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Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

news.samsung.com

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Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#121

Post by peregrine »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #36

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#122

Post by karteum »

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 100€, 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 !

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#123

Post by ezconnect »

ok123456 wrote: post #106
drewg123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general, especially the refrigerators and side loading washing machines.

I had a Samsung front loader and it's a great washer.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#124

Post by gruez »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #46
anonuser123456 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the tyranny of having to pay…

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.

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?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#125

Post by [deleted] »

zimbatm wrote: post #69
anonuser123456 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the tyranny of having to pay…

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]

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#126

Post by ezconnect »

dthul wrote: post #48
wait_a_minute wrote: post #36

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.

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#127

Post by gruez »

nate_meurer wrote: post #120
anonuser123456 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have recourse by showing proof of purchase. Or you sue them.

> 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.

> > 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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#128

Post by pdpi »

dthul wrote: post #75
drewg123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#129

Post by xav0989 »

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#130

Post by deergomoo »

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.

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