I bought one of Samsung's smart televisions a couple years ago. I think I paid $1500 for it. Anyway, it started showing me ads and the TV eventually became sluggish less than a month after owning it. Returned it as defective. Ever since that experience, I swore of all smart televisions and will never buy another Samsung television or smartphone again if I can help it.
This thread feels very...Hacker News Bubble?<p>Why is everyone so confused that smart TVs are popular?<p>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.<p>And it probably costs <$50 for the manufacturer to include whatever chip is running linux in the TV, its a no-brainer.
This technology was used for good this time, but there's nothing stopping it from being used for evil next time. The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.
How different is this from IMEI blacklisting of stolen phones? The secondary market for stolen phones has kind of disappeared despite cost of phones increasing.<p>EDIT: I think there is plenty of reason to want an open source tv os. They are terrible, ad ridden, bloated commodities. But this seems to be only valid use of DRM I can think of.
The larger question for society is do we even <i>want</i> 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 <i>many other</i> nameless parties.<p>The most important aspect here is remote connectivity. Software without remote connectivity may be less correctable, but it is also resistant towards tampering from unwanted directions. With network connectivity the device basically becomes impossible to fully control. In fact, admin control shifts from you, the owner, to someone else on the other side of the planet, unless you want to take a hammer to it.<p>These issue need vigorous debate. 1. Do we even want <i>every</i> device to become "smart"?, and 2. should smart devices be designed with 24x7 network connectivity requirements?
Smart TVs are shit. Especially the modern ones. They got worse rather than better!<p>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...<p>They are also not usable. The UI is crappy and you don't find the most common settings, for example I had to search on the internet where to find the option to disable automatic turn off after 4 hours on an LG TV, the remotes are full of useless buttons (I don't want a huge Netflix button on a remote that if I press by mistake I will lose 10 seconds of the program I'm watching!).<p>Now I'm using a Sony TV, that I purchased 2 years ago only because it was the TV with less smart crap in it, it works pretty well, it does what a TV should do, let me watch TV channels, program guide, teletext (yes, I still use it), and nothing else (well in theory it has Netflix and other apps in it... but I never connected it to the internet and they don't get in the way). For all the other things, a simple media center PC does them better.
I guess this will just greatly inconvenience people who bought the TV from the bandits. But well, if this press release is well-distributed among the public, then they will know to avoid buying Samsung TVs from the backs of vans, and the thieves will avoid Samsung warehouses.<p>Alternatively maybe Samsung should just offer the innocent buyers a e.g. 5% discount to "legitimize" their TVs, so if they bought the TV from the back of the van for 50% off, they'll in effect need to pay 145% of the retail price. In effect the thieves would have become a new, strange, retail arm. It's like Uber, but for TV distribution!(TM)<p>More thoughts: the thieves should just cut off the Ethernet port (do they even have these?) and open the TV up and unplug the WiFi antenna. Sure it won't be an Internet TV anymore, but hey, at least their customers/suckers can still watch stuff.
What are the chances that someone would phish an admin user to the platform that blocks all the TV systems and block the all samsung TV devices. What are the chances that they could be snooping and monitoring what I am watching.<p>It would be nice to see some more transparency in these remote monitoring and management systems. The system setup is very similar to Teamviewer or kaseya where you accept them to manage your device when you accept the terms of service or user agreement.<p>I am not sure if it is just me, but It is making a little paranoid. In my opinion, this is not a good thing.
I'm probably just old and grumpy, but I ditched my newer smart TV's and moved to projectors. Last night I watched Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973) at around 120 inches on wall that has been skim coated and painted white. It looked like actual film with grainy night scenes and a muted color palette. It is a "dumb" projector and I love it. I love the experience of it.<p>I also love the fact that this little projector can go in a drawer when not in use. No black mirror dominating a room. It also means I don't really watch much until near dark which for me makes it a little more special. I actually have to wait for the optimum conditions to enjoy (the horror!)<p>I walked into Costco a few days ago and the new TV's are always near the entrance. Colors are saturated to cartoon levels, motion is 'smoothed' and HDR looks weird. It looks less and less like anything relating to human vision.<p>I'm clearly bucking the trend since I'm guessing all these TV's are hot sellers.
This is why i only buy "Dumb" TV's and connect a third-party "smart" device to them (Firestick, etc)<p>Smart device wants to do some crap like this, in the recycle bin it goes but the TV which cost far more is still good.<p>Many of these manufacturers also have a well documented history of not supporting anything they sold, in an attempt to push new products (buy an android phone and see how many updates it actually gets).<p>Again, far cheaper and easier to replace the smart device instead of the TV when this happens.
I worked for Samsung. Let's just say, I am not letting any "smart" TVs in my home.<p>Given choice of "smart" TV vs no TV, I choose no TV.<p>Currently I have an old 30" monitor filling the function of the TV.<p>I would love to have nice shiny screen, but the price is just too high.
