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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 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.

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I 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.

Samsung's appliances have a pretty bad reputation in general, especially the refrigerators and side loading washing machines.

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.

I got my samsung plasma TV repaired after 4 years of ownership because the Consumer Guarantees Act says that appliances have to last as long as a 'reasonably expected' lifetime, that repair options have to be available and that the warranty period for major defects is that 'reasonably expected' lifetime.

It's still working now, ten years post-purchase.

Would be glad to pay a bit more to ensure quality. My persistent fear when buying something is - if it fails, how do I get it serviced/replaced, or barring that - how will I dispose of it. Because dumping it feels completely unsustainable.

It's prevented me from buying to replace a lot of my stuff.

Would be interesting to know if big manufacturers then only sell their most dependable models in the NZ market, in order to avoid the costs that they can avoid in more business-friendly markets like the US.

It would be a good way to decide which products to buy. Is this (equivalent) model sold in New Zealand? If so, it's probably known by the manufacturer to be solid. If not, avoid it at all costs.

What happens is that big companies try to trick consumers (as most consumers are not aware of their legal rights). Common tactics are:

* It will cost x to fix this, as a gesture we will share the inflated repair cost with you 50/50.

* We don't make this model anymore but we have an identical model with a different serial number, we can offer you that at a "discount".

* We found the item had water damage and this is not covered in our warranty, even when we advertised these items being used in water.

* We are happy to repair the item but first we need to have the item inspected by a repair agent to see how the fault occurred. Please be aware if we find the fault is caused by you, then you agree to pay x dollar value amount even if we do not repair item (because you were at fault)

* Item spends many weeks being assessed for repair. Doesn't get repaired, sent back. Repeat.

.. and many more.

Only when you stand firm and start spouting the legal requirements do they suddenly resolve the situation VERY quickly.

I dealt with dodgy Samsung fridges and they tried to "share" the repair cost with me. I politely declined, then sent them an email citing my legal rights. Samsung then repaired the fridge promptly and no longer tried to talk with me about sharing costs of repair.

Most consumers fall for the tricks above or give up and buy a new item.

I don't think international companies care too much, they are adept selling to the masses. Those that cite the rules to get a repair are likely to be a tiny minority.

There is another aspect of the law which is less known. It is not actually Samsung or large manufacturer on the hook for consumer guarantee. It is the retailer. The retailer has to remedy the situation. If Samsung packs up operations, the retailer still needs to stand by the product it sold. This means that the retailer has an incentive to work with more reliable manufacturers and suppliers and will promptly ditch troublesome suppliers.

It's probably cheaper to insure and replace garbage Hardware.

A lot of consumers probably don't know or care so they might get away with the same products and just take the hit from the few returns. I'm in NZ and never knew about that reasonable lifetime bit. I just have a vague awareness that most appliances come with a card saying they have a 1 or 2 year warranty and beyond that, assume it's on me. There's usually some language like "in addition to your rights under the CGA" but who knows what those rights are. Also, below some price, it's just too much hassle to have figure out how returning it works and weighing the risk that I might get charged for the repair if it turns out to be due to mistreatment, not a defect.

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.

> have a lifespan commensurate with the price

> we pay more for things than people overseas do

This sounds wonderfully cyclical. "Why do I expect my washer to last an extra year? Because it cost 10% more than the one sold in America, which is expected to last a decade".

" the downside is that we pay more for things than people overseas do"

Isn't that they just force you to buy extended warranty on everything?

A warranty that's legally enforced, though. Part of the reason there are so many jokes about extended warranties is that it's very hard to make the seller actually honour them.

A practical example is the an Apple extended warranty is basically in effect on every Apple product in New Zealand. There are some things you don’t get, but if you notify them after 3 years that your phone is not not working (no drop damage or water damage though), they will replace it.

Ice makers are notoriously flimsy. Serious race to the bottom by the manufacturers. The good news is that they're easy to replace (undo a couple of bolts and unplug a cable and they usually come right out), bad news is the replacements are ridiculously expensive, like $100 each and come with all of the same design flaws the original had. There is also surprisingly little standardization which makes the replacements even more expensive as there are hundreds of mostly but not quite compatible models to stock and you have to be very careful when ordering replacements.

Most were up to a few years ago, but the big players went out of their way to make dependable ice makers--I thought.

The last two refrigerators I bought had dependable ice makers.

I just overheard an installer talking to a neighbor while installing his refrigerator.

The tech said most modern refrigerations only last 10 years at best though.

