? Even if it
| is content - I can't imagine many people want yet another
| vendor to pay for media content. Especially not
| LG/Sony/Samsung/etc.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble?
|
| Smart TVs is one of those recurring HN topics where it's clear
| that people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single
| bad experience. Now they can't imagine that any progress has
| been made since then. There's not much reason to buy a new TV
| these days if your old one still works (with an external TV
| box)
|
| You can still find terrible smart TVs out there, of course, but
| the newer models from top tier vendors like LG are actually
| quite good.
|
| I think it's going to take many years before the angry HN smart
| TV comments catch up to modern reality.
| glitcher wrote:
| I think you may be oversimplifying the concerns some have
| about smart tv's. There is quite a broad range of opinions
| between different HN commenters, and lumping us all into one
| group isn't very conducive to discussion.
|
| For me personally, I have basic privacy concerns with how
| smart tv companies are selling my viewing habits without any
| transparency. This issue has nothing to do with the "quality"
| of the tv and its features, and much more to do with the
| policies of the companies behind the products.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I don't think so. I think regardless of how good they are...
| a lot of people don't want to sell their viewing habits in
| exchange for using an app that you have to pay for to watch
| shows.
| jychang wrote:
| I mean, most people just use Netflix and Hulu and Plex from
| their smart TV anyways.
|
| The former 2 are already collecting your viewing habits,
| and the latter is uncollectable since it's just streaming
| from your own server.
| Forbo wrote:
| > the latter is uncollectable since it's just streaming
| from your own server.
|
| Except smart TVs take screenshots of what you are
| watching and send it back for content analysis and
| correlation. So even if all you're doing is using it as a
| dumb monitor they are still collecting data about you.
|
| Edit: Before someone calls me a tinfoil hat, it's called
| automatic content recognition, look it up.
| fsckboy wrote:
| consumerreports privacy "how to turn off smart tv
| snooping"
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-
| smar...
| Forbo wrote:
| Opt-out dark patterns strike again! Even then, it still
| doesn't shut off all telemetry.
| labster wrote:
| > people made up their minds years ago, likely from a single
| bad experience.
|
| It's true, I made up my mind in _1984_.
| blibble wrote:
| unless they've stopped adding ads to my other programmes then
| I'm not plugging the TV back into the internet
| jmcgough wrote:
| Some of these comments have a real "old man yells at cloud"
| vibe. Modern, mid-range or better Smart TVs are great. They
| let me enjoy streaming content or gaming without wasting time
| trying to configure something, torrent something, fiddle with
| subtitles. The newest models offer unparalleled gaming
| experiences via HDMI 2.1 features.
|
| There's (justifiably) privacy and other concerns on HN, but
| no one else is aware of those concerns or cares too much. The
| market has spoken.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _The market has spoken._
|
| Markets only speak when meaningful competition exists. Are
| you really suggesting that people actively prefer to buy
| TVs that, for example, suddenly start showing them ads
| months or years after purchase?
| mattnewton wrote:
| There are almost no tv manufacturers offering consumer TVs
| without the ability to connect to the internet to collect
| metrics, display ads, and run "apps" like Netflix. I don't
| doubt it's because the upsell is profitable and regular
| consumers would choose the TV with smart features over a
| similarly priced TV without, but it's also possible no one has
| decided to compete on the "our TV is $40 cheaper, comes with a
| rebate for a roku you were going to buy anyways, and also we
| can't push ads to you through it"
| fsckboy wrote:
| isn't it going to be "our TV costs $40 more, but..."?
| zucker42 wrote:
| Few people feel strongly that a chip running Linux makes a TV
| worse. What they object to is when the _manufacturer_ controls
| the TV rather than the _owner_ of the TV. Modern smart TVs
| override the users ' desired by, for example, showing ads. It's
| even possible these chips will eventually be responsible for
| copyright verification.
|
| This would be fixed if it was possible to modify the chip's
| software and easy to install alternate OS bulbs.
| nottorp wrote:
| So... I'm supposed to keep the receipt for the lifetime of the
| TV? Around here I don't even need it for the warranty in some
| places, they just look the item up by serial no.
|
| And what is a "valid TV license" ?
| xav0989 wrote:
| I vowed to never buy a smart TV, but it's getting harder and
| harder.
|
| Luckily, I recently found that Sony's smart TVs have a mode
| called "Basic TV". It doesn't require internet and disables a
| bunch of the extra functions that I don't need my TV to do. I can
| even disable the bluetooth connectivity to turn the display into
| as dumb of a TV as possible.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Smart everything enables things to control your behavior, to spy
| and then to report on you. I haven't ditched my smartphone yet
| but am using it less often and hold onto a phone till it becomes
| utterly obsolete (Currently an IPhone SE, still good for me). A
| smart TV would never be on my buy list. First of all I haven't a
| TV since they weren't so smart, last TV I had was a CRT in the
| 2000s. I noticed the difference without one. When I quit TV it
| was because it was toxic and I presume it has gotten worse since.
| I do own a projector and fire it up occasionally to watch a movie
| with the family but it's not on on a daily basis.
| rock_artist wrote:
| Looking at some comments, I was surprised seeing many complaints
| about Samsung ads but (as of writing) no one mentions Google
| doing same thing lately:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208
| mithusingh32 wrote:
| The big difference is with Google you can disable ads for the
| most part with an ad blocker.
|
| Samsung TVs however you cannot. For example I have a pihole
| server running on my network. I cannot use Disney+ or Hulu on
| my Samsung TVs. But Nvidia shield and my phone work perfectly.
|
| Samsung injects ads into all their apps. Even if you lay for
| Hulu with no ads, guess what you're still going to get an ad.
| It won't be a stream stopping ad, but more like ads when you
| pause a stream.
| rock_artist wrote:
| > The big difference is with Google you can disable ads for
| the most part with an ad blocker.
|
| At least from my perspective, any product I buy that impose
| regression in functionality is a bad practice.
|
| It's the same as if you buy an app and then gets ads in an
| update.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Google are an advertising company, it would be like complaining
| about McDonalds selling fast food.
|
| Samsung are an electronics company
| rock_artist wrote:
| So should Android start showing ads on your lock screen is
| that acceptable practice?
|
| Or is it acceptable only for Pixel as it's McDonald's and
| evil if it's a Samsung Galaxy?
| trident5000 wrote:
| Looking forward to the future of consumerism.
|
| Do something out of line? Your tesla car stops working, samsung
| tv shuts down, social media bans you, central bank cryptocurrency
| prevents you from making purchases, airlines put you on the no
| fly list.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| I bought one of Samsung's smart televisions a couple years ago. I
| think I paid $1500 for it. Anyway, it started showing me ads and
| the TV eventually became sluggish less than a month after owning
| it. Returned it as defective. Ever since that experience, I swore
| of all smart televisions and will never buy another Samsung
| television or smartphone again if I can help it.
| lyx0 wrote:
| Same here, I bought a Samsung TV around 5-6 years ago and a
| year ago it started to show me ads all of a sudden in that
| 'Media Bar' (I have no idea what's it called, where you select
| the apps you want to use). A day later I factory reset it and
| gave it no access to the internet anymore and only stream to it
| from my PlayStation.
|
| This made me swear off Samsung forever. Don't mess with my
| stuff I bought years ago.
| turminal wrote:
| Other brands are equally bad in my experience sadly.
| leephillips wrote:
| Can you avoid these problems by not allowing the TV to connect
| to the internet?
| ollien wrote:
| I recently bought a TCL TV specifically because I trust Roku to
| maintain their software more than someone like Samsung. The ads
| drive me insane, even if they're relatively unobtrusive. At
| least in that case the TV was much cheaper (~$500 for a 55" TV)
| dthul wrote:
| I read some other thread on here some time ago that talked
| about the option of using a Pi-hole (or so?) to block smart
| TV ads.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Some TV manufacturers have gotten wise to this ( _sigh_ )
| and started hard-coding their DNS lookup IPs.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Well that's easy enough to filter - just nat all outgoing
| traffic to UDP/53 to your preferred device.
|
| Of course google and other spy companies are pushing DNS
| over HTTPS, so once that becomes popular in these
| devices, you're screwed - you simply have to block all
| traffic (in which case you won't be able to watch
| netflix/disney/whatever using that device. For a TV
| that's fine, as you have a PC plugged into it, for now)
| bavent wrote:
| I remember having to set up a firewall rule to drop or
| reroute all DNS queries through my PiHole. What a pain in
| the ass to have to jump through hoops for a device I paid
| over $1k for.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Some TV manufacturers have gotten wise to this (sigh)
| and started hard-coding their DNS lookup IPs.
|
| Is there a list of such manufactures? Don't want to
| accidentally buy one of their products.
| criddell wrote:
| Roku watches what you are watching and shares that data with
| their trusted partners. Same as Android TV (whatever it's
| called now) and Amazon Fire.
|
| AFAIK, the only mainstream streaming device that doesn't do
| this is Apple TV.
| robohoe wrote:
| You can block them talking back to the mothership using Pi-
| Hole or PFBlockerNG.
| hughrr wrote:
| I got screwed by Sony for a smart TV that was abandoned
| within a year. Then none of the streaming sticks worked on
| it due to HDCP compability issues.
|
| In the end I bought a broken Samsung 32" 1080p mostly dumb
| TV on ebay for PS0.99, fixed it (power supply capacitor
| problem) and steal all my content and ship it on USB sticks
| to the TV which will quite happily play h264 / mp3 encoded
| stuff.
|
| Fuck the whole industry.
| ollien wrote:
| That doesn't surprise me at all. I just also know Roku has
| been around forever, so I trust that if a new service is
| added, it will be there. I don't know that I can say the
| same about other manufacturers (not that they _don't_, I
| just don't have the same level of trust there).
| criddell wrote:
| Eventually it should be there. For example, it took a
| long time for HBOMax to make it to Roku because they
| couldn't agree on how much of a cut of the subscription
| fees Roku should get.
| ripply wrote:
| This is called ACR and you can disable it in settings. The
| FTC sued Vizio when they added it to their TVs without a
| way to turn it off.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I once had a so called "Radio Roku" where the main service
| has been discontinued (the website where you could put in
| your favorite stations etc.), so basically the answer is
| don't trust no one.
| jeffdubin wrote:
| I think the answer is "don't rely upon an external
| service".
|
| BTW, Roku supported the Radio Roku service for 10 years
| after the SoundBridge was discontinued, plus the device
| isn't locked down -- there are community-based efforts
| which still let you use an old SoundBridge, with a little
| effort. However, I'd argue that SoundBridge-era Roku is a
| VERY different company than streaming video-era Roku.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| What's the point of a TV to begin with. All oyu need is a
| display and a laptop.
| dthul wrote:
| The issue is that it's hard to find any not-too-smart TVs with
| up to date technology (4k, OLED, HDR etc). Unless you spend a
| fortune on a luxury brand like Bang and Olufsen.
| drewg123 wrote:
| One alternative is the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U 48" 4K OLED. This
| essentially an LG OLED, minus the smart TV stuff, plus better
| inputs. It seems to have a ~15% price premium over the TV.
| dthul wrote:
| That could be a nice alternative! In that case you do need
| a separate tuner though and something like a Chromecast if
| you want to watch Netflix. And you might not have easy
| access to extended channel offerings such as watching older
| episodes on demand etc.
| [deleted]
| pdpi wrote:
| I have literally not used a built-in TV tuner at home for
| 15 years. It used to be a set-top box for cable/satellite
| providers, now mostly an AppleTV for streaming services
| (including for public broadcast like the BBC iPlayer).
| If/when I replace my TV it'll almost certainly be closer
| to a TV-sized display with decent built-in speakers.
| lsaferite wrote:
| It would be interesting to see some metrics on the number
| of people that use tuners on TVs now days.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Gigabyte does not do business in good faith. I am extremely
| leery of anything related to them now; they are not a safe
| brand.
