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Comment by cgriswald | Hacker News Reader

Samsung is completely untrustworthy. I might buy another television from them in the future as the screen quality on my Samsung televisions has always been great. But their smart appliances are a joke. Read the reviews for any of the required Samsung "Smart" Apps and you'll find terrible software that doesn't work. Where it does work, at best it technically meets the advertised criteria, but in other cases it seems like bald-faced lies.

I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart features don't work without the app, the App basically doesn't work, and while they say they can be connected to the Wi-Fi, they can only be connected to Wi-Fi via WPS. If that was ever justified, it certainly wasn't justified in 2015/2016 when I bought them. Had I bought them for these features I'd have been furious.

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Samsung internet connected TVs monitor what's on your screen and send super low res snapshots up to their servers - just enough that they can automatically work out what you're watching. Your IP can then be cross-correlated with other web companies like google so they can keep a record against your full identity of everything you watch. So even their TVs aren't safe if you care about privacy.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/02/samsung-lg-...

That's going to be interesting if they still do that in a post-GDPR world without positive informed consent.

Every single TV manufacturer does that. In US, Vizio the largest HDTV brand openly sells this as a service to media agencies. Samsung and Japanese TV manufacturer data is much harder to access to and Japanese brands are generally scrupulous over permissions. No one matches any personally identifying info with this viewership data... It's all anonymized.

Source: work in ad-tech and have personally worked with this kind of data from different firms.

Far out, that's the scariest thing I've read today.

These companies are putting spy bugs in citizens homes.

I keep hoping someone will kickstart a display company that sells just really amazing displays and none of the “smart” garbage. I read that some manufacturers even serve up ads in their latest smart UIs. That’s infuriating!

Look into "NEC Commercial Displays". They're intended for use as signage and things, but most of them are full TVs with ATSC tuners, remote controls, speakers, and everything. They generally do not have any smart functionality, but often have serial ports or interfaces for adding your own. They are often slightly more expensive than the more encumbered displays, but not by much.

The biggest problem that I've found with them is that they're not available at your local store, so you pretty much have to just buy one sight-unseen and hope it looks good when it arrives.

I got the NEC E554 from Amazon, and left a 3-star review for it there.

Seconded. I have a NEC P461 as a secondary/movie display in my office. It's the thin bezeled NEC that you see in airports worldwide. Love it.

EDIT: as a followup, I should mention that circa 2018 there aren't really any commercial/signage displays that have 4k resolution. There are lots of "4k signage solutions" but they are all groups of quad monitors. It appears there is not yet demand (or sufficient product dev) in 2018 for 4k signage monitors. It sort of makes sense given that a departures/arrivals screen doesn't really need 4k ...

Looks like NEC has added some very recently, like the C651Q-AVT2, which is a 65" 4K display with an ATSC tuner.

https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2

Do any of the TV review sites test these? That would be very helpful since you can't showroom them.

IF you like a smart TV but not the smart features (but have no dumb alternative), then don't connect it to the Internet. Now it's just a dumb TV.

I guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price but it would be nice not to have to pay for a bunch of features I don't need.

No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality display with a few HDMIs please.

> guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price

They reduce it, because having one do-it-all device increases units/SKU and decreases the contribution of fixed costs to the minimum unit cost needed to break even, and competition prevents charging excessive premiums across most commodity models.

I think that’s called a computer monitor

I know why you're getting down voted, but you're not exactly wrong. There used to be TVs and video monitors, and then there were computer monitors. They were all CRTs. The computer monitors were way more expensive than TVs partly due to being progressive scan vs interlaced. Televisions had low resolution and included things like speakers and tuners. Video monitors could be had with much higher resolution for post/broadcast facilities even though they were still interlaced.

It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors, video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72" computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.

For a while, computer monitors were limited by the HDTV specs, but a computer monitor usually has better specs - often resolution, refresh rate, display lag, connectivity options, etc.

The smart TVs still have a slow and clunky UI before you connect them to the internet.

Except of course that dumb TVs used to at least offer programme guide. Now you can't even get that without an internet connection

The only program guide I've seen on a dumb TV is the scrolling display from my cable provider - which it displays over HDMI, not internet.

If it's displaying anything from the internet, then I don't think it's still a "dumb TV".

In countries that use DVB-T or ISDB-T broadcasts there is over the air programme guide information for the TV to show

In the UK certainly, the programme guide is available over the air on dumb TVs.

