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.
Australia had a spate of house fires caused by Samsung washing machines whose electronics weren't properly waterproofed, shorted, and then burned.
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.
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.
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.
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 heard of exploding Samsung laundry machines. And the house I bought has one. I dread the day it decides to do its thing.
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.
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.
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.
> greatly inconvenience people who bought the TV from the bandits It’s stolen property. The subsequent buyers cannot legally own it.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Why isn't the alternative to keep your TV off the network?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lots of people bought Rokus/FireTVs before they had a smart TV, and now simply prefer the interface.