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/gigabyte-allows-returns-or-
| ex...
| scns wrote:
| Hm, don't want to side with with Gigabyte here, but
| drawing a conclusion from a test of a PSU enduring 120%
| load for an extended period of time failing would not
| make me dismiss all their products.
| gruez wrote:
| >from a test of a PSU enduring 120% load for an extended
| period of time failing
|
| That's from gigabyte's response, not the accusations
| levied against them. In GN's testing, they found that the
| PSU failed at 60% load after 72 hours:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aACtT_rzToI&t=1427s
| e40 wrote:
| Not to mention said test is in a general purpose computer
| and we're talking about a monitor here, with a fixed
| load.
| hughrr wrote:
| They're fucking shit. I've had to replace once twice here
| and it's less than 50% of the stated load.
|
| There's a Be Quiet unit in there now like the rest of the
| PCs in my place.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| The max brightness on the FO48U is 385 nits, the LG CX 48
| has a max brightness of ~740. That'll really impact the
| sort of high level HDR features you expect at that price
| point while paying a premium to use the same Apple TV or
| Shield Pro as your smart portion.
| piyh wrote:
| Why isn't the alternative to keep your TV off the network?
| criddell wrote:
| For now, that works.
|
| It's easy to imagine a time when the TV includes it's own
| 5G modem or that Samsung would make a deal with Amazon or
| Comcast for access to their wifi mesh networks so the TV
| can get online without user intervention.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| This distopyan deal is surely coming soon. And
| unfortunately may apply to far more type of stuff we take
| home.
| r00fus wrote:
| Amazon sidewalk [1] has entered the chat. The article
| focuses on "neighbors" but I'm pretty sure the main use
| case is to enable smart TVs and other IOT to phone home
| despite being disallowed.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-
| devices-will-...
| criddell wrote:
| Thanks for posting that. I was trying to remember what it
| was called and couldn't.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure the main use case is to enable smart
| TVs and other IOT to phone home despite being disallowed.
|
| I _highly_ doubt that. Rolling out this network is a lot
| of work and I 'm nearly 100% certain this is to reduce
| claims of non-working devices caused by bad WiFi, plus
| maybe the option to sell network access on a wide range
| of devices.
|
| Avoiding blocked network for TVs and other "smart"
| appliances is surely a nice benefit, but I doubt even 1%
| of people actually block network access (hell, most
| probably want it!). There's no way Amazon would pour that
| amount of effort into extracting that minuscule piece of
| tracking data.
| Aspos wrote:
| I once moved across the ocean and newly purchased LG TV
| refused to work because I am now in the wrong region. Off
| it went to a landfill, this perfect piece of hardware :-(
| progman32 wrote:
| How did it know?
| Aspos wrote:
| I guess it picked up my ip address.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Might have picked it up from the SSID.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Refused to work on what way?
| ezconnect wrote:
| That's the problem of current consumers. The modern TVs have
| an equivalent no smart same spec screen but only available to
| corporate users with all the modern inputs just without the
| smart. If only we could get access to that market.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > If only we could get access to that market.
|
| You often have access to it, it's just a higher price
| (sometimes double) because it isn't subsidized by
| advertising.
| est31 wrote:
| The subsidies from advertising don't cause thousands of
| dollars of difference. It's maybe a few dozen, or few
| hundred at the most. Facebook's yearly revenue per user
| is about 33 USD, and they probably have a way better grip
| on your eyeballs. A TV lives about 5 to 7 years.
|
| The way larger component is due to effects of scale which
| punishes products that run in small batches, and the
| effect that the "business" version of something is
| usually more expensive, but available with higher
| quality, than the consumer version.
| amelius wrote:
| You can shop for bare display panels at https://panelook.com
|
| Building the TV receiver part shouldn't be too difficult.
| Perhaps someone could write a blog about it.
| olq wrote:
| Then you're very welcome to write it if it's that easy /s
|
| I have looked in to fixing a new but broken pc monitor that
| way but it would end up the same cost as a new monitor, at
| least in my case.
| scarby2 wrote:
| I bought a Samsung smart TV recently got it all hooked up and
| noticed that the UI was unbelievably sluggish out of the box
| when i bought it...
|
| Hooked it up to my Nvidia Shield, configured HDMI-CEC and it's
| everything i want for a TV, all it does is turn on and display
| the shield while passing through audio to my receiver haven't
| seen the Samsung UI in months.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I bought a high-end Samsung smart TV in 2017 and simply never
| gave it the wifi password and never connected it to ethernet. I
| use it as a dumb screen connected to two consoles and a living
| room PC for movies.
|
| Thankfully we're not yet at the point where my xbox one or PS4
| will give it a DHCP lease, NAT and default route/gateway
| outbound and 100Mbps ethernet over the HDMI cable .
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > simply never gave it the wifi password
|
| That's been my strategy too, and so far, so good. We treat
| the TV as dumb. Getting a 75 inch screen that isn't a 'smart
| TV' is dang near impossible.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > simply never gave it the wifi password and never connected
| it to ethernet
|
| I worked on the team who built Samsung's initial smart TV
| experience back in 2009 and yet I'm the exact same as you
| with every TV I own. If I could get the same quality panel
| and video processing without "smart TV" functionality for a
| reasonable price, I would, but they generally are much more
| expensive. My choice of panel is intended to last me 5 years,
| the last thing I would want is to be stuck with 5 year old
| "smart" tech that usually is abandonware shortly after
| purchase. It's just to easy to buy a separate box (AppleTV in
| my case) and get a better experience and easy upgrade ability
| as new stuff comes out without wasting a perfectly good
| multi-thousand dollar panel.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Unless I win the lottery or something I don't see myself
| buying a 'professional' flat panel display that has zero
| smart features, and things like RS232/RS485 based control,
| as they are more than double the price... The same $1700
| smart TV would be easily $3500+ as a
| professional/industrial display.
| fulafel wrote:
| It's just a missing feature in your console, Ethernet over
| hdmi (hec) is a thing and who knows what you need to prevent
| this (hdmi firewall?)
| iso1210 wrote:
| Convert HDMI to SDI and back, but you'll need a HDMI-to-SDI
| converter that ignores HDCP (i.e. either pages of forms
| explaining how you've got a legitimate reason for doing it
| and an expensive converter, or a cheap Chinese one)
| drewg123 wrote:
| I bought a high-end Samsung 4K tv in 2015 or so for about
| $3000. I picked it after a week of research that showed it had
| the highest quality panel.
|
| After taking delivery of the TV, we noticed it had bright lower
| left and right corners that we later found out were due to new
| packaging that pinched the TV and caused most of the TVs in
| that batch to be ruined. Samsung claimed that the corners were
| "in spec" and refused to replace the TV. Thankfully the
| retailer replaced the TV.
|
| I vowed that I'd never purchase another Samsung product. I've
| stuck to that, but a house I just bought has all Samsung
| appliances, which I'm not looking forward to.
| hhsbz wrote:
| What do you expect Samsung to do, throw away a $3000 product
| for a defect most consumers wouldn't notice?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What do you expect customers to do? Accept a $3000
| defective product from a manufacturer screw up?
| shuntress wrote:
| I expect them to repair damaged product at no cost to me.
| syshum wrote:
| No they should sell it as Open Box, or some other reduction
| in price at $1,500 or less...
|
| That is how defects like this normally work, if I buy a
| $$$$ monitor, you better bet I expect not to have dead
| pixels, if I do I want them to replace it.
|
| Then they sell it has Open Box or B Grade Referb to a
| customer that is fine with a few dead pixels in order to
| get a deal on the unit...
| [deleted]
| pojzon wrote:
| Probably not throw away, but replace if customer that sees
| the defect reports it.
|
| Thats what a decent company would do.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Yeah, selling a defective product is a scam. The least what
| can be done is product replacement, the most is jail time
| for execs if they deliberately set up this policy.
| macksd wrote:
| Well if I notice it, I'm not paying $3k for it, I'll tell
| you that. If most customers wouldn't notice, they should
| have no problem "refurbishing" it, should they?
| drewg123 wrote:
| I expect them to either fix it, or replace it and re-sell
| it as refurbished. If most customers won't notice the
| defect, it should re-sell easily.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Ah, found the Samsung Customer Relations HN account.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general,
| especially the refrigerators and side loading washing
| machines.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| We bought a 1.5k refrigerator which died after 2 years
| (warranty expires exactly at that time in Europe). We had
| extended repair, it died again after another year.
|
| Never again!
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Worth noting that in UK under the Consumer Rights Act
| there is no specific time limit for poor engineering
| causing a problem that the _seller_ must fix. The
| limitation is 2 years or how long I've would normally
| expect such a product to last. A fridge should easily
| last a decade and so in theory there's a 10 year
| "warranty" period. The seller can have things repaired,
| replace them, or offer a refund (refunds can be reduced
| to account for the use you did get from the product).
|
| We need to use legislation and taxation to push for every
| longer-lived appliances.
| vjust wrote:
| I had heard of exploding Samsung laundry machines. And the
| house I bought has one. I dread the day it decides to do
| its thing.
|
| https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/news/companies/samsung-
| expl...
