391–400 of 727 posts
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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 pol…
Sounds like something out of China.
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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.
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.…
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.
This would be fixed if it was possible to modify the chip's software and easy to install alternate OS bulbs.
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 exampl…
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 exampl…
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).
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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 e…
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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…
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 inte…
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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.
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.