Unofortunately some manufacturers are now implementing DRM to control your use of the ice maker function.

See: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxpjy/hacker-bypasses-ges-r... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129801

10 years is actually quite good for major appliances. If you're warrantied for 3 and manage to get 10 years out if it you've exceeded the design parameters. Environmentally, replacing a broken fridge is usually the only time someone will even research something more energy efficient.

Meanwhile my Grandmother still uses her fridge from the 60s. It still has the kind of handles where you can get locked inside and almost die if you are on a very special episode of any 80's kid show.

I thought fridges should last 15-20 years at least. 3 years is a joke.

Wow. So the idea is that we want them to wear out more quickly so that they buy a new product that's more energy efficient? That strikes me as terribly wasteful. What about the impacts of a discarded appliance?

The compressor is almost certainly the most expensive part of the fridge. It's also one of 2 moving parts on fridge (the other the being the fan, which is cheap), making it the most likely to fail.

I checked some list prices, and they're a substantial price of the fridge itself. Some site said $200-$450 to replace one, another said the part itself is $100-$500 without even including labor. At those prices, I can see why people might just buy new. It's also something most people would want to hire a professional for; refrigerants are not good to inhale, and this needs to be air-tight.

I would also hope that most of them get refurbished. It's pretty hard to just "discard" a fridge. You have to call someone at the city (or GoodWill), and I presume they sell those to refurbisher. They're worth some money.

So I think in reality, it goes to a refurbisher who fixes it, then sells it to someone else who replaces and even older fridge. So the fridge that actually ends up in a landfill might be a 1960s deep freeze. The same idea as used cars.

The thing that gets me is that for commercial operations it seems to be a solved problem. They break and require maintenance like anything else but if they’re not outright broken they are super reliable where fridge ice dispensers even when they’re working suck.

Standalone ice machines in particular infuriates me as 90% of the machines on Amazon are copies of the same broken design: it rotates a plastic water container by firing a motor on one side only for a number of seconds without any sensor to stop it. As a result, if you use them heavily, it reliably develops stress fractures after a year or so.

It took me four broken machines to find a model without that exact same design flaw...

It seems a lot of the problems with these kind of products is that most customers use them quite little, and so they don't see a major fallout even for problems that'd be trivial to fix (many of the ice maker models in question has a switch to stop rotation too far in the opposite direction) and so it just gets ignored.

I have never heard about anyone having trouble with an ice maker until I read this.

My ice maker has been working fine for over 15 years. My mother's ice maker has been working fine for about 25 years.

You have old ones from before the manufacturers stopped caring. It seems like ones made in the past 5 years have gone precipitously downhill, especially the GE ones.

The Icemaker in my Frigidaire refrigerator has never worked since I bought the house, the problem is that the coils keep freezing over (the icemaker is in the refrigerator compartment so has its own freezer coil to make it cold)

I spent a weekend pulling it out, thawing everything out, and then replacing the defroster coil, thinking that would fix it. It didn't -- it worked for about a week afterwards until freezing over again.

Me neither! I got their fridge, and in my case the deicing functionality is faulty. There is a little metal tab behind the back panel that heats up an ice dam to keep the condensation flowing out, that happens to be too short by about 2cm. They skimped on 2cm of aluminum and now I will never buy anything Samsung ever again.

So in short, it seems that they can neither make a proper ice maker nor ice un-maker :-)

Hey I had that same issue with my old fridge, a guy on YouTube helped me solve it! Take a short piece of the copper ground wire from a length of Romex and wrap it around the heating element, then have it point down into the drip area. It should conduct enough heat to keep the fins from icing up. It's not ideal but it saved me from replacing the (I think) evaporator fan for a third or fourth time, plus all the ruined food. Also had to replace the mainboard on the pile of junk fridge. So glad I don't own it anymore.

When I worked delivery at a national big box home improvement store, Samsung and LG refrigerators that we brought back due to ice maker not working went to the recycle trailer and was sold for scrap once the trailer filled up.

Same. Samsung has had a bad reputation for a while. I remember having issues with their CRT monitors back in mid 2000s. I bought one of their smart TVs back in 2011 and it's had issues with the panel ever since with randomly showing purple & pink lines. Their cell phones have also been crap in my personal experience.

I've never had a good experience with a Samsung device. Their TV screens are too blue for me, their appliances fail too quickly and are not user repair friendly, their phones have too much bloat.

Admittedly, this is all down to personal experience and taste but I am decidedly anti-samsung. I've had a few decent computer monitors from them but otherwise everything I've owned from them has become e-waste with far too much rapidity for the price paid.