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| Front loading washing machines just seem like an all around
| more fragile design that is also less usable.
|
| I have an HE top loader. It uses just as little water, but
| it can wash a lot more clothes when needed. I can push a
| button and it stops being HE and can fill its tub up to
| wash blankets and comforters.
|
| Also front loaders just can't clean synthetic fabrics that
| water beads off of. I've seen fabrics come out of a front
| loader almost completely dry because the tiny bit of water
| that is used can't even penetrate the outer layer of
| fabric. Mostly my Ikea comforters, I put one in a front
| loader I used to have and after a complete wash cycle it
| wasn't even damp, and it was still very dirty.
|
| Finally, front loaders are mechanically more complex. For
| one, if that seal fails, well, it leaks. The simplicity of
| a Top loaders means they can last longer, and in the very
| least top loaders don't get all gunked up around the door
| seal. I have seen so many front loaders that smell awful
| because no one ever cleans the crud out of the seal, ick!
|
| Aside from space savings, I really don't get the point of a
| front loader at all. Maybe the tumbling action is better at
| some types of cleaning?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I've literally never ever seen a washing machine that
| isn't a 'front loader' here in the UK either in someones
| house or in a store, I didn't know you could still buy
| other ones!
| com2kid wrote:
| UK yeah, you all have those washer/dryer combos that wash
| tiny loads, and almost set clothes on fire to dry them.
| (In my experience they also take forever to dry the
| clothes!) Can't be very good for synthetics, I have
| clothing that has gotten scorch marks from my American
| dryer's "medium heat" setting, I can't imagine what would
| have happened in a UK machine!
|
| It should be noted that in many places in the US that
| hanging clothes outside is either not allowed, or
| impractical. Also I've had some really bad nights (baby)
| where I needed to wash and dry all my bedding twice over,
| so having a, rather fast, dryer was nice.
|
| Seriously though, if you need to wash a large comforter,
| what do you do? I haven't seen a front loader large
| enough to fit a proper comforter in. Something like
| http://canyon-sports.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/91YEVCAn...
|
| In America, you can buy top loaders or front loaders.
| Front loaders are popular in condos and apartments
| because you can stack them with a dryer.
| avhception wrote:
| I think it's mostly about being able to stack other
| appliances on top of them to save space. Especially
| dryers.
| Levitz wrote:
| Here in Spain I've never seen anything but front loaders,
| they are almost always embedded into the distribution of
| the bathroom or kitchen, kinda like dishwashers. Front
| loading allows you to use the space above it for the
| kitchen counter or such, washing machines rarely have
| their door opened anyway.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung
| front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of
| the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Try to stay away from pricy Bosh washers, and
| dishwashers.
|
| I can offer this with a Bosh. If you get a E13 error it's
| the pump.
|
| It's a pretty easy fix. You can get a generic pump for
| $50.
|
| Most disguarded Bosh washers are due to a pump. The
| computer is second on the list. It's not worth fixing if
| it's the board.
|
| I've been meaning to put a fan on my washer's computer
| board. There us definitely room in there for a computer
| fan.
| Clampower wrote:
| It's Bosch fyi
| Unklejoe wrote:
| That's crazy because I've had terrible experience with
| Samsung front loader washing machines. I own a few rental
| properties, so I tend to go through appliances a lot and
| I've had more Samsung washers and dryers fail than
| anything else.
|
| The dryers are the worst. They use a plastic tensioner
| pulley for the belt, but the pulley doesn't have a
| bearing...it just rides on a metal sleeve. This
| eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly off.
|
| The washers have this issue I think due to incompatible
| metals (aluminum mounting to the stainless drum maybe)
| that causes them to break after about 5 years.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly
| off.
|
| On my dryer it took less than a year before it tossed the
| belt.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| My experience has been fine after I learned that ankle
| socks and masks will cause the machine to jam. Now I just
| hand wash small items and the machine works perfectly
| /sarcasm>
|
| Edit: I'm getting downvoted. Is this a well known thing
| not to wash small items? (I've been using washing
| machines for 20 years, without a problem until this one.)
| SECProto wrote:
| > Is this a well known thing not to wash small items
|
| Front loaders specifically - though usually to protect
| the objects being washed, not the machine itself. The
| joint around the door tends to pinch small objects. I put
| masks in a mesh bag meant for washing "delicates"
| rodgerd wrote:
| Australia had a spate of house fires caused by Samsung
| washing machines whose electronics weren't properly
| waterproofed, shorted, and then burned.
|
| I have avoided Samsung products since then.
| pcurve wrote:
| Seems like LG makes better appliance than Samsung in
| general... but I guess mileage varies between model and
| customer.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Samsung and LG are so big that I would not expect to be
| able to make an objective statement on either's quality
| relative to another, not even for a specific product
| line, much less company wide.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Doesn't a larger sample size reduce the noise?
| mattmcknight wrote:
| I think the issue is that both companies make very cheap
| and very expensive products in various places around the
| globe. So, we could be reading series of negative
| comments from people that got an inexpensive model made
| in Mexico versus people that got an expensive one made in
| Korea, or something like that.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My Samsung front-loader failed the first time in less
| than a year. Right after that, the Samsung dryer I bought
| with it also failed.
|
| My Samsung refrigerator had the display fail after two
| years, and the replacement display started failing in a
| month. I no longer bother buying replacement displays
| because everyone else agrees they never last more than a
| few months.
|
| No more Samsung appliances for me, ever. And CR's
| credibility took a major hit in my eyes because I bought
| the washer & dryer on their recommendation, even after I
| already knew that Samsung refrigerators were garbage.
| rangerelf wrote:
| Never again will I buy anything Samsung.
|
| They have steadfastly refused to fix my fridge's ice maker
| even though they have admitted it's a design fault, and
| retailers will not take it back as faulty because the ice
| maker is not considered vital to the functioning of the
| refrigerator in general.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I won't buy appliances anywhere other than Costco for
| this reason. No-questions-asked returns for 90 days on
| appliances, and a year on most other items. Extended
| warranty for several years for free if you use their
| credit card, too.
| myaccounthaha wrote:
| Yeah but good luck getting them delivered in the first
| place. My understanding is that Costco owns Innovel now
| and they are a truly terrible logistics company. Buyer
| beware!
| lostlogin wrote:
| New Zealand has a bit of legislation called the Consumer
| Guarantees Act, and it specifies something to the effect
| of 'the thing should have a lifespan commensurate with
| the price, free of defects or faults'. It's really great
| - the downside is that we pay more for things than people
| overseas do. I vastly prefer that we have it.
| hiram112 wrote:
| Would be interesting to know if big manufacturers then
| only sell their most dependable models in the NZ market,
| in order to avoid the costs that they can avoid in more
| business-friendly markets like the US.
|
| It would be a good way to decide which products to buy.
| Is this (equivalent) model sold in New Zealand? If so,
| it's probably known by the manufacturer to be solid. If
| not, avoid it at all costs.
| ant6n wrote:
| It's probably cheaper to insure and replace garbage
| Hardware.
| depereo wrote:
| I got my samsung plasma TV repaired after 4 years of
| ownership because the Consumer Guarantees Act says that
| appliances have to last as long as a 'reasonably
| expected' lifetime, that repair options have to be
| available and that the warranty period for major defects
| is that 'reasonably expected' lifetime.
|
| It's still working now, ten years post-purchase.
| r00fus wrote:
| Would be glad to pay a bit more to ensure quality. My
| persistent fear when buying something is - if it fails,
| how do I get it serviced/replaced, or barring that - how
| will I dispose of it. Because dumping it feels completely
| unsustainable.
|
| It's prevented me from buying to replace a lot of my
| stuff.
| foobarian wrote:
| Me neither! I got their fridge, and in my case the
| deicing functionality is faulty. There is a little metal
| tab behind the back panel that heats up an ice dam to
| keep the condensation flowing out, that happens to be too
| short by about 2cm. They skimped on 2cm of aluminum and
| now I will never buy anything Samsung ever again.
|
| So in short, it seems that they can neither make a proper
| ice maker nor ice un-maker :-)
| myaccounthaha wrote:
| Hey I had that same issue with my old fridge, a guy on
| YouTube helped me solve it! Take a short piece of the
| copper ground wire from a length of Romex and wrap it
| around the heating element, then have it point down into
| the drip area. It should conduct enough heat to keep the
| fins from icing up. It's not ideal but it saved me from
| replacing the (I think) evaporator fan for a third or
| fourth time, plus all the ruined food. Also had to
| replace the mainboard on the pile of junk fridge. So glad
| I don't own it anymore.
| jandrese wrote:
| Ice makers are notoriously flimsy. Serious race to the
| bottom by the manufacturers. The good news is that
| they're easy to replace (undo a couple of bolts and
| unplug a cable and they usually come right out), bad news
| is the replacements are ridiculously expensive, like $100
| each and come with all of the same design flaws the
| original had. There is also surprisingly little
| standardization which makes the replacements even more
| expensive as there are hundreds of mostly but not quite
| compatible models to stock and you have to be very
| careful when ordering replacements.
| Spivak wrote:
| The thing that gets me is that for commercial operations
| it seems to be a solved problem. They break and require
| maintenance like anything else but if they're not
| outright broken they are super reliable where fridge ice
| dispensers even when they're working suck.
| vidarh wrote:
| Standalone ice machines in particular infuriates me as
| 90% of the machines on Amazon are copies of the same
| broken design: it rotates a plastic water container by
| firing a motor on one side only for a number of seconds
| without any sensor to stop it. As a result, if you use
| them heavily, it reliably develops stress fractures after
| a year or so.
|
| It took me four broken machines to find a model without
| that exact same design flaw...
|
| It seems a lot of the problems with these kind of
| products is that most customers use them quite little,
| and so they don't see a major fallout even for problems
| that'd be trivial to fix (many of the ice maker models in
| question has a switch to stop rotation too far in the
| opposite direction) and so it just gets ignored.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Most were up to a few years ago, but the big players went
| out of their way to make dependable ice makers--I
| thought.
|
| The last two refrigerators I bought had dependable ice
| makers.
|
| I just overheard an installer talking to a neighbor while
| installing his refrigerator.