There is a system for TV Meta Data to be sent over the air and TVs with tuners used to be able to read this data and create an on screen guide. I had this on one of the first HDTVs I got but haven't seen it since

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_and_System_Information...

They still do. My ota setup gets it just fine

Here's how I solved this for now: I've kept around my 10yo dumb 32'' TV from Samsung for casual viewing, like showing a video to our kid (we hardly every use it otherwise). For something serious I made a beamer cart that I can roll everywhere, with a PS4, a Nintendo Switch, and a place to put a laptop. Beamers can mostly still be had without any connectivity. A decent 1080p one from BenQ costs you around 600-700 bucks and that's plenty enough for me to have full bluray quality movie experiences. For sound I just bought an Avantree AptX low latency bluetooth receiver, and I plan on extending this with an HDMI audio splitter and low latency transmitter with optical input to get full stereo quality on a nice pair of speakers. Screw surround, screw 4K, keep your 3D crap, I'm getting too old for this.

A 700USD beamer to protect your privacy? Surely you can just broadcast your computer on to the tv?

Get a receiver with HDMI passthrough so the sound comes out your hifi speakers and the video signal gets sent on to the TV. No need for bluetooth, splitters, optical input

it's not just to protect my privacy, it's just generally how I've come to think about consuming media in my house.

* a beamer gives you a viewing angle as wide as you'd want to have in a cinema (wider than this is uncomfortable).

* therefore immersion in movies and games is about the strongest you can have for non-VR content in your home.

* cinema is (a) rarely showing what I want anymore and (b) incovenient now that we've got a small kid, so this solves that as well.

* a beamer on a cart is mobile - sometimes I just roll it to the end of our bed, lie down and play Zelda or whatever for half an hour to relax a bit.

* beamers are mostly still dumb, so there's not much to break that I cannot fix and not much to annoy me, like "go online to get the full experience (and our ads)" and all that crap.

* when we're done the beamer can be rolled out of sight, so you don't have a giant black hole in the middle of your living room, constantly telling you you should probably do something with it to make it worthwhile.

* setting up the beamer is a bit of an act, and that's good, so we do it about once every week and have enough activities in our life other than passive media viewing. with the cart it's still quick enough to not be very inconvenient, I can just plug in one power cable and push a couple of buttons and it's done.

Is beamer quality decent? Every time I've seen one in action (I admit last time was years ago) it was nowhere near the quality of TV and the room also needed to be very dark.

When the bulbs break they're quite pricey to replace no?

It depends on how you want to use it. With good lighting conditions it totally is, and this matches the way in which I use our beamer quite well (during the day there's no time anyways). If you want something that works during the day and rolling down blinds is too annoying for you, then yes, it's not the best choice. But beamers have become much better than 5-10y ago for a given price. DLP technology has become affordable for high resolutions and its rainbow effect has been treated quite effectively, giving you very sharp images. Strong light bulbs are also much more prevalent. Yes you gotta replace them, but I'm anticipating many years until I run out of their 1000+ hours of lifetime, and 150 bucks or so every couple of years seems quite fine for me, more realistically it's probably going to be a new device every 5-10 years like with TVs.

What is a beamer?

German (and possibly neighboring languages) term for a video projector. One of the weird "english-but-not-actually" words we have.

Thanks for clearing that up - the times when loan words mess up your foreign language skills... ;)

I’ve been complaining about this for a few years as well. When I went to buy a new TV last year my options were so horrifically limited that I gave up, bought a highly regarded model and have purposefully never connected it to any networks.

It’s getting worse, we couldn’t even find a new fridge with the options we wanted that wasn’t ‘smart’. I wound up taking apart my LG fridge to disable the WiFi module after we bought it. Not connecting it to the WiFi wasn’t enough, the damn thing broadcasts it’s own wireless network and I got sick and tired of seeing it. Shocker, there was no way to turn it off.

Unfortunately most TVs are "smart" TVs (the dumbest idea ever, seen from a tech's point of view - you're stuck with whatever is in the TV, unlike if you just connect your Pi (or even Chromecast) etc. through HDMI). But non-"smart" TVs are still out there, fortunately. I found a very nice Philips DVB-T "dumb" TV. And it was quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent sized Samsung "smart" TV. It does everything I need (and the guide is broadcasted over DVB-T, so no net is needed for that. A Pi connected to HDMI makes it smart, but my way.)