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!

I won't buy appliances anywhere other than Costco for this reason. No-questions-asked returns for 90 days on appliances, and a year on most other items. Extended warranty for several years for free if you use their credit card, too.

Yeah but good luck getting them delivered in the first place. My understanding is that Costco owns Innovel now and they are a truly terrible logistics company. Buyer beware!

What country do you live in?

Anecdotal but I've had very good experience with Samsung front loading washing machine, might depend on regions of the world though, I've had one in Asia and one in Europe.

My Samsung front-loader failed the first time in less than a year. Right after that, the Samsung dryer I bought with it also failed.

My Samsung refrigerator had the display fail after two years, and the replacement display started failing in a month. I no longer bother buying replacement displays because everyone else agrees they never last more than a few months.

No more Samsung appliances for me, ever. And CR's credibility took a major hit in my eyes because I bought the washer & dryer on their recommendation, even after I already knew that Samsung refrigerators were garbage.

That's crazy because I've had terrible experience with Samsung front loader washing machines. I own a few rental properties, so I tend to go through appliances a lot and I've had more Samsung washers and dryers fail than anything else.

The dryers are the worst. They use a plastic tensioner pulley for the belt, but the pulley doesn't have a bearing...it just rides on a metal sleeve. This eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly off.

The washers have this issue I think due to incompatible metals (aluminum mounting to the stainless drum maybe) that causes them to break after about 5 years.

> This eventually wears out and causes the belt to fly off.

On my dryer it took less than a year before it tossed the belt.

Australia had a spate of house fires caused by Samsung washing machines whose electronics weren't properly waterproofed, shorted, and then burned.

I have avoided Samsung products since then.

Trouble with this way of deciding is that it's biased by the number of individual products a brand has. Samsung has a lot so they're exposed to more risk of some bad ones even if they're safer on average than their competitors.

You used to see this with car brands back when everybody worried about reliability. Somebody would hear a bad story and go round saying "Don't buy BMWs because their fuel injectors fail". Fortunately, most people have goldfish memory, so people still buy Ford cars despite the Ford Pinto's fuel tank fires and they still buy Toyota despite the Prius's uncontrolled acceleration or whatever.

Try to stay away from pricy Bosh washers, and dishwashers.

I can offer this with a Bosh. If you get a E13 error it's the pump.

It's a pretty easy fix. You can get a generic pump for $50.

Most disguarded Bosh washers are due to a pump. The computer is second on the list. It's not worth fixing if it's the board.

I've been meaning to put a fan on my washer's computer board. There us definitely room in there for a computer fan.

Frequently with an E13 it's just an item stuck in the pump outlet plumbing.

It’s Bosch fyi

My experience has been fine after I learned that ankle socks and masks will cause the machine to jam. Now I just hand wash small items and the machine works perfectly /sarcasm>

Edit: I’m getting downvoted. Is this a well known thing not to wash small items? (I’ve been using washing machines for 20 years, without a problem until this one.)

> Is this a well known thing not to wash small items

Front loaders specifically - though usually to protect the objects being washed, not the machine itself. The joint around the door tends to pinch small objects. I put masks in a mesh bag meant for washing "delicates"

Seems like LG makes better appliance than Samsung in general... but I guess mileage varies between model and customer.

Samsung and LG are so big that I would not expect to be able to make an objective statement on either's quality relative to another, not even for a specific product line, much less company wide.

Doesn’t a larger sample size reduce the noise?

I think the issue is that both companies make very cheap and very expensive products in various places around the globe. So, we could be reading series of negative comments from people that got an inexpensive model made in Mexico versus people that got an expensive one made in Korea, or something like that.

that's a good point regarding price points... but I didn't realize the price went up to $8000 for a fridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEDxRY4xcCI

Life is Good indeed.

We bought a 1.5k refrigerator which died after 2 years (warranty expires exactly at that time in Europe). We had extended repair, it died again after another year.

Never again!

Worth noting that in UK under the Consumer Rights Act there is no specific time limit for poor engineering causing a problem that the _seller_ must fix. The limitation is 2 years or how long I've would normally expect such a product to last. A fridge should easily last a decade and so in theory there's a 10 year "warranty" period. The seller can have things repaired, replace them, or offer a refund (refunds can be reduced to account for the use you did get from the product).

We need to use legislation and taxation to push for every longer-lived appliances.

Same in Australia

Front loading washing machines just seem like an all around more fragile design that is also less usable.