|
| The tech said most modern refrigerations only last 10
| years at best though.
| yardie wrote:
| 10 years is actually quite good for major appliances. If
| you're warrantied for 3 and manage to get 10 years out if
| it you've exceeded the design parameters.
| Environmentally, replacing a broken fridge is usually the
| only time someone will even research something more
| energy efficient.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I thought fridges should last 15-20 years at least. 3
| years is a joke.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| What country do you live in?
| rascul wrote:
| When I worked delivery at a national big box home
| improvement store, Samsung and LG refrigerators that we
| brought back due to ice maker not working went to the
| recycle trailer and was sold for scrap once the trailer
| filled up.
| robohoe wrote:
| Same. Samsung has had a bad reputation for a while. I
| remember having issues with their CRT monitors back in
| mid 2000s. I bought one of their smart TVs back in 2011
| and it's had issues with the panel ever since with
| randomly showing purple & pink lines. Their cell phones
| have also been crap in my personal experience.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I've never had a good experience with a Samsung device.
| Their TV screens are too blue for me, their appliances
| fail too quickly and are not user repair friendly, their
| phones have too much bloat.
|
| Admittedly, this is all down to personal experience and
| taste but I am decidedly anti-samsung. I've had a few
| decent computer monitors from them but otherwise
| everything I've owned from them has become e-waste with
| far too much rapidity for the price paid.
| ezconnect wrote:
| I had a Samsung front loader and it's a great washer.
| swayvil wrote:
| Was it the one that sings a Schubert tune every time the
| wash is done?
|
| That cracks me up.
| ezconnect wrote:
| It's a Korean version, I am not familiar with the tune it
| was playing.
| specto wrote:
| I've vowed not to buy samsung 3 times now, every time I've
| been burned. This time it's for real
| cronix wrote:
| Samsung has some of the best displays. I use 0 "smart" features
| and just use it as a big dumb 4k monitor for a dedicated Home
| Theater PC. My wireless keyboard with built in track pad is way
| better than any smart features they offer, or having to wave a
| dumb remote around in the air to get their "air mouse" feature
| offset just right from where you're actually pointing so it
| doesn't mess up. The TV itself is not connected to the internet
| and doesn't receive firmware updates beyond the initial one to
| set the TV up. When I still subscribed to cable TV I used cable
| cards and windows media center to get all the HDTV stations.
| Sweet DVR functionality.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| did anyone in this thread really expect quality when buying a
| product from a company run by a convicted embezzler?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-yong_(businessman)#201...
| peregrine wrote:
| I purchased a Samsung tv, I connected it to Wifi one time to
| download any 'updates' then I disabled WIFI and all of the
| smart features via the menu and went the extra mile to block
| its MAC Address on the router.
|
| I never once touched any of the smart features and it has been
| fine so far. This has been my rule for any devices that
| requires WIFI. I should really setup a special guest network
| for them and disable WAN access but I haven't gotten that far
| yet.
| skyboy101 wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, smart TVs can still communicate by via
| inaudible sound signals directly to other devices. Spooky.
| kossTKR wrote:
| Really? That's dystopian, but in a cool way. A little like
| Amazons own internet sharing network or what it was.
|
| It's terrible though. We really live in a panopticon now.
|
| Any links?
| foepys wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2017/05/there...
|
| Be careful which apps you allow to use your phone's
| microphone.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-
| ads-th...
|
| Not exactly the TV manufacturer doing it, but there have
| been reports of advertisers using ultrasonic pitches to
| do cross-device tracking.
| crysin wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
|
| Slightly different than what gp was talking about but
| also deals with using invisible audio for DRM
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| Audio is usually invisible
| saiya-jin wrote:
| If you don't want it constantly connected ie to use built-in
| apps, the step with allowing it out once is needless or even
| potentially harmful.
|
| Of course I don't know your usage of it, but generally there
| is nothing worth downloading in those firmwares, only
| potentially new ways to serve ads and be obtrusive if facing
| issues with that. You don't want your previously-OK TV to
| start showing you some warnings after updating it.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| You can't really avoid smart TVs these days. Any model that has
| a good picture quality will have a higher end chipset, and with
| that higher end chipset TV manufacturers are just rolling
| Android since they largely don't have to worry about the UI
| etc.
|
| Technically, all you should have to do is not enable
| Wifi/Ethernet and you're good to go. But I wouldn't put it past
| Samsung to look for open APs or connected Samsung products and
| secretly funnel data via that channel.
| mam3 wrote:
| This is bad.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Please elaborate. These kind of comments don't really belong on
| hacker news without more content.
| mam3 wrote:
| If youd actually browse HN you would know. One less step away
| from full ownership of your own devices and one more toward
| the consumer even more dependent on the compagnies.
|
| Who cares about a bunch of stolen TVs ?
| kelvin0 wrote:
| My coffee machine was bricked, once it detected I started
| drinking Tea.
|
| IoT gone wild.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I guess this will just greatly inconvenience people who bought
| the TV from the bandits. But well, if this press release is well-
| distributed among the public, then they will know to avoid buying
| Samsung TVs from the backs of vans, and the thieves will avoid
| Samsung warehouses.
|
| Alternatively maybe Samsung should just offer the innocent buyers
| a e.g. 5% discount to "legitimize" their TVs, so if they bought
| the TV from the back of the van for 50% off, they'll in effect
| need to pay 145% of the retail price. In effect the thieves would
| have become a new, strange, retail arm. It's like Uber, but for
| TV distribution!(TM)
|
| More thoughts: the thieves should just cut off the Ethernet port
| (do they even have these?) and open the TV up and unplug the WiFi
| antenna. Sure it won't be an Internet TV anymore, but hey, at
| least their customers/suckers can still watch stuff.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| > greatly inconvenience people who bought the TV from the
| bandits
|
| It's stolen property. The subsequent buyers cannot legally own
| it.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| The illegality is also inconvenient, but how likely are the
| cops or whoever are going to inconvenience them about that?
|
| For the bandits the disabled TVs is no big deal because
| they'll probably manage to sell them to "bargain hunters"
| anyway.
| gruez wrote:
| The point is to make it harder for the bandits to offload
| their goods, by ruining their resale value. If someone's
| selling cheap TVs off the back of a truck, and you know
| that you'll get to keep it (as in netherlands, see sibling
| comments), then there's no real incentive for you _not_ to
| buy it. Who _wouldn 't_ want a 75" OLED TV for $1000, no
| strings attached? On the other hand, if the law was that
| stolen property was liable to be bricked/seized, then you'd
| be much more hesitant in buying the TV. Sure, $1000 is
| still cheaper than paying retail, but if the cops find out
| you could be out the $1000 _and_ the TV. In response you
| might not want to buy the TV at all, or are willing to pay
| less for it ($500 perhaps). The reduced demand /price hurts
| the bandits.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Yeah yeah yeah, but this is S. Africa, a place where laws
| aren't automatically obeyed, unlike e.g. Singapore. If
| there is your law, my guess is getting caught "buying
| stolen goods" is probably not something many people there
| worry about. Sure there will be straight and narrow
| citizens, but my guess is, without the disable-tech, the
| bandits wouldn't really have a problem getting rid of
| their stolen goods. Even with this tech, my hunch is
| those TVs will still sell, but at least now the crippling
| will be a lesson for their bargain-hunting buyers.
| superice wrote:
| Under Dutch law: sure they can. As long as you had no reason
| to suspect it was a stolen TV (super low price, no receipt
| even though it was basically new, stuff like that) a party
| that bought the TV second hand is now the legal owner even if
| the initial owner gets ahold of the current owner.
|
| Under Dutch law the most common thing this applies to is
| second hand bicycles. If you bought it off a junkie at the
| train station for 10 bucks, it's probably not yours to keep.
| Showing up to a house through a Facebook-group and paying
| something like 100 bucks for a second hand bike would totally
| qualify though, even if that bike turned out to be stolen.
| msh wrote:
| I think that varies a lot around the world.
|
| Under Danish law even if you were in good faith you will
| still loose the merchandise. If you were in bad faith you
| can be punished with a fine or even prison in the most
| severe cases.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Many comments here going on about "I do not have a proof of
| purchase for X". Well, good luck claiming insurances if your
| property ever gets burgled.
| chaircher wrote:
| you only have to prove ownership not purchase for insurance
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| How do you otherwise prove an ownership of an item you have
| purchased?
| ketralnis wrote:
| Lots of ways. My renters insurance just wants a timestamped
| digital photo
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Cool. Unfortunately not every country works the same.
| juanani wrote:
| Great, so they just end up in a landfill quicker? Just let the
| people watch the bs propaganda anyway, they'd be giving screens
| out for free if we stopped watching them.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| > The blocking will come into effect when the user of a stolen
| television connects to the internet, in order to operate the
| television
|
| I purchased a Sony TV in 2019 after giving up on looking for 70"
| "dumb" television sets that would only connect to my PlayStation
| and act as a screen.
|
| I decided that I would buy a smart tv but never connect it to the
| internet.
|
| Every few days when I start my TV, I get an annoying "set up your
| Android TV" prompt that takes over my TV. I have to grab my
| remote and dismiss it to go back to my PlayStation.
|
| If I happen to have a stolen television set, I would never know
| the difference. (My TV is from Sony, article is about Samsung
| TVs)
| cr3ative wrote:
| In case it's helpful to you, you can ADB over the network to
| your Android TV and uninstall packages which are annoying to
| you. I'd wager there's one which this prompt comes from. I have
| disabled all but the essential apps (for HDMI-CEC function,
| etc) on my Sony Android TV.
|
| Alternatively, set it up once then ban it from the internet.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| This hadn't ever crossed my mind! Thanks for the tip.
|
| I wonder if I can adb root into my tv via some USB port. Some
| hardware hacker probably has figured this out - time to go
| look.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Sad state of affairs when you have to hack a device you
| probably paid well over EUR1000 for...
| nyjah wrote:
| Cr3ative's comment is interesting and I am definitely going to
| look into that.
|
| I fixed my issues with Sony popping up the android crap by
| allowing the device I am turning on to control HDMI.
|
| I'm not the biggest fan of that setting being on, but I turned
| it off and started getting those android pop ups. It took me
| awhile to figure out why that was happening as my TV isn't on
| the internet. I use a Sony television connected to Apple TV
| with internet fwiw.
| Jaepa wrote:
| How different is this from IMEI blacklisting of stolen phones?
