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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 slug
by wait_a_minute 5y ago
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.
- VoodooJuJu 5y agoCan you recommend a non-smart TV? Seems like everything is smart these days.
- acchow 5y agoGet an LG. Problem solved.
- lxgr 5y agoHave you tried another brand? Seems like you are jumping from "I had a bad experience with one smart TV" right to "smart TVs are to be avoided". I have a smart TV (of another brand) that I am very happy with, and while I don't really use the built-in apps, they are quite decent and – importantly – don't get in the way of me using the TV as a HDMI sink exclusively. It even got native AirPlay support via a software update three years after its original market launch, something I'd absolutely not expect and was quite pleasantly surprised by.
- lyx0 5y agoSame here, I bought a Samsung TV around 5-6 years ago and a year ago it started to show me ads all of a sudden in that 'Media Bar' (I have no idea what's it called, where you select the apps you want to use). A day later I factory reset it and gave it no access to the internet anymore and only stream to it from my PlayStation. This made me swear off Samsung forever. Don't mess with my stuff I bought years ago.
- rezic 5y agoMake sure your HDMI cable doesn't support ethernet... I've seen people comment about their TVs updating through HDMI when connected to peripherals like consoles.
- ollien 5y agoI recently bought a TCL TV specifically because I trust Roku to maintain their software more than someone like Samsung. The ads drive me insane, even if they're relatively unobtrusive. At least in that case the TV was much cheaper (~$500 for a 55" TV)
- dthul 5y agoI 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.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y agoSome TV manufacturers have gotten wise to this (sigh) and started hard-coding their DNS lookup IPs.
- gatgeagent 5y agoNot 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).
- iso1210 5y agoWell that's easy enough to filter - just nat all outgoing traffic to UDP/53 to your preferred device. Of course google and other spy companies are pushing DNS over HTTPS, so once that becomes popular in these devices, you're screwed - you simply have to block all traffic (in which case you won't be able to watch netflix/disney/whatever using that device. For a TV that's fine, as you have a PC plugged into it, for now)
- bavent 5y agoI remember having to set up a firewall rule to drop or reroute all DNS queries through my PiHole. What a pain in the ass to have to jump through hoops for a device I paid over $1k for.
- caskstrength 5y ago
- dthul 5y agoThe issue is that it's hard to find any not-too-smart TVs with up to date technology (4k, OLED, HDR etc). Unless you spend a fortune on a luxury brand like Bang and Olufsen.
- drewg123 5y agoOne alternative is the Gigabyte AORUS FO48U 48" 4K OLED. This essentially an LG OLED, minus the smart TV stuff, plus better inputs. It seems to have a ~15% price premium over the TV.
- dthul 5y agoThat could be a nice alternative! In that case you do need a separate tuner though and something like a Chromecast if you want to watch Netflix. And you might not have easy access to extended channel offerings such as watching older episodes on demand etc.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pdpi 5y agoI have literally not used a built-in TV tuner at home for 15 years. It used to be a set-top box for cable/satellite providers, now mostly an AppleTV for streaming services (including for public broadcast like the BBC iPlayer). If/when I replace my TV it'll almost certainly be closer to a TV-sized display with decent built-in speakers.
- lsaferite 5y agoIt would be interesting to see some metrics on the number of people that use tuners on TVs now days.
- plussed_reader 5y agoGigabyte does not do business in good faith. I am extremely leery of anything related to them now; they are not a safe brand. https://www.windowscentral.com/gigabyte-allows-returns-or-exchanges-exploding-psus-are-reliable-real-world-usage?amp https://www.windowscentral.com/gigabyte-allows-returns-or-ex...
- drewg123 5y agoI bought a high-end Samsung 4K tv in 2015 or so for about $3000. I picked it after a week of research that showed it had the highest quality panel. After taking delivery of the TV, we noticed it had bright lower left and right corners that we later found out were due to new packaging that pinched the TV and caused most of the TVs in that batch to be ruined. Samsung claimed that the corners were "in spec" and refused to replace the TV. Thankfully the retailer replaced the TV. I vowed that I'd never purchase another Samsung product. I've stuck to that, but a house I just bought has all Samsung appliances, which I'm not looking forward to.
- hhsbz 5y agoWhat do you expect Samsung to do, throw away a $3000 product for a defect most consumers wouldn't notice?
- vorpalhex 5y agoWhat do you expect customers to do? Accept a $3000 defective product from a manufacturer screw up?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pojzon 5y agoProbably not throw away, but replace if customer that sees the defect reports it. Thats what a decent company would do.
- drewg123 5y agoI expect them to either fix it, or replace it and re-sell it as refurbished. If most customers won't notice the defect, it should re-sell easily.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoAh, found the Samsung Customer Relations HN account.
