Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 398 posts

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#131

Post by PeterisP »

bhelkey wrote: post #117
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes me think this will never happen is that - Open Wi-Fi networks are a thing of the past. There hasn't been any around me in a residential area for a long time now. Businesses and workplace lobbies, more likely, though. - No one is going to just give Samsung free Internet except the hapless consumer by supplying Wi-Fi credentials. - Samsung might make a deal with providers, but it would have to have unique cr…

Every TV ships with a unique secret key. Secret keys that are used to do anything other than connect to an Ads server are disabled.

Every TV ships with a non-unique secret key and an agreement with some major internet service provider which specifies that accounts using that key will gain network access but only to a specific list of IP addresses that host or proxy firmware updates and advertising content.

[edit - to be clear, I'm not saying that this is what Samsung is doing, I'm just describing a plausible way how this might get done]

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#132

Post by nwiswell »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #102
tpxl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps in the near future we'll have public wifi or free Google community wifi, and the new firmware will have the smarts to use that and bypass your wifi. Xfinity WiFi has been around for at least 8 years. Amazon sidewalk has been around for over a year. Wanna bet those are or will be used by your smart TV producers to connect them to the internet via wifi?

What makes me think this will never happen is that - Open Wi-Fi networks are a thing of the past. There hasn't been any around me in a residential area for a long time now. Businesses and workplace lobbies, more likely, though. - No one is going to just give Samsung free Internet except the hapless consumer by supplying Wi-Fi credentials. - Samsung might make a deal with providers, but it would have to have unique cr…

> No one is going to just give Samsung free Internet except the hapless consumer by supplying Wi-Fi credentials.

I think it's implied that Samsung would pay Amazon for Sidewalk access.

> Samsung might make a deal with providers, but it would have to have unique credentials embedded in its OS and firmware, and I doubt Samsung has the ability to keep that totally secure.

I don't think this is as hard a problem as you're making it sound. Each TV ships with a serial number, let's suppose; it tries to handshake with the Sidewalk network. Sidewalk phones home to Amazon, Amazon talks to Samsung, Samsung says "yes, we sold that S/N recently and it has never connected before, here's its public key".

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#133

Post by pseudosavant »

cantrevealname wrote: post #35

The sentiment here on HN is to never connect the TV to the Internet and instead use a digital media player or external streaming device. I wholeheartedly agree. But then several people mentioned wanting to update the firmware. If you'll never connect it to the Internet, then you should never update the firmware either. It goes against conventional wisdom, but updating the firmware in this situation is more likely to…

Obviously most users won't be able to do this, but this is exactly the type of reason I use OpenWRT on my RPi-based router. I have a firewall rule that prevents the TV from communicating with anything in the WAN zone. I can still have the TV on the Wi-Fi and still use features like Airplay.

I disable the firewall rule if I want to try updating the TV firmware.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#134

Post by asciimov »

cantrevealname wrote: post #35

The sentiment here on HN is to never connect the TV to the Internet and instead use a digital media player or external streaming device. I wholeheartedly agree. But then several people mentioned wanting to update the firmware. If you'll never connect it to the Internet, then you should never update the firmware either. It goes against conventional wisdom, but updating the firmware in this situation is more likely to…

Sometimes firmware updates are necessary. I've got a Tcl tv that had HDR issues out of the box that were fixed by an updated firmware.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#135

Post by jason-phillips »

I worked for Samsung for ten years and will never buy a Samsung product. It's pretty simple, their product support is shit. I will defend the people I worked with in Semiconductor to my dying breath but nope out on the consumer products like they're lava.

Their UI/UX is also pretty atrocious across the board, so I can imagine what their TVs are like.

I have a big 2022 Sony Bravia smart TV and while there are some suggestions on the home page, I would not call them intrusive at all.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#136

Post by tsukikage »

hedora wrote: post #101
midasuni wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have links to blogs that show this happening, I see plenty of hearsay, but I know my LG doesn’t attempt to my honeypot wifi, I’d love to see proof.