| The secondary market for stolen phones has kind of disappeared
| despite cost of phones increasing.
|
| EDIT: I think there is plenty of reason to want an open source tv
| os. They are terrible, ad ridden, bloated commodities. But this
| seems to be only valid use of DRM I can think of.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > How different is this from IMEI blacklisting of stolen
| phones?
|
| It's not. People have been doing this for years now, it looks
| like the big brouhaha this time is that it's likely disabled
| when it connects to WiFi, not cellular or GPS info like how a
| phone might respond.
| mrkramer wrote:
| On your phone you might have unencrypted private content and
| information on the other hand on Smart TV you have
| entertainment apps and entertainment content no private
| information at least that is what I think most people have and
| do.
|
| I don't anybody who stores private information on the Smart TV
| so when stolen Smart TVs start to circulate on the market no
| private information can be acquired or accessed(besides maybe
| your login credentials and a credit card) unlike with phones
| which store vast amount of your private content and
| information.
|
| Idk how IMEI blacklisting works but if they can block at least
| your private phone number from the network that's good because
| rogue user can abuse your private phone number and cause havoc
| because your personal phone number is attached to your identity
| in numerous databases and records.
| PeterisP wrote:
| IMEI blacklisting has nothing to do with private information
| or user of previous phone number, it does not try to do that,
| it's a technique that attempts to prevent stolen phones to be
| used by anyone as the operators would refuse to allow that
| device (identified by the device's IMEI number) to connect to
| their network.
| mrkramer wrote:
| But the crucial question is when was device stolen; "a
| priori" of someone using it or "a posteriori" of someone
| using it.
|
| Samsung refers to TV being stolen "a priori" of consumer
| using it("A TV blocking system has been activated on
| Samsung television sets stolen from our warehouse") but if
| a TV is stolen posteriori of someone using it maybe
| blocking can come in handy in order to protect consumer's
| private information on the device. But when remotely
| disabling someone's TV you should be 100% sure you are
| doing it for the right reason and you should inform the
| consumer before you do it.
|
| Samsung explains "a priori" blocking of Smart TV like this:
|
| Samsung Television Block works as follows:
|
| A TV blocking system has been activated on Samsung
| television sets stolen from our warehouse
|
| The blocking will come into effect when the user of a
| stolen television connects to the internet, in order to
| operate the television
|
| Once connected, the serial number of the television is
| identified on the Samsung server and the blocking system is
| implemented, disabling all the television functions
|
| Should a customer's TV be incorrectly blocked, the
| functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and
| a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or
| click here for more information
| Jaepa wrote:
| I don't think there is really much of a difference for
| the person buying the device, except they have some
| degree of recourse.
|
| 1. I unknowingly buy a stolen device.
|
| 2. I connect it to it's associated network.
|
| 3. The device is reported back to some central authority
| which then black-lists/bricks the device making it fairly
| useless.
|
| The only difference I see is that Samsung will allow your
| to provide proof of purchase, and it will function
| without being connected to that networked system.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think the same question comes into play here as well,
| what does blocking have to do with protecting private
| information?
|
| If it actually had some tie-in to the previous users
| information I'd follow why it's relevant to the
| conversation better. As is blocking IMEIs and TVs from
| registering seems completely unrelated to stealing the
| existing local data so I can't follow the distinction.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I don't know anybody*
| deergomoo wrote:
| I've wondered about the feasibility of jailbreaking Tizen. Ads
| aside, my 2019 HDR TV has a bug where HDR10+ content will drop to
| 1/2 brightness every 6 minutes to the second, until I open the
| menu. That will reset the 6 minute counter, but it never stops.
| It's infuriating.
|
| It affects the 2020 models too, but by the looks of a very long
| forum thread it seems to have been fixed with a software update.
| They have no interest in fixing the older models, but maybe some
| enterprising hacker would.
|
| I want to say fuck Samsung and that my next TV will be LG, but LG
| have ads in the menus too. Judging by reviews, most high-end Sony
| panels cost more money but are missing features I value like VRR.
|
| It's really shitty, there is basically no amount of money you can
| spend to get both a high-end panel and a user experience that
| isn't fucking awful.
| scns wrote:
| Search the thread for the Gigabyte oled monitor FO48 IIRC.
| haxorito wrote:
| That seems like dangerous and very anti-consumer practice. I
| honestly don't like smart TVs in general, I haven't seen one
| where you won't end up buying a tv setup box, like Apple TV or
| Amazon firestick anyway.
|
| Samsung you've done f up.
| vjust wrote:
| How can they know for sure that some activation was invalid. I'd
| think this could be challenged in court. If hypothetically the SA
| govt. declares amnesty for the looting, then will Samsung unlock
| it. Just saying.
| gotostatement wrote:
| I don't own a smart TV because every smart TV I've used has been
| in an airbnb and they are generally sluggish to the point of
| being unusable. Even my plug-in Roku has gotten to this point. I
| don't understand what it could be. Memory leaks? It's totally
| bizarre
| alerighi wrote:
| Planned obsolescence. We should really make that practice
| illegal at some point... but we are too busy imposing people to
| get rid of they perfectly reliable 20 years old petrol cars to
| buy crappy new electric cars that will break for a software
| update and will end up in a landfill...
| lsaferite wrote:
| Poor software development is my theory.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| forget smart TVs, I want somebody to just make a decent dumb TV.
| Same thing goes for cars, I feel like there is a huge market for
| "dumb" products. Manufacturers feel the need to keep adding
| features for some reason
| speeder wrote:
| For cars stuff is even harder now.
|
| EU for example has regulations that make mandatory for all new
| cars to come with tracking devices and logging of what you do
| with the car.
|
| EDIT: just remembered the name of one of such things. It is
| "eCall", now mandatory on EU. It mandates all cars must have
| GPS, Galileo, microphone, logging, cellphone transmitter, and
| be able to detect a serious emergency happened and call the
| police automatically and provide them with all data needed.
|
| Seemly removing that crap from the car is illegal too. (I don't
| live in EU right now so I didn't dove too deep in that
| subject).
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Sounds like something out of China.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Do China have a society built on advertising stuff you
| don't want or need on TV and radio and in magazines and
| movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons,
| and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| meowster wrote:
| From the albeit little feedback I've heard, I hear the Spectre
| 4K dumb TVs are decent enough. They go up to 75" and Walmart
| sells them.
|
| But yes, I want a bigger market for "dumb" products such as
| cars, and other consumer appliances such as TVs.
| meowster wrote:
| Sceptre* brand
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| awful because next thing what they do is block when you laugh
| about a funny joke which is female unfriendly or not inclusive.
|
| The way to hell is paved with good intentions, as usual
| chmod775 wrote:
| Overall I'm not against such a thing because at the end of the
| day this makes theft less attractive and thus protects consumers.
|
| However not like this: "Should a customer's TV be incorrectly
| blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of
| purchase and a valid TV license is shared to
| serv.manager@samsung.com [...]".
|
| That's flipping the burden of proof around. Clearly not the way
| to go about this.
|
| Also of course things should work by default and not require you
| to go online.
| mminer237 wrote:
| They've all been reported stolen. That already satisfies the
| burden of proof in Samsung's view. What more proof do you want
| Samsung to have? They can't prove customers don't have a
| receipt. It's up to the potential legitimate customer to
| overcome Samsung's evidence.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Then having that avenue would not be necessary, would it?
|
| It's likely Samsung only has a rough idea which serial
| numbers were stolen, or there is at least considerable room
| for mistakes. As a company you don't set up a _process_ for a
| _few_ outliers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What? All the big tech companies on HN get lambasted all
| the time for excessive automation and not having a process
| for a few outliers.
|
| Why would you NOT want to setup a process for outliers
| (other than to save money like the big tech companies)?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| I'd love to hear folks' recommendations for non-smart TV's. I
| haven't paid attention to this topic in a while and I haven't
| kept up with the technology.
| 1-6 wrote:
| You can always buy a large monitor. For example, AORUS FO48U
| 48" gaming monitor has 4K OLED, 120Hz, 1ms G2G Freesync Premium
| for $1400. https://slickdeals.net/f/15210775-aorus-
| fo48u-gaming-monitor...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I bought the Sceptre 65" (model U658CV-UMC) based on a
| recommendation in another HN thread last year. There's not a
| lot to say about it, since all it does is show a signal on a
| big TV screen, but that's also its biggest benefit. It's an
| $800 4K 65" TV that doesn't spy on you, so big thumbs up from
| me.
|
| I'm not sure if it's got the best panel in the world or not.
| It's definitely good enough for me. One thing I accept about
| myself is that if I am not looking at two TVs side by side, I
| am not going to know if one is inferior to the other.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Thanks. I'm the same. I'm sensitive to audio quality, but I'm
| pretty oblivious to the quality of TV screens. I'll happily
| watch a movie on a laptop as long as I can hook it up to a
| decent sound system.
| cabraca wrote:
| If i just need a "dumb" TV go for prosumer or commercial
| solutions. Imaging the TVs you see in big corps or shops. NEC
| E-Series is good if you're on a budget.
| fkfowl3 wrote:
| what does #RebuildSouthAfrica mean? Why is this post tagged with
| this? Weird
| powersurge360 wrote:
| South Africa is apparently having large riots and looting going
| on right now. This video popped up in my YouTube
| recommendations last week and completely surprised me. I'd tell
| you more but this video is my only exposure to it so far so I
| figured I'd just link it than try to say it second hand.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cew-BnjA_q4
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Funniest and saddest thing I saw was bookstores being completely
| ignored during the looting. South Africa's literacy rate declined
| from 93% to 87% during the last decade.
| superasn wrote:
| When it says disabled does that mean it won't even connect to
| HDMI ports? Because if that's not the case, then all that's
| needed is an android box which costs like $50 bucks and often
| performs better than the bloated android rom on tvs.
| debarshri wrote:
| What are the chances that someone would phish an admin user to
| the platform that blocks all the TV systems and block the all
| samsung TV devices. What are the chances that they could be
| snooping and monitoring what I am watching.
|
| It would be nice to see some more transparency in these remote
| monitoring and management systems. The system setup is very
| similar to Teamviewer or kaseya where you accept them to manage
| your device when you accept the terms of service or user
| agreement.
|
| I am not sure if it is just me, but It is making a little
| paranoid. In my opinion, this is not a good thing.
| infogulch wrote:
| > What are the chances that they could be snooping and
| monitoring what I am watching.
|
| 100%.