- 5y ago
- scarby2 5y agoI bought a Samsung smart TV recently got it all hooked up and noticed that the UI was unbelievably sluggish out of the box when i bought it... Hooked it up to my Nvidia Shield, configured HDMI-CEC and it's everything i want for a TV, all it does is turn on and display the shield while passing through audio to my receiver haven't seen the Samsung UI in months.
- cronix 5y agoSamsung has some of the best displays. I use 0 "smart" features and just use it as a big dumb 4k monitor for a dedicated Home Theater PC. My wireless keyboard with built in track pad is way better than any smart features they offer, or having to wave a dumb remote around in the air to get their "air mouse" feature offset just right from where you're actually pointing so it doesn't mess up. The TV itself is not connected to the internet and doesn't receive firmware updates beyond the initial one to set the TV up. When I still subscribed to cable TV I used cable cards and windows media center to get all the HDTV stations. Sweet DVR functionality.
- peregrine 5y agoI purchased a Samsung tv, I connected it to Wifi one time to download any 'updates' then I disabled WIFI and all of the smart features via the menu and went the extra mile to block its MAC Address on the router. I never once touched any of the smart features and it has been fine so far. This has been my rule for any devices that requires WIFI. I should really setup a special guest network for them and disable WAN access but I haven't gotten that far yet.
- skyboy101 5y agoIf I'm not mistaken, smart TVs can still communicate by via inaudible sound signals directly to other devices. Spooky.
- kossTKR 5y agoReally? That's dystopian, but in a cool way. A little like Amazons own internet sharing network or what it was. It's terrible though. We really live in a panopticon now. Any links?
- foepys 5y agohttps://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/theres-a-spike-in-android-apps-that-covertly-listen-for-inaudible-sounds-in-ads/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/there... Be careful which apps you allow to use your phone's microphone.
- r3trohack3r 5y agohttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-th... Not exactly the TV manufacturer doing it, but there have been reports of advertisers using ultrasonic pitches to do cross-device tracking.
- crysin 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia Slightly different than what gp was talking about but also deals with using invisible audio for DRM
- anonuser123456 5y agoYou can't really avoid smart TVs these days. Any model that has a good picture quality will have a higher end chipset, and with that higher end chipset TV manufacturers are just rolling Android since they largely don't have to worry about the UI etc. Technically, all you should have to do is not enable Wifi/Ethernet and you're good to go. But I wouldn't put it past Samsung to look for open APs or connected Samsung products and secretly funnel data via that channel.
- rainbowzootsuit 5y agoYou could create a black hole wifi SSID or vlan to frustrate their efforts if this was discovered to be the case.
- crackercrews 5y agoIt would be trivial for them to cut a deal with Comcast to use their xfinity mobile base stations, for example. Frightening! Coming soon: movie rooms housed inside faraday cages.
- turminal 5y agoOther brands are equally bad in my experience sadly.
- leephillips 5y agoCan you avoid these problems by not allowing the TV to connect to the internet?
- jareklupinski 5y agodid anyone in this thread really expect quality when buying a product from a company run by a convicted embezzler? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-yong_(businessman)#2017_arrest_and_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-yong_(businessman)#201...
- walrus01 5y agoI bought a high-end Samsung smart TV in 2017 and simply never gave it the wifi password and never connected it to ethernet. I use it as a dumb screen connected to two consoles and a living room PC for movies. Thankfully we're not yet at the point where my xbox one or PS4 will give it a DHCP lease, NAT and default route/gateway outbound and 100Mbps ethernet over the HDMI cable .
- skocznymroczny 5y agoI'd rather expect they'll soon start putting cell chips inside of them for telemetry and ads, kind of like cars do nowadays.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jsjohnst 5y ago> simply never gave it the wifi password and never connected it to ethernet I worked on the team who built Samsung’s initial smart TV experience back in 2009 and yet I’m the exact same as you with every TV I own. If I could get the same quality panel and video processing without “smart TV” functionality for a reasonable price, I would, but they generally are much more expensive. My choice of panel is intended to last me 5 years, the last thing I would want is to be stuck with 5 year old “smart” tech that usually is abandonware shortly after purchase. It’s just to easy to buy a separate box (AppleTV in my case) and get a better experience and easy upgrade ability as new stuff comes out without wasting a perfectly good multi-thousand dollar panel.
- dotancohen 5y agoSurely there's a wire to snip or PCB trace to cut to disable IP-over-HDMI.
- walrus01 5y agoUnless I win the lottery or something I don't see myself buying a 'professional' flat panel display that has zero smart features, and things like RS232/RS485 based control, as they are more than double the price... The same $1700 smart TV would be easily $3500+ as a professional/industrial display.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y agoWhat's the point of a TV to begin with. All oyu need is a display and a laptop.