Blu-ray player keeps cycling on/off whenever plugged in
us.community.samsung.com
us.community.samsung.com
If subject turns around before then, the picture is instantly taken, and I'm instantly getting photos if no faces are detected as well. I've reproduced this across a number of conditions.
This is great for the family photos..
They're really going strong with their software now.
https://www.insider.com/samsung-phones-default-beauty-mode-c...
We used to have a simple rule where you always had two firmwares in storage, a primary image and secondary image. If you see tonnes of unplanned reboots recently you fallback to the secondary image. It can also be manually rolled back by holding some button during boot. (Other reasons to falling back could also be a failed hash check or bad signing for example.) To be clear, this method also had potential flaws and two bad software updates in a row could be bad (it tries to mark "good" firmwares, but it isn't foolproof).
I've seen other methods also make use of a minimalist boot system that is just about enough to flash a new firmware. Stick a USB device in and hold a button during boot for example - if no button press you pay very little in startup time and the main application boots instead. You then * really * test this fallback firmware to make sure it will be very reliable in the field from cold boot.
This gets even more troubling when OTA (over the air) methods are more widely employed too, where there may not be any exposed programming port on the device. I remember seeing somebody brick a few hundred devices via bluetooth before somebody said "have you tested that firmware works?" - turns out it was a bad unchecked-in local build...
If you've got a 64MB image, that could be 50 cents per unit. That works out to a non-trivial drop in margins, and Blu-ray players have gotten commoditized enough that you might not be able to afford that. And I guarantee you it's not just this corner. Lots of corners were cut. I assume, anyway. I don't actually know for this model.
The funny thing is I'd happily pay $10-20 more for a Blu-ray player that had less cost-centric engineering, the problem is consumers have no way to easily see this.
I remember seeing several motherboards advertising "dual BIOS" quite prominently, although the customer base there would understand the advantages of the feature far more than if something similar was advertised for a Blu-ray player.
> unit.
I remember at times, even 1 cent savings was "rewarded". It really can get cut throat on cost savings. Luckily some of the things I worked on were automotive, so the potential cost of recall really was a consideration that we could hold over the heads of management, otherwise you would really struggle to make the case.
> And I guarantee you it's not just this corner. Lots of
> corners were cut.
I think very large books could be filled with engineering stories about corner cutting. This is the sort of thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
> problem is consumers have no way to easily see this.
This is why I end up buying slightly older hardware/software that has had some real user testing, but of course this doesn't always work.
How many times are we going to keep making the same mistakes? There is no benefit to connecting a Samsung TV or Blu-ray player to the internet when a $35 Chromecast works far better, has all the same features (plus more), doesn’t break a year or two after you buy it, and is more secure. There’s just no excuse.
[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-oper...
[1]: https://www.consumerreports.org/televisions/samsung-roku-sma...
[2]: https://threatvector.cylance.com/en_us/home/many-popular-sma...
[3]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681683/samsung-smart-tv...
[4]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/02/chromecast-bug-hackers-hav...
But for everyone else, Chromecast et al are plug-’n-play. If you’re an Apple person and are willing to spend a bit extra, Apple TV’s UI/UX is hard to beat without making your own system.
That being said, I do like the UI. I don't mess with it much, though; I mostly just talk to it. It does a fairly good job of figuring out what show I'm telling it to play. It works, it updates on its own, it doesn't brick itself, it doesn't disconnect from the network (because it's wired in), it's reasonably secure, it plays what I tell it to play. Good enough for me.
Depending on your use case, you might want to give Kodi a try if you're not satisfied with the mainstream alternatives. I haven't used it in ages, but I hear it works quite well these days.
In the case of plex, having a native app on the TV is far superior than fiddling with my phone or tablet or starting something on my computer and running into the next room to watch it.
For steamlink, I've suddenly started playing some of my old steam backlog, and now that epic is throwing games at me some of those as well. And I've also got a serious retroarch habit that works great over the steamlink app.
Maybe my hardware is just on the older side—it’s a whole 5 years old now!—but Samsung TV apps are pretty slow compared to apps on third-party hardware and always have been. For example, my Samsung TV natively supports Miracast, but the latency is terrible compared to an external Microsoft Wireless Display dongle.
Here’s what I use for everything you’ve mentioned, no phone required, although it might be overkill for casual use:
Plex: Apple TV
Steam Link: Steam Link (although I should probably stop using that deprecated device and just use the app on Apple TV). I tend to favor Parsec over Steam Link, though; it’s less convenient but has lower latency and isn’t limited to games. I also have a Microsoft Wireless Display dongle, which is generally the most convenient of the three and still has low enough latency for casual use, although I wouldn’t use it for gaming.
Retro: RetroPie
I know it’s inconvenient to have additional devices for all of these when you could just use the apps on your TV. Strong passwords are also inconvenient. But is it worth getting hacked or dealing with Samsung’s problematic updates? Maybe someday the situation will improve, but until then, either choose a different brand or use external devices.
It's out of warranty, isn't it? Sounds like flawless planning to me.