|
| > Samsung Smart TVs have built-in Automated Content Recognition
| (ACR) technology that can understand viewing behavior and usage
| including programs, movies, ads, gaming content and OTT apps in
| real-time. It's a simple 3-step process:
|
| Linked elsewhere itt:
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...
| long11l wrote:
| One of the CIA leaks included malware for turning Samsung tvs
| into a listening device
|
| So it's not unrealistic for it to be done my others
| ipaddr wrote:
| What leads you to believe they are not monitoring eveything you
| watch now?
| debarshri wrote:
| Jeez. I am going off the grid.
| jakearmitage wrote:
| It is impossible to find a "dumb" TV today. It sucks, because I
| was currently looking for a new 75+ inch one, but everything out
| there is just smart crap.
| meowster wrote:
| They're out of stock now, but they were available last time I
| checked a few months ago.
|
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-75-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD...
| kunagi7 wrote:
| Unless Samsung enforces an internet connection on the first start
| of the TV it's completely useless as long as they don't connect
| it.
|
| Still, a worrisome approach. After a few years if they shut down
| or change the blocking servers will the TV still work or it will
| become a brick since it can't check its authenticity?
| 1-6 wrote:
| They do on The Frame series TVs because it's supposed to show
| 'artwork'. If you don't connect, you'll constantly have to deal
| with an ugly warning message instead of defaulting to the
| preloaded images.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| The larger question for society is do we even _want_ smart
| everything? I rarely see this issue debated. Undoubtedly,
| software enables complex /rich functionality for what were
| hitherto relatively "dumb" devices, but the same flexibility can
| also lead to exploits, backdoors, bugs and place too much control
| in the hands of the manufacturers and _many other_ nameless
| parties.
|
| The most important aspect here is remote connectivity. Software
| without remote connectivity may be less correctable, but it is
| also resistant towards tampering from unwanted directions. With
| network connectivity the device basically becomes impossible to
| fully control. In fact, admin control shifts from you, the owner,
| to someone else on the other side of the planet, unless you want
| to take a hammer to it.
|
| These issue need vigorous debate. 1. Do we even want _every_
| device to become "smart"?, and 2. should smart devices be
| designed with 24x7 network connectivity requirements?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It sucks. The smartest capability I want is the ability to
| mount network storage, play video from USB, etc. Give me
| options for playing _my_ media.
|
| Unfortunately nobody owns media, they stream everything, hence
| TVs with "smart" features.
| mrkramer wrote:
| "Smart" is just a fancy marketing word for better features and
| richer experience. Smart TVs and smartphones are not smart.
| Smart is someone or something who exhibits high degree of
| intelligence which no computer has right now.
| city41 wrote:
| I'm not sure the consumer's wants really have much weight here.
| Manufacturers want smart TVs so they can get ad revenue.
| Streaming services want smart TVs to help get their app in
| front of more people. Google, Apple, Amazon and Roku want to
| hook more people into their ecosystems. I would guess your
| average consumer doesn't really consider any of this, they just
| go to Best Buy and buy a TV that seems reasonably priced.
| ukyrgf wrote:
| A few months back I found a very nice Samsung TV locked in a
| closet. I looked it up and it cost like $3,500 a few years
| back. When I asked about it, my boss said "I bought it to watch
| soccer but it doesn't have any apps, what good is it?" He had
| never heard of Roku/Apple TV/Fire TV.
| pp19dd wrote:
| Best I can figure is companies not eating their own dog food.
| Clever engineers forced in directions the clueless set and
| enforced.
|
| IMO, we lost the TV and car entertainment system battle long
| ago. It all just went south. And those two are leading symptoms
| of dumb smartification.
|
| Car entertainment systems: lure of reprogrammable "somethings"
| replaced tactile buttons, distracting drivers. And then the
| programmable interface became a sequence of terrible things,
| features and partnerships, completely disconnected from how you
| use a radio.
|
| TV: we went from hundreds of channels modulated on a single
| coax cable where you can flip instantly and get immediate
| signal to layers of slow interfaced descrambling and streaming,
| ... "please wait, updating" ... "please wait, cannot connect to
| service" ... "service status ok, 4/4" and of course, slow
| loading interfaces, > 1+ minute time-to-play experiences, audio
| lipsync issues and balkanization of content streaming, and
| market juggling of rights.
|
| Yes, I'm whining, but why couldn't evolution of at least these
| two have gone ... better?
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Good point - I don't understand how it's legal for me to
| drive my Citroen - the flat panel displays are as distracting
| as a mobile phone.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| The companies want it because they make money selling your
| viewing activity, and that means that these devices will be
| popular with everyone who buys the lowest priced item in the
| store.
|
| What I'd like to see are mandatory privacy disclosures on the
| front of the box and minimum lifetimes based on the primary
| function: full support for the advertised features for, say,
| the 10-15 years that the display lasts or they buy it back at a
| significant fraction of the original purchase price. We have a
| ton of usable equipment going to landfills because the
| manufacturer refuse to ship updates for things which aren't
| generating ongoing revenue.
| alerighi wrote:
| Smart TVs are shit. Especially the modern ones. They got worse
| rather than better!
|
| They are slow and laggy, even doing the most basic things like
| turning on or changing channel. It was faster the CRT that I used
| 20 years ago, and it had to warm up before displaying an image!
| But at least the audio started immediately...
|
| They are also not usable. The UI is crappy and you don't find the
| most common settings, for example I had to search on the internet
| where to find the option to disable automatic turn off after 4
| hours on an LG TV, the remotes are full of useless buttons (I
| don't want a huge Netflix button on a remote that if I press by
| mistake I will lose 10 seconds of the program I'm watching!).
|
| Now I'm using a Sony TV, that I purchased 2 years ago only
| because it was the TV with less smart crap in it, it works pretty
| well, it does what a TV should do, let me watch TV channels,
| program guide, teletext (yes, I still use it), and nothing else
| (well in theory it has Netflix and other apps in it... but I
| never connected it to the internet and they don't get in the
| way). For all the other things, a simple media center PC does
| them better.
| vizzier wrote:
| Gigabyte's latest OLED monitor looks appealing. LG OLED without
| the smart features. Recently featured in a LTT video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBE9DL7MlG0
| jmcgough wrote:
| What LG TV are you talking about? My old smart TV was "slow and
| laggy", but as soon as I upgraded to a mid-range model a lot of
| those complaints went away.
|
| I can't imagine trying to use a dumb TV now. We have four
| streaming services in my house, the UI homepage quickly shows
| which series we're in the middle of and makes it easy to jump
| back in without navigating a lot of menus.
|
| Even if plex were to do exactly what I want, it's more effort
| on my end when I just want to be able to easily pull up shows
| without issues. On top of that, you need a very new TV (with
| new HDMI 2.1 features) if you want to really experience the
| power of next-gen gaming consoles.
|
| An older TV might work for your use cases, but I think you're
| increasingly in the minority. No one I know (except my parents)
| watches channels anymore, they all just stream
| Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll/Disney. If there's something really
| niche I want to watch, there's torrents and videostream.
|
| Stay away from cheap Samsung TVs and get a good Sony TV. I love
| my Bravia x900h.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yeah between the TVs and the content, it's just not worth it to
| me. I have a TV but haven't even switched it on in months. I
| watch YouTube on my phone a bit, that's enough for me.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >They got worse rather than better!
|
| Sort of. Picture quality is way better, but component and build
| quality is shit because flat-panel TVs are a commodity. They
| are also way way cheaper.
|
| The manufacturers are now trying to figure out how to add a)
| value-add at the software level to stand-out from the pack and
| b) figure out how to increase profitability (hence the ads).
| mrkramer wrote:
| "Should a customer's TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality
| can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license
| is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more
| information"
|
| Fuck off.
|
| This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart
| TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Oh the tyranny of having to pay...
| zimbatm wrote:
| You might have paid the TV second hand, and not be aware of
| the theft. What recourse do you have then? You're out of
| pocket, the seller might not be reachable anymore, and you
| have no proof of purchase.
| [deleted]
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Supply chains matter and that has always been true. You
| have never had recourse for buying stolen goods under law.
| If you buy stolen goods, the police can seize them and you
| are out the money.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Samsung is not a police agency. It should not be allowed
| to virtually seize something that belongs to me.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| If it was stolen, it was never yours, even if you paid
| the thief for it. At least in the US, this is a settled
| matter; You have no right to a stolen good that you paid
| for.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You did, if you did so unknowingly and had no reason to
| doubt you bought stolen merchandise.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Burning the buyer means they will be more careful who they
| buy from next time. This could be both good (reduces market
| for stolen goods), and bad (inhibits legitimate 2nd hand
| sales). In the long term I would expect some technology for
| proving provenance pops up but it might be a little painful
| until that happens.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Apple remotely scanning our phones for "suspicious" content,
| Samsung remotely disabling our TVs on the suspicion of TV
| being stolen what is next?!
|
| This is akin to Crypto Wars from the 1990s but this time the
| enemy is far more dangerous. In the 1990s we had a
| centralized enemy the government which decided to turn
| against us this time the enemy is decentralized in the form
| of private corporations which are turning against us one by
| one.
|
| Government can be tamed but private corporations can not;
| they only see profit and now they think they can get more of
| it by lying to us they do it in the name of social justice.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I have a 10 year old Sony TV that I have NO proof of purchase
| for, I threw out that receipt with the box about 3 moves ago.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Well, since you didn't steal it why would they disable it?
|
| But if you bought it off the back of some guys truck would
| you honestly expect it to work?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| From the parent:
|
| > "Should a customer's TV be incorrectly blocked, the
| functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase
| and a valid TV license is shared to
| serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more
| information"
|
| I don't know why they would block me, but apparently it
| is something they've created a process for, a process I
| wouldn't be able to participate in.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| But they wouldn't. You have a 10 year old Sony TV. This
| is Samsung.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My point is that, I don't have proof of purchase for my
| 10 year old Sony. I would presume this also applies to
| Samsung customers.
| ollien wrote:
| Obviously that's not the point, here. The fact that Samsung
| has the ability to brick a TV remotely _at all_ is
| ridiculous. It's not hard to imagine this being used by an
| attacker to shut down all Samsung TVs remotely, or for
| planned obsolescence if you want to be more cynical.
| mminer237 wrote:
| That would be about as huge of a security failure as an
| attacker sending out a malicious OS update for any other
| device, except with a planned, controlled way to disable
| TVs, Samsung could reenable them promptly once they
| realize.
|
| Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them to
| buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is illegal.
| ollien wrote:
| > Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them
| to buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is
| illegal.
|
| You've never seen any IoT devices shut down remotely? It
| happens all the time.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Which part of the South African laws says that?
| gambiting wrote:
| Or.....against thieves. As someone who had stuff stolen,
| I'd pay money for electronics that catches fire once
| reported stolen, thieves are literally scum of the earth
| and only one step above murderers and rapists in my books.
| Great step by Samsung here.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| I can't argue with your assessment of thieves, but if
| you're going to have self-destruct mechanisms in your
| devices, appliances, or car, do you really trust a
| company like Samsung with the red button? Wouldn't you
| rather have that under your own control?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| That's akin to a booby trap, and US law does not look
| kindly on such machinations.
| dpedu wrote:
| You'd install a firebomb in your own home? I think you
| need to rethink this position.
| Filligree wrote:
| I carry one in my pocket every day, so why not?
| kazinator wrote:
| Some people will pay, not knowing the TV was stolen.
|
| A batch of stolen TV's could end up in the ends of a legit
| distributors; someone could end up with that by walking into
| some established brick-and-mortar discount TV warehouse type
| place.
|
| Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off
| Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled if
| it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money.
| Because you're the bad guy!