I have an HE top loader. It uses just as little water, but it can wash a lot more clothes when needed. I can push a button and it stops being HE and can fill its tub up to wash blankets and comforters.

Also front loaders just can't clean synthetic fabrics that water beads off of. I've seen fabrics come out of a front loader almost completely dry because the tiny bit of water that is used can't even penetrate the outer layer of fabric. Mostly my Ikea comforters, I put one in a front loader I used to have and after a complete wash cycle it wasn't even damp, and it was still very dirty.

Finally, front loaders are mechanically more complex. For one, if that seal fails, well, it leaks. The simplicity of a Top loaders means they can last longer, and in the very least top loaders don't get all gunked up around the door seal. I have seen so many front loaders that smell awful because no one ever cleans the crud out of the seal, ick!

Aside from space savings, I really don't get the point of a front loader at all. Maybe the tumbling action is better at some types of cleaning?

I've literally never ever seen a washing machine that isn't a 'front loader' here in the UK either in someones house or in a store, I didn't know you could still buy other ones!

UK yeah, you all have those washer/dryer combos that wash tiny loads, and almost set clothes on fire to dry them. (In my experience they also take forever to dry the clothes!) Can't be very good for synthetics, I have clothing that has gotten scorch marks from my American dryer's "medium heat" setting, I can't imagine what would have happened in a UK machine!

It should be noted that in many places in the US that hanging clothes outside is either not allowed, or impractical. Also I've had some really bad nights (baby) where I needed to wash and dry all my bedding twice over, so having a, rather fast, dryer was nice.

Seriously though, if you need to wash a large comforter, what do you do? I haven't seen a front loader large enough to fit a proper comforter in. Something like http://canyon-sports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/91YEVCAn...

In America, you can buy top loaders or front loaders. Front loaders are popular in condos and apartments because you can stack them with a dryer.

I’ve seen one of those combo things in my entire life. They’re awful but certainly not common. The front loading machines allow you to have the machine inset under a kitchen counter which is a common place for them in the UK. Separate “laundry rooms” aren’t common and neither are basements so the machine needs to fit in other use environments. I used top loading machines for a while when living in Canada and had constant problems with the detergent staining clothes.

Regarding the sizing again, I’ve never had a problem. I’ve also never heard of anybody washing a comforter (although I don’t call it a comforter so maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean). A comforter (or duvet) has a cover on it and you wash the cover.

Depends on each one's habits, but around here washing such a big comforter would be a "special cleaning day" type of thing, to happen just once in a year or couple of years (or even more, if it has been kept clean). So e.g. after the winter finishes, before putting the heavy clothing away in a closet for the summer, you might bring it to a laundry shop for cleaning, which usually has huge front loaders: https://previews.123rf.com/images/toonpang/toonpang2008/toon...

My washing machine can fit in one of those 'comforters' (duvet as It would seem to other UK folk!) easily with more to boot. Maybe our front loaders are larger than the ones available in the US?

The front loaders in the US tend to be of the High Efficiency variety, which means they spray just a little bit of water on the clothing and then "tumble" it around to get the clothes clean.

If the machine is stuffed full this doesn't work, the water gets caught in some fold of the clothing and you end up with 1 damp spot and an otherwise dry duvet.

I Air BnB'd my way around the UK, the washing machines in the places I stayed were generally tiny, like smaller than anything I've even seen in the US, but that could've just been an artifact of me staying in Air BnBs.

They all did share the trait of getting the clothing seemingly scorching hot to dry it though. :/

American top loading machines are generally huge. Now days they have sensors to detect how much water they really need to use, so they aren't going through LMAOWTFBBQ gallons of water like they did when I was a kid.

Definitely a symptom of AirBNB. Every single one I've stayed in has the cheapest most laughably small washing machine. Considerably smaller than the ones most people would purchase for their own home.

Huh. Top loaders are more common than front loaders in the US.

Not in apartments, where machines are often stacked on top of each other.

> Also front loaders just can't clean synthetic fabrics that water beads off of.

None of the front loaders I’ve used has had a problem with that. Are you sure the one data point you apparently have experience with wasn't just an older and/or relatively low-quality front-loader?

> Aside from space savings, I really don't get the point of a front loader at all.

They are easier to get stuff out of than a top loader of similar size, particularly for larger ones. I’ve also never seen a top loader with a steam cycle, though I guess its possible they exist.

My wife says front loaders are more gentle, so do less damage to delicate clothes. Maybe due to the lack of the central agitator (do new top loaders still have that)?