I mean, seriously. What incentive could a company possibly have to keep those servers running five minutes after the last product shipped goes out of support? Sure, you'll get mad and swear to buy your next IoT widget from some other company. But that company will do the same thing, because they have exactly the same incentives.
This will have to be fixed legislatively... and as a liberty-minded kind of guy, I'm truly depressed by how often I find myself typing those words these days.
How can they not know this is happening minutes after the update is pushed?
Is the chat farmed out to script-reading third-parties?
- Maybe it only happens from a cold start, or maybe only when waking from sleep more.
- The push likely takes hours
- It might be hard to capture the right metric for if the push was good in time to stop the push. I wouldn't be shocked if support realized the issue first, but didn't have a way to quickly escalate to the firmware team.
- When the push fails, by the time that team figured it out, at a big company, it could take at least a day to make it into the customer service script.
For example, imagine that the latest Slack update made all desktop clients crash, and that Slack support simply said to try restarting the client. There would be mass outrage, and the expectation of a prompt fix.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be much expectation of an immediate fix from Samsung in this thread.
Or if a comparison more closer to same industry is desired, imagine if the issue was with Netflix instead.
This makes me wonder aloud, are electronics behemoths held to lower standards?
But there are electronic components that can be programmed with software.
Eh, yes?
Or if a comparison more closer to same industry is desired, imagine if the issue was with Netflix instead.
That's slightly different since it's a service with ongoing payment, and customers who will stop payment if the service fails to serve, whereas Samsung has already been paid by those who bought their hardware.
First thought coming to mind is if this is indeed a bad firmware update as some suggest. Or maybe an x509 certificate used internally to verify something like firmware signatures has expired? I guess a bit of digging through these threads might shed some light on if people accepted updates recently.
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/2015-blu-r...
I miss the days when companies cared about the longevity of their products. Companies like IBM and Compaq were infamous for well-placed updates to drivers, firmware, BIOS, and documentation.
The below has information I never heard of before, that it might be related to mold growth on the circuit board??
<< Re: Blu-ray player BD-JM57C, keeps cycling on/off whenever plugged in yesterday • last updated yesterday
I have a BD J5700, it started doing the same thing on 06/18/2020. It has never been connected to an Ethernet and as far as I know it has never been updated. I believe it is a preprogrammed failure. >>
Keep in mind this is a 2015 BluRay player, so outside a class action I doubt Samsung will do anything and just act like they all just coincidentally failed.
These players do have a "Hold Eject for 5 seconds" factory reset mode, but it doesn't appear to re-flash the factory firmware, only clear the settings.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-JM57C-Streaming-Blu-ray-Re...
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61v%2BV4kna...
"I also got assistance from chat with Samsung Pro Care reps. I am trying to troubleshoot one of the players. Samsung kindly gave me the reset proceedure for my model which is to hold down eject button for 15 seconds. did not work for me. I requested if I could try firmware flash by USB. They kindly gave me a firmware zipped file which I unzipped and wrote to a USB stick. However since the players won't stay on the firmware flash proceedure instructions provided could not be initiated."
Oopth. This is going to be expensive. It looks like well over a dozen models were affected.
It's a video player, some of the common uses of a device like this would be Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, and DIAL.
Money doesn't grow on trees, why would I stop using a device only because it is 5 years old?
The embedded system may function excellently at its task, but most hardware manufacturers are not up to the task to providing long term support.
I've got a decade+ old Blu-ray player with an ethernet jack. A network switch is a standard part of my entertainment center. Every time I've moved things around, I've resisted the call to add an extra cable and find out what network services are available. With my network setup I can easily block it from having Internet access, and it's still a hard no. There is just no upside, and a huge downside of it being more likely to break, and then having to buy a new player for the rare times I want to play a legacy disc.
My receiver is hooked to the network, but with no Internet access. It has an embedded webserver that can control it. But now that it's out of the warranty period I would never let it update itself, as that's a good way for a manufacturer to break a device with no recourse. Firmware used to be shipped with no updates, and that worked well. Weighing the chance of it being bricked from a manufacturer's update versus an attacker with vulnerability also getting past my router, the latter seems much less likely.
I know I'm bailing out a leaking boat here (cheap embedded cell modems are around the corner, which will necessitate doing surgery). But the market has to catch on some time...
Telsa kind of does this with their cars. If you drive near a tesla service center your car will automatically connect to the the tesla wifi. You cannot disable this (although you can turn off wifi one-time until the next time the car is turned on, and maybe that works)
That's one of the big complications with ripping Blu-Ray discs. Even once you've broken the copy protection it's a guessing game what's played when. Also why VLC still doesn't have menu support.
I guess today's customer forums is a version of Borges' Library of Babel, but one with very dull contents.
But if you get an inrush of customers all saying “yo, shits broke...” The fire alarms get trigger sooner, if it’s a bad update it can get pulled sooner to lessen the number of affected customers and start the whole recovery process sooner.
Sure a single high quality post from someone in the tech space who’s curiosity made them break out wireshark and give you a detailed bug report can do wonders. But such reports take time, you got to have someone actually decide it’s worth there time to investigate and report back.
Or you can hear the high numbers of low detail reports and pull the fire alarm cause shits on fire somewhere.