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Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

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Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#241

Post by uncletammy »

metiscus wrote: post #133
kenned3 wrote: post #82

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#242

Post by fulafel »

walrus01 wrote: post #214
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 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 .

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?)

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#243

Post by lsaferite »

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.

It would be interesting to see some metrics on the number of people that use tuners on TVs now days.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#244

Post by lsaferite »

gotostatement wrote: post #136

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

Poor software development is my theory.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#245

Post by kodah »

gruez wrote: post #108
kodah wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vec…

>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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#246

Post by gruez »

kazinator wrote: post #230
gruez wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 s…

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.

>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?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#247

Post by jeffdubin »

Tarsul wrote: post #234
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)

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.

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#248

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

Santosh83 wrote: post #56

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 connecti…

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.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#249

Post by jdavis703 »

nicolas_t wrote: post #113
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.

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.

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.)

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#250

Post by lotsofpulp »

pcurve wrote: post #198
nicolas_t wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like LG makes better appliance than Samsung in general... but I guess mileage varies between model and customer.

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.
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