> The blocking will come into effect when the user of a stolen television connects to the internet, in order to operate the television<p>I purchased a Sony TV in 2019 after giving up on looking for 70" "dumb" television sets that would only connect to my PlayStation and act as a screen.<p>I decided that I would buy a smart tv but never connect it to the internet.<p>Every few days when I start my TV, I get an annoying "set up your Android TV" prompt that takes over my TV. I have to grab my remote and dismiss it to go back to my PlayStation.<p>If I happen to have a stolen television set, I would never know the difference. (My TV is from Sony, article is about Samsung TVs)
On the one hand this is understandable and sort of "evil genius", on the other hand, this will also affect grey market buyers who cannot produce a legitimate receipt. It's also problematic because this means they can alter your property at will.
I am quite ambivalent to this feature. On one hand, if someone steals your TV, you can deactivate it. But
now there is also a benefit to having a dumb TV. Imagine if you have too old of a model, so Samsung decides to remotely disable your TV.
Overall I'm not against such a thing because at the end of the day this makes theft less attractive and thus protects consumers.<p>However not like this: "Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com [...]".<p>That's flipping the burden of proof around. Clearly not the way to go about this.<p>Also of course things should work by default and not require you to go online.
Smart everything enables things to control your behavior, to spy and then to report on you. I haven't ditched my smartphone yet but am using it less often and hold onto a phone till it becomes utterly obsolete (Currently an IPhone SE, still good for me). A smart TV would never be on my buy list. First of all I haven't a TV since they weren't so smart, last TV I had was a CRT in the 2000s. I noticed the difference without one. When I quit TV it was because it was toxic and I presume it has gotten worse since. I do own a projector and fire it up occasionally to watch a movie with the family but it's not on on a daily basis.
forget smart TVs, I want somebody to just make a decent dumb TV. Same thing goes for cars, I feel like there is a huge market for "dumb" products. Manufacturers feel the need to keep adding features for some reason
I’ve wondered about the feasibility of jailbreaking Tizen. Ads aside, my 2019 HDR TV has a bug where HDR10+ content will drop to 1/2 brightness every 6 minutes to the second, until I open the menu. That will reset the 6 minute counter, but it never stops. It’s infuriating.<p>It affects the 2020 models too, but by the looks of a very long forum thread it seems to have been fixed with a software update. They have no interest in fixing the older models, but maybe some enterprising hacker would.<p>I want to say fuck Samsung and that my next TV will be LG, but LG have ads in the menus too. Judging by reviews, most high-end Sony panels cost more money but are missing features I value like VRR.<p>It’s really shitty, there is basically no amount of money you can spend to get both a high-end panel and a user experience that isn’t fucking awful.
I'm on the fence here, I sort of like the premise that looters don't get their booty. I do agree though I don't like the idea that a corporation can remotely disable a piece of hardware I bought.
Looking at some comments, I was surprised seeing many complaints about Samsung ads but (as of writing) no one mentions Google doing same thing lately:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208</a>
The ecological impact of this shouldn't be ignored.<p>Imagine the number of iPhones that are activation locked due to oversight of owners before disposal. They are much more likely to become e-waste.<p>Possession as the primary indicator of ownership isn't such a bad option after all.<p>At the very least, there should be a well-known process to remove these locks.
So... I'm supposed to keep the receipt for the lifetime of the TV? Around here I don't even need it for the warranty in some places, they just look the item up by serial no.<p>And what is a "valid TV license" ?
I'd love to hear folks' recommendations for non-smart TV's.
I haven't paid attention to this topic in a while and I haven't kept up with the technology.
> Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared<p><i>What the hell is TV license?</i>
Funniest and saddest thing I saw was bookstores being completely ignored during the looting. South Africa's literacy rate declined from 93% to 87% during the last decade.
Many comments here going on about "I do not have a proof of purchase for X". Well, good luck claiming insurances if your property ever gets burgled.
When I was young, you could steal a TV, or a VHS or CD or DVD collection, or a phone or (a little later) a GPS or media unit in a car or books.<p>Now almost everything can be remotely disabled, and nobody really owns anything anyway, they just pay for subscriptions to things.<p>I wonder what it does to society if crime becomes effectively impossible. A lot of writers have suggested that some level of deviance is essential for a healthy society.
Remotely disabling stolen internet-connected devices is good common practice. We used this once at my company for some items which inexplicably went missing from the manufacturing line. A few years later I got a support ticket escalation about a customer who got a device from “some weird turn of events” (something like that) and couldn’t figure out how to activate it, it kept saying to contact support.