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Do you not believe in property rights? If a stolen car gets
| resold that doesn't automatically void the original
| ownership papers... and that's the standard practice in
| every country in the world I think.
| kazinator wrote:
| The standard practice in most countries is that the
| police and the court system are distinct from this entity
| called Samsung.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| That doesn't affect the principle that the original
| ownership rights cannot be affected by any subsequent
| resale after theft.
| gruez wrote:
| >Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off
| Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled
| if it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money.
| Because you're the bad guy!
|
| You're not the bad guy, but you're also not entitled to
| keep the stolen goods. It has to go back to its original
| owner. I'd be pretty pissed if someone stole my bike, sold
| it, and I'm not able to recover my bike because somebody
| "bought" it at 80% off.
| kazinator wrote:
| No, you aren't; it called "possession of stolen
| property".
|
| However, Samsung is not the law, first of all. (If they
| have a court order to disable the equipment, that's fine,
| I suppose.)
|
| Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will
| probably just end up in the landfill.
|
| You're not catching the thieves this way.
| gruez wrote:
| >However, Samsung is not the law, first of all. (If they
| have a court order to disable the equipment, that's fine,
| I suppose.)
|
| Should apple require a court order to enable icloud lock
| on your stolen iphone?
|
| >Second of all, these TV's won't be recovered; they will
| probably just end up in the landfill.
|
| >You're not catching the thieves this way.
|
| Same for stolen iphones, are you against icloud locks as
| well?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I don't have proof of purchase for 90% of the stuff I own.
| It's insane to expect people to hang on to receipts for
| eternity.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| No bank statements?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I have bank / credit card statements, but those aren't
| itemized.
|
| I could say I spent $1500 at BestBuy on some date, but
| not have concrete proof of _exactly_ what I bought from
| that alone.
| memco wrote:
| Even more fun is that there's some receipts where the ink
| fades/rubs off in a matter of days so even though you have
| the paper receipt you still have no proof of purchase.
| gruez wrote:
| And you're not expected to. This is for TVs that were
| recently stolen. Do people here actually think this will be
| used in the future for random ownership checks?
| cyckl wrote:
| oh the tyranny of having a product which you purchase and
| think you own have all functionality be remotely disabled--
| effectively becoming a multi thousand dollar paperweight--at
| the whim of a large international corporation with no real
| recourse...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| You have recourse by showing proof of purchase. Or you sue
| them.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _You have recourse by showing proof of purchase_
|
| How does that help when the product is out of warranty?
|
| > _Or you sue them._
|
| How exactly would _you_ go about suing Samsung. Figure
| that out and let us know if it would be worth it for a
| TV.
| gruez wrote:
| > > You have recourse by showing proof of purchase
|
| >How does that help when the product is out of warranty?
|
| This is for TVs that were recently stolen. They'd
| definitely be in warranty (short of you not buying from
| an authorized reseller because you bought it out of the
| back of a truck), and you're reasonably likely to have
| the receipt.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| While TFA focuses on recently stolen goods, the broader
| concern here is the invasive remote control that Samsung
| has over your device. The concerns I'm reading in this
| thread include Samsung turning on invasive advertising,
| remote bricking, and possibly monitoring your media
| consumption.
|
| So in light of the relevant debate here, how exactly does
| a proof-of-purchase help if the product is out of
| warranty?
| cptskippy wrote:
| > This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source
| Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.
|
| Why does the TV have to be smart? Having the smarts integrated
| into the TV requires that 2 components be replaced if either no
| longer meets the user's needs.
|
| Lets make a really nice large format display with no smarts or
| connectivity and then let the user choose an Apple TV, Roku,
| Fire, Android, or whatever.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| This! I'm never buying any kind of smart TV again. I
| currently have one those TCL TVs with Roku built in and it
| sucks. All of the apps on it are slow, the menu/home/OS is
| slow. This could just be a overall Roku thing but I'll never
| buy either a Roku or a "smart tv" again.
|
| I mainly use Apple TV and PS4 to access all of the streaming
| services. They are slick, fast, and responsive.
| mminer237 wrote:
| If you don't want a smart TV, you are pretty much limited
| to bargain bin Sceptre and Best Buy TVs or finding a
| business signage TV.
| slivanes wrote:
| Sadly PS4 is pretty bad for streaming services. They don't
| show up on the main screen and often are buried in
| subsequent pages in the streaming menu.
|
| I haven't been able to figure how to "sticky" YT TV for
| example to either the main screen or early in the "Video"
| section.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Yeah it's not perfect, they shove everything into that TV
| & Video section[1] and then in there I sometimes I have
| to look for the app I want in another sub-screen. I want
| to just create a folder on the home screen with my
| streaming apps on it. I'm probably going to get another
| Apple TV in the end. But even with all of those
| annoyances I am still much happier using the PS4 than the
| built-in Roku.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBJxPkUUh4 <-- If
| anyone is curious, this is what PS4 does to your
| streaming apps and there's no way out of it. You are
| forced to go into this section to find the streaming app
| you want to use
| Scramblejams wrote:
| I have a Hisense with a built-in Roku, same experience, but
| it got a lot faster once I cut off its internet access.
| (It's still connected to the home network so I can use the
| iOS remote control app for it, but I set up a firewall rule
| to block it from WAN access.) Worth a try if you can live
| without it dialing out.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Interesting, I'll give this a shot. thanks for the tip!
| itsyaboi wrote:
| While I agree that smart TVs are a cancer, I'm confused by your
| take. Do you have the same opinion towards locking stolen
| iPhones? If not, why?
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-is-reportedly-disabl...
| prepend wrote:
| iPhones are necessarily cloud connected, TVs not so much.
| Activating my iPhone is something I normally do and provides
| me value (payment, location services, etc etc) so there's a
| natural place.
|
| All this is bloat on a tv.
|
| Also the iPhone bricking requires a police report and has a
| pretty defined process and I'm not aware of any overreach by
| Apple to brick phones like this story.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| Ah, I see. It's mainly the lack of due process and the
| implication that legitimately purchased units might have
| been included in the bulk lockout. Thank you for
| explaining!
| kodah wrote:
| I think it depends on who initiates the lock. If a company
| can choose to arbitrarily lock my device then inevitably it
| will be misused. In the case of phones it is usually the
| customer initiating a lock, either from Find My Phone style
| apps or through the carrier itself.
|
| My TV phoning home doesn't really seem like it accomplishes
| much, and will likely be misused in the future, not to
| mention is an entire layer to vectorize in terms of fleet
| device attacks.
| gruez wrote:
| >I think it depends on who initiates the lock. If a company
| can choose to arbitrarily lock my device then inevitably it
| will be misused. In the case of phones it is usually the
| customer initiating a lock, either from Find My Phone style
| apps or through the carrier itself.
|
| why does this matter? In either case the entity responsible
| for handling the lock request is the company itself.
| kodah wrote:
| The company has to coordinate it because otherwise I
| would need to have a server that supports some remote
| locking protocol and my phone configured for it.
|
| Who initiates it matters because if a TV vendor can
| arbitrarily brick your TV for something after you've paid
| cash for it, then that smells of theft. The same thing if
| a TelCo could or would arbitrarily brick a device I paid
| for. The distinction is that I'm _telling them_ to do
| this to _my_ phone.
| gruez wrote:
| >Who initiates it matters because if a TV vendor can
| arbitrarily brick your TV for something after you've paid
| cash for it, then that smells of theft. The same thing if
| a TelCo could or would arbitrarily brick a device I paid
| for. The distinction is that I'm telling them to do this
| to my phone.
|
| What happened in south africa:
|
| * TVs are sitting inside a factory
|
| * TVs are owned by samsung
|
| * factory gets robbed
|
| * the owner (samsung) tells the manufacturer (samsung) to
| brick the devices
|
| I fail to see how it's different than:
|
| * iPhone is sitting in your pocket
|
| * iPhone is owned by you
|
| * you get robbed
|
| * the owner (you) tells the manufacturer (apple) to brick
| the device
| dmos62 wrote:
| Not OP, but I'd say the problem is that someone, doesn't
| matter if it's the manufacturer, can disable your device
| remotely or that he has access to it at all.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| My confusion was why this is considered to be a positive
| feature in some cases (e.g. iPhones), but not in this case.
| Lammy wrote:
| You don't usually carry your smart TV around with you in your
| pocket
| gruez wrote:
| But TV sets are targets of burglars.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Hence it's good to have a proof of purchase. If your
| house gets burgled, you can claim the insurance.
| h2odragon wrote:
| There's several. I'm fond of https://libreelec.tv/
| prepend wrote:
| This is not to firmware though. Is there an OSS firmware that
| can be used to replace whatever crap Samsung has on these
| devices?
| rightbyte wrote:
| It is quite pointless to fight hardware vendors for FOSS
| support if they don't want to and you don't have to.
|
| Why spend effort to crack their platform when you can buy
| from competitors, which you do a disservice for fixing
| Samsungs TVs.
|
| Then again I don't know if there are any 'dumb' or open
| software competitor TVs left on the market ...
| turminal wrote:
| The same argument applies to M1 and people still
| (successfully) reverse engineer them.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure, but it is a high profile target versus keeping up
| with reverse engineer TV model after TV model.
| prepend wrote:
| It works quite well for WiFi router hardware.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source
| Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny._
|
| Or to just stop buying "Smart" televisions.
|
| People on HN like to say that buying a regular display panel
| without any of the "smart" features is cost-prohibitive, but it
| isn't.
|
| A few months ago I did some comparison shopping on B&H, and the
| price difference was very small. Sometimes within sales tax
| range.
|
| My next TV will be a regular display panel, and it will be the
| "smartest" decision I can make.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > People on HN like to say that buying a regular display
| panel without any of the "smart" features is cost-
| prohibitive, but it isn't
|
| My argument is the opposite. It can be very difficult to find
| a dumb TV that actually has a high-end panel in it.
|
| One avenue is the digital signage models, but they _can_ be
| super expensive, and are not always available via normal
| retail channels.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Or just use dumb tvs?