The big reason I prefer them though: I can put a counter top above them for folding laundry and things.

They are an absolute pain in the ass to keep clean and odor free though.

Higher end top loaders don't have the giant doom spiral in the middle that rips fabrics apart. :)

I think it's mostly about being able to stack other appliances on top of them to save space. Especially dryers.

Here in Spain I've never seen anything but front loaders, they are almost always embedded into the distribution of the bathroom or kitchen, kinda like dishwashers. Front loading allows you to use the space above it for the kitchen counter or such, washing machines rarely have their door opened anyway.

The spin cycle dries synthetics to near dry if the machine is lightly loaded. Works the same on top loaders.

I had heard of exploding Samsung laundry machines. And the house I bought has one. I dread the day it decides to do its thing.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/news/companies/samsung-expl...

Not around here. TVs, fridge and a/c throughout the house working without issue for more than 10 years so far. A couple of Samsung mobile phones as well that kept going until they were so old they could not receive updates.

You can add stoves to that list.

I had a Samsung front loader and it's a great washer.

Was it the one that sings a Schubert tune every time the wash is done?

That cracks me up.

It's a Korean version, I am not familiar with the tune it was playing.

I've vowed not to buy samsung 3 times now, every time I've been burned. This time it's for real

Same 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.

Make 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.

I 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 .

> 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.

Unless 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.

Surely there's a wire to snip or PCB trace to cut to disable IP-over-HDMI.

> simply never gave it the wifi password

That's been my strategy too, and so far, so good. We treat the TV as dumb. Getting a 75 inch screen that isn't a 'smart TV' is dang near impossible.

It's just a missing feature in your console, Ethernet over hdmi (hec) is a thing and who knows what you need to prevent this (hdmi firewall?)

Convert HDMI to SDI and back, but you'll need a HDMI-to-SDI converter that ignores HDCP (i.e. either pages of forms explaining how you've got a legitimate reason for doing it and an expensive converter, or a cheap Chinese one)

If it ignores HDCP, doesn't that prevent you from using it to play Netflix and Amazon Prime content?

These devices pretend to pay attention to HDCP, tell the tranmitting device "oh yes I'm good", but then ignore it.

I'd rather expect they'll soon start putting cell chips inside of them for telemetry and ads, kind of like cars do nowadays.

The 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.

One 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.

Gigabyte 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-ex...

Hm, don't want to side with with Gigabyte here, but drawing a conclusion from a test of a PSU enduring 120% load for an extended period of time failing would not make me dismiss all their products.

>from a test of a PSU enduring 120% load for an extended period of time failing

That's from gigabyte's response, not the accusations levied against them. In GN's testing, they found that the PSU failed at 60% load after 72 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aACtT_rzToI&t=1427s

Well, that is definetly not okay. Would never consider buying something else than a motherboard from gigabyte, but i prefer Asus anyway.

They're fucking shit. I've had to replace once twice here and it's less than 50% of the stated load.

There's a Be Quiet unit in there now like the rest of the PCs in my place.

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.

I had a problem with the lighting in my Logitech mouse. I desoldered all the LEDs :)

Not to mention said test is in a general purpose computer and we're talking about a monitor here, with a fixed load.

The max brightness on the FO48U is 385 nits, the LG CX 48 has a max brightness of ~740. That'll really impact the sort of high level HDR features you expect at that price point while paying a premium to use the same Apple TV or Shield Pro as your smart portion.

That 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.

I 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.

It would be interesting to see some metrics on the number of people that use tuners on TVs now days.

Why isn't the alternative to keep your TV off the network?

For now, that works.

It's easy to imagine a time when the TV includes it's own 5G modem or that Samsung would make a deal with Amazon or Comcast for access to their wifi mesh networks so the TV can get online without user intervention.

Amazon sidewalk [1] has entered the chat. The article focuses on "neighbors" but I'm pretty sure the main use case is to enable smart TVs and other IOT to phone home despite being disallowed.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-...

> I'm pretty sure the main use case is to enable smart TVs and other IOT to phone home despite being disallowed.

I highly doubt that. Rolling out this network is a lot of work and I'm nearly 100% certain this is to reduce claims of non-working devices caused by bad WiFi, plus maybe the option to sell network access on a wide range of devices.

Avoiding blocked network for TVs and other "smart" appliances is surely a nice benefit, but I doubt even 1% of people actually block network access (hell, most probably want it!). There's no way Amazon would pour that amount of effort into extracting that minuscule piece of tracking data.

Thanks for posting that. I was trying to remember what it was called and couldn't.