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.<p>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.<p>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)
They mention TV license is needed to reactive the device if it stops working, and I remember back when I was in uni they told us we need to have a TV license to watch TV in the U.K.<p>So I am wondering would this mean any government that wants to collect money for people watching TV, Samsung TVs will provide these gov with the power to do TV licensing automatically?
Unless Samsung enforces an internet connection on the first start of the TV it's completely useless as long as they don't connect it.<p>Still, a worrisome approach. After a few years if they shut down or change the blocking servers will the TV still work or it will become a brick since it can't check its authenticity?
I don't own a smart TV because every smart TV I've used has been in an airbnb and they are generally sluggish to the point of being unusable. Even my plug-in Roku has gotten to this point. I don't understand what it could be. Memory leaks? It's totally bizarre
Samsung should be permitted to have something like this until the unit is sold.<p>Once it is sold it is no longer theirs and any of these blocking features should be removed unless explicitly re-added buy the new owner. In fact why don't they charge extra for such a feature?
Jack a bunch of smart TVs from a warehouse and nobody panics. Because -- it's all part of "the plan". But if a company reaches out across the 'net and disables their stolen contraband; everybody LOSES THEIR MINDS!
This reminds me of a thread here recently about certain power tools being sold in Home Depot stores that will need to be “activated” or they won’t work as an anti-theft measure.<p>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.<p>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.
Smart TVs are an obvious cash grab from TV manufacturers. When a new [Roku|Apply TV|Fire Stick] comes out, a consumer only has to buy that device itself to get access to new features. They don't buy a new tv. In this way "Smart" TVs are a way for TV manufacturers to bond the two devices so that consumers will be locked out of new developments eventually where they'll obviously buy a new TV because they've been conditioned to and because they know the TVs UI and switching is harder.
I gave away our SmartTV several months ago, and bought a dumb TV that is basically a cheap monitor with one HDMI input that we plug an Apple TV box into. I love this setup, but we don’t have the same hires quality display.<p>I would like SmartTVs a little bit, if they had secure operating system with good security updates, but I don’t think that they do. Our Apple TV box does get frequent software updates, and we don’t have to deal with being marketed to (pushing apps, etc.).
Got it, don't connect the stolen TV to the internet. Just plug in a Fire Stick, Apple TV or what have you. Fortunately, that's good advice in general anyway.
I vowed to never buy a smart TV, but it's getting harder and harder.<p>Luckily, I recently found that Sony's smart TVs have a mode called "Basic TV". It doesn't require internet and disables a bunch of the extra functions that I don't need my TV to do. I can even disable the bluetooth connectivity to turn the display into as dumb of a TV as possible.
I also swore to never buy Samsung, after they messed up the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. But then, I bought the S7, because they made a lot of improvements.<p>In the end, I'm happy with the purchase, because I got it at a massive discount. However, I am still weary of Samsung devices in general.<p>Also, the iPad just didn't do it for me. I prefer the S-Pen to the Apple Pencil.
When it says disabled does that mean it won't even connect to HDMI ports? Because if that's not the case, then all that's needed is an android box which costs like $50 bucks and often performs better than the bloated android rom on tvs.
Looking forward to the future of consumerism.<p>Do something out of line? Your tesla car stops working, samsung tv shuts down, social media bans you, central bank cryptocurrency prevents you from making purchases, airlines put you on the no fly list.
Gonna be a lot of fun one day when hackers target out-of-maintenance but otherwise fully functional devices one day and the manufacturers make the decision to brick them in order to save money then pretend like nothing happened.
How can they know for sure that some activation was invalid. I'd think this could be challenged in court. If hypothetically the SA govt. declares amnesty for the looting, then will Samsung unlock it. Just saying.
That seems like dangerous and very anti-consumer practice. I honestly don’t like smart TVs in general, I haven’t seen one where you won’t end up buying a tv setup box, like Apple TV or Amazon firestick anyway.<p>Samsung you’ve done f up.
> Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com<p>So if you can't find your receipt, you're SOL?
Would be an interesting situation if someone bricked a large chunk of internet connected TV's. It would possibly drive the mainstream population towards greater internet security.<p>(generous assumption?)
It is impossible to find a "dumb" TV today. It sucks, because I was currently looking for a new 75+ inch one, but everything out there is just smart crap.
No-one forces you to connect your "smart" TV to the network... You can just use it as a "dumb" TV and connect anything on it (such as a Raspberry Pi) to do the "smart" things. I have an old Toshiba smart TV from >7 years ago that I bought second-hand for 100€, and while it is doing great as a dumb TV I would never connect it to the network considering there have been no firmware update for years and that the current one is likely affected by un-fixable security holes !
"Should a customer’s TV be incorrectly blocked, the functionality can be reinstated once proof of purchase and a valid TV license is shared to serv.manager@samsung.com or click here for more information"<p>Fuck off.<p>This is a wake up call for us to make free and open source Smart TV operating system so we can stop this tyranny.