Have you looked at Monoprice's stuff? They sell displays using the same panels as some of the nice name brand stuff, and I'd personally be surprised if they packaged the same BS into their house brand displays.

Is it the same panels though? I've heard that a lot of these new TV vendors are buying panels that might not have met the QA standards of Samsung, Apple, Sony, etc, but still function. Rather than trashing the unit, it gets sold off to a different company.

Someone else mentioned that to me too but all I see on their site are Vizio TVs and I refuse to buy one of those. I bought a Vizio a few years ago and it was the worst TV I've ever owned. Replaced it with a Sony and never looked back.

Where do I get the Monoprice TVs?

monoprice qa is awful. would not recommend for larger ticket items. they're great for cables and accessories tho

You can get professional displays, they're just big monitors with HDMI, VGA, RGB inputs, those are also supposedly made to whitstand heavier usage but a bigger price tag.

Look at the less sturdy versions of digital signage devices. Iiyama is one of these manufacturers that in my experience doesn't sell bullshit, but results always wary and I don't buy a new screen that often, nor does (close) family/friends where one'd notice badly behaving devices.

I haven't yet found large OLED screens with none of the smart BS though, so if that's what you want, good luck.

When I bought my smart TV I've decided to not connect it to my WLAN and didn't plug in the Ethernet. So it isn't able to send information or install anything. Everything I watch on it is through my home theater PC. If I ever wanted to update it I would connect it with Ethernet and then remove the ethernet cable after the update.

Actually the Samsung dryers use some material in the drum that react over time and eventually fail. There was a good rundown by someone with the knowhow to explain why they fail. If I can find the video I'll link it.

Different video than I saw, but same explanation: https://youtu.be/0uDQaHiEfbA?t=29

This is classic galvanic corrosion. The manufacturing engineer in me understands why they made this choice, but the materials engineer in me is surprised they did. (And, yes, I own a Samsung washer).

If you want to learn more about the electrochemistry here, Google "Pourbaix Diagram"

Could you clarify what the manufacturing angle and the materials angle is for this choice? Thanks.

The short version is that it is much easier to form complicated shapes in aluminum than stainless. Easier to form and more processes to do so.

On the materials side, When you connect dissimilar metals, their is a potential that forms between them (long topic). This drives redox reactions at the surfaces of the two metals, and the stable species depend on the pH of the water they are in. In this case the aluminum will preferentially dissolve into solution. If you must connect dissimilar metals, you want the surface area of the more Noble (i.e. SS) to be small, and the metal that corrodes large. This is because you actually care about current density (current/area) on the part that is corroding. Here you have a lot of surface area of stainless, which, in broad strokes, is probably not a good decision.

Samsung is the one company I've decided to never get a TV from because of their privacy issues but also because they are so intrusive in their efforts to push ads. Buying a Samsung TV is like asking for commercials in the middle of every bluray or DVD you watch.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8017771/samsung-smart-tvs...

> I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine.

I would not be so sure, they have a recall on a number of units:

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/man-saves-hom...

I have a Samsung "smart TV" and have no intention of ever letting it on my LAN. It does not get the wifi password and has no Ethernet cable. It's used as a dumb display hooked up to a home theatre receiver and Xbox one x, home theatre pc, etc.

Do not trust the software on these things.

I do the same. And the next step will be wrapping everything in alu foil, because it is cheap for companies to include gsm module. Only half kidding, unfortunately. :-/

"I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart features don't work without the app ..."

Lucky you!

Very high end (or commercial) appliances are the only ones left that don't have spyware/crapware/IoT so you really lucked out there ...

I had a Samsung Dryer whose heating element died three years after I purchased it brand new. They only have a warrenty of one year, I could only find grey market parts, and I would have had to completely disassemble it to replace it.

It was far easier to replace it, and I will not buy Samsung appliances again.

Surprise - modern appliances aren't made with easy maintenance in mind -- I had to disassemble my entire dryer to replace a $15 guide wheel. Took me nearly an entire day to do it, and would have been cost prohibitive to pay someone else to do it. (and indeed, if I priced out my own time it wouldn't have been worth it, but I liked the challenge)

My Samsung washer-dryer heater element broke pithing the first month of ownership (or was DOA) and it too over six months to be repaired under warranty. That was just over 2 years ago, it it's just failed again.

My first and last Samsung product.

Sounds like they should stick to hardware innovation and stop trying so hard on software.

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