I once moved across the ocean and newly purchased LG TV refused to work because I am now in the wrong region. Off it went to a landfill, this perfect piece of hardware :-(

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?

Unbelievable. Not even as a monitor?

How did it know?

I guess it picked up my ip address.

Might have picked it up from the SSID.

This distopyan deal is surely coming soon. And unfortunately may apply to far more type of stuff we take home.

Or segregate it from the network (e.g. using a VLAN). Some folk might need the freeview/on-demand TV apps (if they're trying to avoid having other smart devices for these things (e.g. fire sticks and Apple TVs et al) and these require at least working outbound internet access.

That's the problem of current consumers. The modern TVs have an equivalent no smart same spec screen but only available to corporate users with all the modern inputs just without the smart. If only we could get access to that market.

> If only we could get access to that market.

You often have access to it, it's just a higher price (sometimes double) because it isn't subsidized by advertising.

The subsidies from advertising don't cause thousands of dollars of difference. It's maybe a few dozen, or few hundred at the most. Facebook's yearly revenue per user is about 33 USD, and they probably have a way better grip on your eyeballs. A TV lives about 5 to 7 years.

The way larger component is due to effects of scale which punishes products that run in small batches, and the effect that the "business" version of something is usually more expensive, but available with higher quality, than the consumer version.

You can shop for bare display panels at https://panelook.com

Building the TV receiver part shouldn't be too difficult. Perhaps someone could write a blog about it.

Then you're very welcome to write it if it's that easy /s

I have looked in to fixing a new but broken pc monitor that way but it would end up the same cost as a new monitor, at least in my case.

You 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.

It 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.

You could create a black hole wifi SSID or vlan to frustrate their efforts if this was discovered to be the case.

I 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.

If you don't want it constantly connected ie to use built-in apps, the step with allowing it out once is needless or even potentially harmful.

Of course I don't know your usage of it, but generally there is nothing worth downloading in those firmwares, only potentially new ways to serve ads and be obtrusive if facing issues with that. You don't want your previously-OK TV to start showing you some warnings after updating it.

If I'm not mistaken, smart TVs can still communicate by via inaudible sound signals directly to other devices. Spooky.

Really? 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?

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.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/there...

Be careful which apps you allow to use your phone's microphone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

Slightly different than what gp was talking about but also deals with using invisible audio for DRM

Audio is usually invisible

I 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)

Roku watches what you are watching and shares that data with their trusted partners. Same as Android TV (whatever it's called now) and Amazon Fire.

AFAIK, the only mainstream streaming device that doesn't do this is Apple TV.

I got screwed by Sony for a smart TV that was abandoned within a year. Then none of the streaming sticks worked on it due to HDCP compability issues.

In the end I bought a broken Samsung 32" 1080p mostly dumb TV on ebay for £0.99, fixed it (power supply capacitor problem) and steal all my content and ship it on USB sticks to the TV which will quite happily play h264 / mp3 encoded stuff.

Fuck the whole industry.

That doesn't surprise me at all. I just also know Roku has been around forever, so I trust that if a new service is added, it will be there. I don't know that I can say the same about other manufacturers (not that they _don't_, I just don't have the same level of trust there).

Eventually it should be there. For example, it took a long time for HBOMax to make it to Roku because they couldn't agree on how much of a cut of the subscription fees Roku should get.

This is called ACR and you can disable it in settings. The FTC sued Vizio when they added it to their TVs without a way to turn it off.

You can block them talking back to the mothership using Pi-Hole or PFBlockerNG.

This can be disabled in the setup/settings

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.

I 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.

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

Is there a list of such manufactures? Don't want to accidentally buy one of their products.

Well 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)

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).

I once had a so called "Radio Roku" where the main service has been discontinued (the website where you could put in your favorite stations etc.), so basically the answer is don't trust no one.

I think the answer is "don't rely upon an external service".

BTW, Roku supported the Radio Roku service for 10 years after the SoundBridge was discontinued, plus the device isn't locked down -- there are community-based efforts which still let you use an old SoundBridge, with a little effort. However, I'd argue that SoundBridge-era Roku is a VERY different company than streaming video-era Roku.

Samsung 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.

Can you avoid these problems by not allowing the TV to connect to the internet?

I 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.

Have 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.

Other brands are equally bad in my experience sadly.

Can you recommend a non-smart TV? Seems like everything is smart these days.

Get an LG. Problem solved.

did 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)#201...

What's the point of a TV to begin with. All oyu need is a display and a laptop.

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