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

Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

news.samsung.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 727 posts

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#701

Post by mminer237 »

anshumankmr wrote: post #636
mminer237 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the millions of old TV owners sue Samsung for trespass to chattels? That would be a horrible decision both financially and publicity-wise. The benefit this gives to having a dumb TV is that it makes it more attractive to thieves.

I don't know how exactly consumer behaviour works in America when it comes to televisions but in India, most people hold on to their TVs for at least a decade. So yeah this would not fly in a place like India. But in America, if the average consumer changes their television far quicker than here, it is likely very few will remain holding onto TVs older than 10 years. So the complaints of people will fall onto deaf ea…

Nah, I think that's pretty normal here in America too. I've never met someone who's bought a replacement TV for a reason other than that their old one broke, besides ~10 years ago when everyone upgraded from CRTs to flat-screen HDTVs.

And you don't even need a public outcry about it. Just enough people to make a class-action worth it.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#702

Post by reaperducer »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #216
reaperducer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung is not a police agency. It should not be allowed to virtually seize something that belongs to me.

If it was stolen, it was never yours, even if you paid the thief for it. At least in the US, this is a settled matter; You have no right to a stolen good that you paid for.

I don't dispute that. I just don't like huge corporations in other countries acting like the criminal justice where I live.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#703

Post by gatgeagent »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #90
dthul wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read some other thread on here some time ago that talked about the option of using a Pi-hole (or so?) to block smart TV ads.

Some TV manufacturers have gotten wise to this ( sigh ) and started hard-coding their DNS lookup IPs.

Not only the DNS lookup IPs are getting hardcoded, even the ads themselves may be shipped on the device, in case it cannot update the ads (e.g. no internet connection).

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#704

Post by ikr678 »

tshaddox wrote: post #525
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color TVs superseded black and white because it was objectively an improvement for the customer. There wasn't any benefit to the manufacturer besides selling a new unit. the "Smart" TVs of today are riddled with spyware and telemetry that provides a second revenue stream to the manufacture since 95% of the population is too lazy or uninformed or doesn't have the time to turn it off. Yes, there benefits to the consume…

> Maybe I'm just cynical but I have a hard time believing that it was because everyone just _had_ to have a TV with a buggy UI (in many cases) and/or loaded with spyware. As you indicated, dumb TVs did compete against smart TVs for many years. The options were more like: 1. Buy a smart TV that might contain spyware and bugs. 2. Buy a dumb TV, and also buy another device to play content which can just as easily contai…

Being able to update the secondary device (with or without bugs) independent of the tv screen is a better upgrade path.

How long will tv manufacturers be supporting and providing updates to smart tv software? If the smart components in the tv bug out or get bricked, you need a whole new tv.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#705

Post by sundvor »

hughrr wrote: post #667
sundvor wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have been happy with their Aorus GPU, a 1080TI Xtreme, however their software suite turned into a pile of shit. I will not buy another Gigabyte / Aorus card for that reason.

The cheap gigabyte cards are fine. I’ve got a bottom end 1660 and it has been good. But I only use the stock nvidia drivers with it. Just the power supplies are dog crap.

The card is fine, but if you want to control the oh so annoying lighting...

Fortunately Afterburner will let you take control of the fan etc with a custom profile.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#706

Post by brokenmachine »

lostlogin wrote: post #254
rangerelf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Australia has the same thing. Amazing to have an actual law to protect consumers a bit from multinationals.

Wonder how long until our politicians take it away.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#707

Post by zinekeller »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #682
zinekeller wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not op) > Well that's illegal in almost all (western) countries. A device need to have an declaration of all radio equipment inside in some form (depending on locale). I agree, but I'm pretty sure that it will be buried on the declarations page. > It also would be a lot harder to profit from ads when you have to pay for lte bandwidth especially with the prices in the US. You vastly overestimated the costs of wholesa…

Can you extract that SIM card and use for free internet?

Depends? Amazon's SIMs are locked to the specific Kindles, so you need to clone at least the radio identification codes (like IMEI) that is used, and you need to relay that to a specific proxy operated by Amazon because the network-in-question would block (on behalf of Amazon) other servers.

I imagine that in case someone has implemented this, it would be locked in a similar way to ensure that it can only access those ad servers and nothing else.

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#708

Post by zzo38computer »

The one feature I like better of the Samsung TV is the picture setting menu, which seems to have more options than the other one (although there is still room for improvement; I would design it very differently, with settings for YIQ->RGB matrix, RGB->RGB matrix, deinterlace mode, YIQ bandwidth, etc). Still, I don't use a smart TV; I have the older one. Even a while ago I had used a computer monitor as the TV set; it is smaller than a TV set but I don't mind. It is also faster than a smart TV set which is too slow.

What I think should be want on the TV display is only: Digi-RGB video and analog audio input, IMIDI interface for control, picture setting, 4:3 aspect ratio (I dislike the wide screen), and a remote control with numbers. It shouldn't do more; the other features (including tuner) could be implemented in a VCR/DVD with FOSS, so that you can modify the program by yourself and adjust according to your intention.

About remotely disabling TV sets, will they use it to violate the right of first sale? (Is that even how it works? I don't really know)

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#709

Post by brokenmachine »

Aspos wrote: post #495
beebeepka wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refused to work on what way?

There was a dialog window with a error message and a [Continue] button which did nothing.

Wow, that's terrible.

I only know about LGs but they have a service remote that you can use to change the region. Maybe Samsung has a similar thing?

Re: Samsung remotely disables TVs looted from South African warehouse

#710

Post by dotancohen »

BizarroLand wrote: post #692
dotancohen wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can find a good stylus, I won't need a Note anymore. The Note is the last Samsung device that I buy, but only because there is absolutely no competition. I don't even use all the fancy S-Pen software, I just use the stylus for the same functionality that every Android device has.

Moto has a stylus phone out now.

Thank you, I'll take a look at that!
Post reply on HN