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

Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

us.community.samsung.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 580 posts

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#411

Post by mh- »

bhaney wrote: post #372
0xFEE1DEAD wrote: post #360

Someone on reddit [0] mentioned that they updated their device via USB and hadn't encountered any issues. If that's true, then it might actually have been the previous firmware update that silently bricked the device. Or maybe Samsung only test in a controlled lab environment without real world signal interference. In any case, it's mind boggling how a multi billion dollar company lacks proper rollout strategies. I h…

I also have a pair of XM4s. I installed the app briefly when I first got them so I could turn off the voice notifications on connection/mode change, and then immediately uninstalled it and have never needed it again. Why on earth would I want to update the firmware on my perfectly working headphones?

The app enables other features like changing EQs, etc.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#412

Post by bombela »

jajko wrote: post #392
3np wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't burn CA pubkeys into your binaries without means for user override. If the software can persist a user-specific analytics ID it can support user certs. This is a solved problem.

Yeah but how many people would do that? You, me, and maybe thousand other people here and similarly minded. That's sadly fart in the wind for such companies and not worth creating more friction and risk (ie folks hack their under-warranty tvs till they stop working and then come back asking for free replacements and tarnishing the brand). I wish there was some trivial real-life applicable solution to this that big co…

But we could do it for our friends and families. A repair shop could do it too. Instead of a full brick.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#413

Post by bombela »

tzs wrote: post #326
hadlock wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bought a samsung tv in 2016 and it slowly became unusable by mid-2020. Fortunately it got dropped by the movers and we were able to justify buying a new TV (LG). The LG UI/UX is awful though, I wish we'd bought a sony. LG TVs don't have a way to simply select "HDMI1/2/3/4" you're stuck using it's "smart" detection system, which can only be reset by physically unplugging the HDMI cables from the back of the TV, whi…

> LG TVs don't have a way to simply select "HDMI1/2/3/4" you're stuck using it's "smart" detection system, which can only be reset by physically unplugging the HDMI cables from the back of the TV, which is never easy to get to. Apparently the solution is to buy Sony and just pay the extra price. Another possible solution is to only use one input on the TV. Connect an A/V receiver to that one input and connect all you…

But this breaks DRMs if that's something you need.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#414

Post by bhaney »

mh- wrote: post #411
bhaney wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a pair of XM4s. I installed the app briefly when I first got them so I could turn off the voice notifications on connection/mode change, and then immediately uninstalled it and have never needed it again. Why on earth would I want to update the firmware on my perfectly working headphones?

The app enables other features like changing EQs, etc.

Yeah, I'm not sure why I'd want that on my headphones themselves. I just set it to a neutral EQ during initial setup, and now I change the EQs elsewhere in the audio pipeline (music app, mixer, etc) just like we were all doing before the advent of headphones with their own apps.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#415

Post by bradyd »

harrall wrote: post #285
0x457 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all of those are in the realm of possibilities, but has it ever been the norm? In my experience, products like this are only get updates when the company finds a way to extract more money: - add more ads - add more ads that pretend not to be ads - to remove functionality, so it won't cannibalize sales of more expensive product

It’s the norm because people rather buy one single product that does it all. The alternative to an all-in-one sound bar is having regular 5.1 speakers, a nice receiver, a nice streaming box, and maybe a dumber TV and you will have absolutely the best setup but it’s a lot of putting pieces together, more space usage, and either money (if you want it right away) or a lot of waiting (if you want to get it used).

Even dedicated receivers have software updates now. My Onkyo receiver had an update that added Dolby Atmos support, for example.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#416

Post by zaik »

LoganDark wrote: post #113
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

If the damage is actually as bad as it sounds, Samsung is probably talking with their lawyers and is being instructed to maintain radio silence so as to better prepare for the class-action lawsuit.

That is at least, if their ToS doesn't contain the all-too-common provision that you are simply not allowed to sue.

Not sure about US legislation, but where I live clauses like this are void automatically, even if you agree to the contract.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#417

Post by nabaraz »

I got tired of constant updates/apps on home screen/lag and all on my Samsung TV and finally bought a Sony. Everything I do is through Apple TV and Xbox now, Sony is not connected to the internet.

Other than the slow boot (takes about 5 seconds to switch to Apple TV after pressing power button), I have no complaints.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#419

Post by AlotOfReading »

boricj wrote: post #355
AlotOfReading wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies don't do this because it's not one of their organizational priorities to have reliable updates. The infrastructure is usually custom built and maintained by a couple of folks who have a dozen other responsibilities they're told are more important. Testing is usually limited by hardware availability and release velocity. "One of every board revision we've ever produced" simply isn't available and waitin…

I'm working on embedded systems and I've seen and heard some horror stories just on the device's side. Piles and piles of pre- and post-reboot shell scripts filled with race conditions against the system's services and themselves. When these break, if you're lucky a factory reset is enough to fix the system, if you're unlucky they become field bricks. I'm trying to buck the trend though and on the new embedded system…

That's a strong start, but be careful if your system ever evolves beyond a single logical processor. You'll need additional orchestration to have reliable updates in a distributed system with semi-independent processors. The update on one might succeed, while another fails. Depending on when the old images were produced, the new images might not be able to talk to each other. Depending on their relative roles in the system (e.g. one sets up the power supply or network for the other, or acts as the time master to do certificate validation) this may or may not be an easily fixable issue even if each system locally thinks it's okay.

This sort of functional interdependency has become increasingly common in embedded these days with heterogenous SoCs.

One thing I've seen before is to separate downloading from rebooting, broadcast the manifest for the updates between all the independent processors (all updates need a declarative manifest for so, so many reasons) to check locally, and only proceed when they all agree. Rollbacks are initiated if they can't see everyone with their expected versions afterwards.

Still isn't perfect either.

Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update

#420

Post by yuumei »

I have the same Samsung sound bar and absolutely nothing works. We need to hard reset it every day because it refuses to work, switching between programmes in Netflix causes a horrible loud crack, the latest one is having speakers out of sync. Really bad. Unfortunately the rtings reviewers didn’t seem to test any of these things.
Post reply on HN