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Never ever connect the TV to the internet. If it won't operate
| without an internet connection, take it back to the store.
| y04nn wrote:
| When you see what the open source community is able to do with
| entertainment systems I'm sure there is a market for an open
| source smart TV. But the issue will always be marketing to the
| customers and brand reputation that will make years to acquire.
| But sure, done right with quality premium products first, not
| low cost ones and times, this can be achieved.
| rektide wrote:
| > _This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source
| Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny._
|
| Heh, firey take.
|
| Personally my want is for systems like Netflix's Discovery and
| Launch[1] to take off. TV's can present themselves on the
| network, and phones or other devices can tell them to start
| running certain activities, & control them from afar.
|
| There's been some good work to try to modernize these early
| protocols, & to build a more robust, fully featured, competent
| standard. That work has been happening at Open Screen
| Protocol[2] spec, which recently went Draft.
|
| Alas, of course, Apple seems like they're going to do
| everything they can to prevent open standards from succeeding.
| They have a couple dozen patents vaguely in the field, most of
| which seem farcially ridiculously generic & obvious, and the
| bulk of these patents don't start expiring till 2024. They've
| disclaimed these to the working group[3] and while it doesn't
| prevent the standard from being worked on, as far as I know, it
| means there's almost no chance of it being supported or shipped
| until ~2028 or latter.
|
| This is a spec that seems enormously pure & good, based on
| simple, obvious, straightforward ideas. I'd expect a random
| pick of Senior Engineer I's to come up with a design real
| similar to what is presented here- little of it feels novel or
| interesting. It's so damning, so sad that this world feels so
| obstructed, so road blocked, from doing the right thing, from
| the good & easy paths. And Apple being the sinister juggernaut
| preventing the good just feels so typical to me, locking us in
| to specific narrow means, controlling how we connect, how we
| think. It's been very hard days for me hearing Apple set us
| back like this. And I have no hope any kind of Fair Reasonable
| and Non-discriminatory licensing will ever be set up, no
| confidence we could try to find a legal route, even if we
| wanted to. Humanity is occluded by the largest, vastest,
| highest tech entity on the planet, held back.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch
|
| [2] https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/8973
| https://www.w3.org/TR/2021/WD-openscreenprotocol-20210318/
|
| [3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-
| Pa...
| kenned3 wrote:
| This is why i only buy "Dumb" TV's and connect a third-party
| "smart" device to them (Firestick, etc)
|
| Smart device wants to do some crap like this, in the recycle bin
| it goes but the TV which cost far more is still good.
|
| Many of these manufacturers also have a well documented history
| of not supporting anything they sold, in an attempt to push new
| products (buy an android phone and see how many updates it
| actually gets).
|
| Again, far cheaper and easier to replace the smart device instead
| of the TV when this happens.
| metiscus wrote:
| The problem is finding non smart TVs anymore. It used to be
| that WalMart would have a tv or two that were still just
| display devices but I haven't seen a non smart tv for sale in
| quite a while.
|
| Honestly, I'm not a big one for regulation, but I think those
| TVs should have a large print notification somewhere that says
| they're spying on you - although people would probably accept
| the convenience tradeoff.
| uncletammy wrote:
| > Honestly, I'm not a big one for regulation, but I think
| those TVs should have a large print notification somewhere
| that says they're spying on you
|
| The warning should replace all the branding on the outside of
| the package, exactly like tobacco products in Europe.
| user3939382 wrote:
| It would be cool if we end up with an OpenWRT-type situation
| for Smart TVs. We establish some rooting procedures for some
| popular models, and then root it or replace the OS.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| This sounds like it's going to paint a target for necklacing on
| the back of anyone who's found to be a Samsung employee.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The announcement reads like they're in a frigging war zone. Calm
| down, you're a TV company.
| ballenf wrote:
| The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored.
|
| Imagine the number of iPhones that are activation locked due to
| oversight of owners before disposal. They are much more likely to
| become e-waste.
|
| Possession as the primary indicator of ownership isn't such a bad
| option after all.
|
| At the very least, there should be a well-known process to remove
| these locks.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored.
|
| Pretty low so long as they only use it for theft. Thieves will
| soon learn not to steal TVs as there is no value in it. As such
| it is only a small number of bricked TVs that are landfilled
| early - nothing compared to all the TVs already landfilled.
|
| Now if this is used for something other than theft cases it can
| get bad, but in this case at least it is a good thing that
| helps all honest people.
|
| > At the very least, there should be a well-known process to
| remove these locks.
|
| There is. Or so they claim, I don't know if it works or not,
| but supposedly you can just send proof of legal purchase.
| alerighi wrote:
| What proof? A receipt from a shop barely lasts the 2 years
| warranty product if you don't photocopy it, because it's
| printed on thermal paper. And a lot of people doesn't either
| keep it. Also is this service going to be maintained forever?
|
| The reality is that new TVs and in general new electronics
| are effectively disposable products, not meant to last in the
| time. While I have at my house an old CRT with valves in it,
| that I can repair simply with a soldering iron, as I did a
| couple of times, and other old electronic devices that still
| works fine, it's not the same for modern crap. When it breaks
| the only option is to throw it in a landfill.
|
| We should start form the past, where everything came with its
| schematic in it, and thus the facto open source, where they
| didn't even imagined something opposed to that, it was
| natural when you purchase something to be in full control of
| it, to have the right to know how it worked and how to repair
| it when it failed.
|
| And nobody, I mean no user, complained that there wasn't a
| way to remotely block their TV in case someone steal it.
| bluGill wrote:
| > And nobody, I mean no user, complained that there wasn't
| a way to remotely block their TV in case someone steal it.
|
| Only because they didn't know they could. Where TV theft is
| a problem people will be happy for this where it isn't
| people will rightly be more worried about the things you
| point out.
|
| > We should start form the past,
|
| Modern electronics is a lot more reliable than the old
| stuff. Sure you can't repair it anymore, but you also don't
| need to, it just works.
| tus89 wrote:
| Does anyone connect their TV to the internet these days?
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Smart TVs are an obvious cash grab from TV manufacturers. When a
| new [Roku|Apply TV|Fire Stick] comes out, a consumer only has to
| buy that device itself to get access to new features. They don't
| buy a new tv. In this way "Smart" TVs are a way for TV
| manufacturers to bond the two devices so that consumers will be
| locked out of new developments eventually where they'll obviously
| buy a new TV because they've been conditioned to and because they
| know the TVs UI and switching is harder.
| karteum wrote:
| No-one forces you to connect your "smart" TV to the network...
| You can just use it as a "dumb" TV and connect anything on it
| (such as a Raspberry Pi) to do the "smart" things. I have an old
| Toshiba smart TV from >7 years ago that I bought second-hand for
| 100EUR, and while it is doing great as a dumb TV I would never
| connect it to the network considering there have been no firmware
| update for years and that the current one is likely affected by
| un-fixable security holes !
| potamic wrote:
| Just wait till your Samsung TV phones in to your Samsung mobile
| to share wifi credentials. It's zero click convenience!
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| https://thehometheaterdiy.com/hdmi-with-ethernet/
| iso1210 wrote:
| As you control your pi, you can control ethernet over hdmi
| notyourwork wrote:
| I'm on the fence here, I sort of like the premise that looters
| don't get their booty. I do agree though I don't like the idea
| that a corporation can remotely disable a piece of hardware I
| bought.
| imglorp wrote:
| Really? How about this? Your social media
| $POST critical of $PARTY is incompatible with Samsung's
| vision of community. We have therefore disabled your $PHONE,
| $WATCH, $TV, $DISHWASHER, and $PC. Contact
| serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more
| information"
|
| Does that possibility change your position?
| gruez wrote:
| But if you reached that level of tyranny, shouldn't you be
| more worried about the state sending Men With Guns to your
| residence, or blocking you from receiving government services
| (eg. welfare, healthcare, renewing drivers license)? Not
| being able to netflix and chill seems like the least of your
| worries.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| You may have not considered that appliances allowing
| profiling are part of the system that may enable the above.
|
| Which, also, may not be worse: it may be less absurd under
| some perspective.
|
| Edit: by the way: if you used your handeld and general
| purpose computers as your extension, which really should be
| factual, your dismissal would become the least justifiable
| statement. " _Yes, I had an hyppocampus (amygdala etc.) but
| I probably did not need it that much_. " Little has more
| priority than your full ownership of your extensions.
| gruez wrote:
| > You may have not considered that appliances allowing
| profiling are part of the system that may enable the
| above.
|
| Profiling/anti-theft seems orthogonal here. You can have
| profiling without anti-theft (eg. facebook/google), and
| you can have anti-theft without profiling (eg. lojack).
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Since when is this going on?
| mminer237 wrote:
| They have the ability to, but that doesn't make it legal.
| Samsung has the ability to hire mercenaries to go to your home
| and forcibly take your TV, and that's beyond your control too.
| But both are illegal. You can never ensure that nobody will
| ever have the ability to do bad things to you, but as long as
| it's a rectifiable matter and you're protected by the law, we
| often have to rely on those legal protections.
| mc32 wrote:
| On the one hand this is understandable and sort of "evil genius",
| on the other hand, this will also affect grey market buyers who
| cannot produce a legitimate receipt. It's also problematic
| because this means they can alter your property at will.
| argomo wrote:
| Yep. This hurts all SmartTV owners because it lowers the resale
| value of their property. Buyers have to stick to official
| retailers or risk getting a product that will be remotely
| bricked.
| [deleted]
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