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Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

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Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#241

Post by bluGill »

cjk wrote: post #129

I spent several years at B&W prior to the Sound United and Masimo era, so this news makes me incredibly sad. I hope Samsung doesn’t run the company into the ground. There are lots of good people left at B&W. If they are afforded the autonomy they deserve, everything will be fine. If not…I guess we’ll see.

That if is the question. There in other industries examples of a good small company being bought out and it is for the better - they keep making quality things but now have the advantages of the big company. There however a lot of well known examples of a good small company being bought out for the name which is then put on junk while fooling people who still remember the name.

Only time will tell.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#242

Post by phkahler »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #161
trentnix wrote: post #77

Now there are more avenues for Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats. I have a modestly high-end home theater and it is utterly maddening waiting for devices to “boot” and “handshake”. And after the wait, I’m presented with another “User Agreement” to sign that insists on shoveling ads down my throat and harvesting data. How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experien…

"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business." isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that

>> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that

NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which is precisely the opposite of what people want and the antithesis of what YC once was.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#243

Post by jhfdbkofdchk »

bob1029 wrote: post #10

Polk used to produce some of the best bang-for-buck loudspeakers available in traditional retail channels. The RTi12 was easily the best floor standing speaker I've ever owned, potentially at any cost.

Polk speakers are an amazing deal.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#244

Post by pc86 »

bayindirh wrote: post #230
tonyhart7 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business." isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that

> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that Abusing customers as a business model should not be legal. It's not ethical to begin with, actually, and applauding this practice is interesting .

I don't know that they're disagreeing with you, more just pointing out the hypocrisy of people railing against adtech on a forum run by an investment company that has made [tens of?] billions off of... adtech. And countless more off companies that paved the way for the internet's enshittification.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#245

Post by pc86 »

hapticmonkey wrote: post #222
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you use it without needing a TV or display to navigate the UI?

I have my TV on which doesn’t bother me but I understand why it’s not ideal for all setups. If I select a song on my iPhone and airplay it to my AppleTV, it does a handover. If you want to stay within the Apple ecosystem without the TV part, you could use an AVR with airplay built-in. Or get an AirPort Express, which can join a wifi network and become an Airplay client, and connect it via optical (mini toslink) to an…

At the risk of turning this into "please describe your setup in increasing detail to me," do you use Spotify for anything? I have a Marantz AVR and honestly it's kind of buggy, but I'm trying to connect directly to it from Spotify (mostly because that's just where my listening history is). Perhaps it would do better connecting into an Apple TV and running spotify on there?

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#246

Post by HenryBemis »

trentnix wrote: post #77

Now there are more avenues for Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats. I have a modestly high-end home theater and it is utterly maddening waiting for devices to “boot” and “handshake”. And after the wait, I’m presented with another “User Agreement” to sign that insists on shoveling ads down my throat and harvesting data. How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experien…

> Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats

Why on earth do you say that? :))) I got a nice Samsung 12" tablet, and a nice Samsung (work) smartphone. After 20-30mins of disabling bloat/crap-ware their batteries last a week on stand-by.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#247

Post by steveBK123 »

bluGill wrote: post #239
steveBK123 wrote: post #207

It's a shame that big box stores (Walmart, Target) / online retail (Amazon) / brand owned stores (Apple, Bose) have all conspired to reduce consumer choice. Even in big cities, there's practically no specialty stores to go to in which I can demo a product category across brands. Think pre-GFC peak Best Buy & the old CompUSA/Circuit City chains of the past or even Apple before they captured every other product categor…

The problem with showrooms is it is easy to go in, see what you need, then walk out and order from the cheaper mail order place that doesn't have retail overhead. The other problem is walmart with the generic stuff is good enough for most even though it is measurably bad, in a cheap but measurably bad listening environment - but they can thereby compete with online sales. That and a lot of expensive stuff is measurab…

Maybe, maybe not re: Walmart being good enough.

It goes back to the old tale of "being too poor to buy cheap boots" that US consumerism has forgotten. We are addicted to cheap stuff, not good value stuff. Cheap is not always good value.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#248

Post by itfossil »

cj wrote: post #223
itfossil wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ROFL - Are you seriously telling me a device running Roku software is trouble-free? Sell this lie somewhere else please. Devices running Roku software, TVs especially are a straight up dumpster fire. On top of that, its harvesting the hell out of your data. Stop being a sucker. Toss that Roku powered shit out of the window.

Apple TV connected via HDMI to a big screen TV not connected to the internet. 2-3 second boot up. No ads. Snappy interface. No complaints. No bloatware. No adware. Why does this solution not work for you? Does your TV not work when you turn off WiFi with an attached Apple TV? I’m confused.

As it so happens I currently run a Roku TV that is not connected to the internet with an Apple TV attached. However that is not long a term solution and if it ever dies you can be damn sure I'll buy a different television.

Roku is breaking things constantly. If you ever have to replace that hardware, it will have more up to date software and your experience will be broken. This will be by design.

Even implying that somebody should consider buying Roku hardware at this point is stunningly irresponsible. In the last few weeks they broke HDR. Before that they broke the ability of their TVs to display content properly when using apps on the built-in OS due to some new craptacular frame rate feature they pushed out and have refused to roll back. Thankfully I can work around it on my Apple TV by turning on Game Mode for the input. They are currently testing a wide variety of invasive ad features that you can be damn sure will destroy your experience once they officially roll them out.

They harvest every bit of your data and sell it to whomever will pay.

Roku is a stunningly objectionable company. On top of all that (as if it wasn't enough), their platform lags behind everybody else. They refuse to license a full range of video codecs so pieces of software like Channels DVR will never work on their platform. Not to mention that when you run a Roku TV that isn't connected to the Internet, you lose the ability to customize various aspects of it. You can't rename the inputs for example.

Nobody should ever even imply that somebody should buy a Roku device. They are crap and there is virtually no chance of the company changing course.

They are a poster child for enshittification.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#250

Post by bluGill »

rayiner wrote: post #219

My left wing idea is that the government should be much more aggressive in preventing his sort of consolidation. Every industry is like the same handful of companies, with numerous “brands.” (These particular brands are all already owned by a single entity.) I’ve got an “Amana” heat pump. It’s really a Daikin, and is part for part compatible with Goodman, also owned by Diakin. But all the brands are sold to customers…

Careful - it isn't clear that consolidation is bad. There is only a small market for this type of gear and less competitors can mean that the ones left actually have the money to design/build something good.
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