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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

#161

Post by gruez »

mdp2021 wrote: post #154
gruez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.) b…

> 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).

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#162

Post by shuntress »

hhsbz wrote: post #66
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…

What do you expect Samsung to do, throw away a $3000 product for a defect most consumers wouldn't notice?

I expect them to repair damaged product at no cost to me.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#164

Post by ollien »

criddell wrote: post #115
ollien wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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.

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).

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#165

Post by ripply »

criddell wrote: post #115
ollien wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#166

Post by mminer237 »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #146
cptskippy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 what…

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#167

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#168

Post by jandrese »

rangerelf wrote: post #143
ok123456 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#170

Post by saiya-jin »

peregrine wrote: post #121
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 acc…

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.

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