Samsung (Dacor) discloses this behavior in their fridge manual; it says it will mesh with Samsung TVs to better target ads. I’m not about to buy a Samsung set to find out what it actually does in practice. The fridge has deep learning object classifiers and internal cameras; I assume that is a big part of its ad targeting capability. Note that the fridge has demand response / energy use time shifting features that do…

> Samsung (Dacor) discloses this behavior in their fridge manual; it says it will mesh with Samsung TVs to better target ads.

...seriously?

...we collectively did this to ourselves. We live in the science fiction dystopian future we deserve.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#137

Post by reaperducer »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #102
tpxl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps in the near future we'll have public wifi or free Google community wifi, and the new firmware will have the smarts to use that and bypass your wifi. Xfinity WiFi has been around for at least 8 years. Amazon sidewalk has been around for over a year. Wanna bet those are or will be used by your smart TV producers to connect them to the internet via wifi?

What makes me think this will never happen is that - Open Wi-Fi networks are a thing of the past. There hasn't been any around me in a residential area for a long time now. Businesses and workplace lobbies, more likely, though. - No one is going to just give Samsung free Internet except the hapless consumer by supplying Wi-Fi credentials. - Samsung might make a deal with providers, but it would have to have unique cr…

Open Wi-Fi networks are a thing of the past.

I've been to two medical facilities and a large regional hospital in the last week where there were open wifi networks with no portals. My apartment building operates an open wifi network for guests so we don't have to bother giving out passwords to visitors. An airport I visited last month has wide open wifi. A see ads on transit buses all the time stating that the bus has wifi. I suspect that is wide open because the transit agency didn't want to deal with tech support.

Open wifi is far from a thing of the past.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#138

Post by pb7 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #105
sgtfrankieboy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a 32" monitor is small for a TV? and a projector has tons of downsides? The solution is to buy a commercial TV used in retail environments.

> and a projector has tons of downsides? I'm not so sure. I've been using a projector as a TV for something like four years straight: no TV at home, only a projector. As a bonus the living room becomes a home cinema. I didn't see much downsides. Zero issue. No ads. Cheaper than a TV for a much wider diagonal and a more "cinema'ish" picture too (I hate it when movies look like cheap sitcoms on modern TVs). And as many…

>I hate it when movies look like cheap sitcoms on modern TVs

That has nothing to do with "TVs" in general and more the software smoothing settings that are on by default. Properly configured (takes literally minutes or less one time) using a website like rtings.com for the optimal settings, a TV will look better than a similar quality projector every time, and in greater lighting situations. There's a reason why projectors aren't popular and it's not because people forget about them. Movies on my OLED TV look incredible, better than a cinema frankly.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#139

Post by danielheath »

pseudosavant wrote: post #133
cantrevealname wrote: post #35

The sentiment here on HN is to never connect the TV to the Internet and instead use a digital media player or external streaming device. I wholeheartedly agree. But then several people mentioned wanting to update the firmware. If you'll never connect it to the Internet, then you should never update the firmware either. It goes against conventional wisdom, but updating the firmware in this situation is more likely to…

Obviously most users won't be able to do this, but this is exactly the type of reason I use OpenWRT on my RPi-based router. I have a firewall rule that prevents the TV from communicating with anything in the WAN zone. I can still have the TV on the Wi-Fi and still use features like Airplay. I disable the firewall rule if I want to try updating the TV firmware.

That breaks the built in chromecast, right (since the TV is the one fetching the stream), but I suppose you could plug in a regular chromecast dongle if that matters to you.

Re: I spent $3k on a Samsung Smart TV and all I got were ads and unwanted content

#140

Post by antihero »

domy wrote: post #109
mattmanser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One remote is inherently better than two remotes. It's objectively less hassle. The apps are actually mostly identical from experience. I actually use a PS4 at the moment, and it occasionally forces me to update before I can use the TV app, so even more hassle.

I have an AppleTV connected to my Samsung TV, and almost never use the Samsung remote. The AppleTV remote's on/off button switches everything together (through CEC I believe) so in everyday usage I only ever need a single remote.

Yep, I only ever use the LG remote for turning off the display when I want to listen to music with a blank screen.
Post reply on HN