Slashdot Mirror
Samsung TV Owners Furious After Software Update Leaves Sets Unusable (theguardian.com)
Thousands of owners of high-end Samsung TVs have complained after a software update left their recently acquired $1,800 sets with blank, unusable screens. From a report: The Guardian has been contacted by a number of owners complaining that the TVs they bought -- in some cases just two weeks ago -- have been rendered useless by an upgrade sent out by Samsung a week ago. Others have been posting furious messages on the company's community boards complaining that their new TVs are no longer working. The company has told customers it is working to fix the problem but so far, seven days on, nothing has been forthcoming. The problem appears to affect the latest models as owners of older Samsung TVs are not reporting the issue. The report doesn't identify the models that have been affected. But we scanned the forums and found that at least UE49MU7070, UE49MU7070TXXU, and MU6409 models are affected.
Yes, and unambiguously so.
Personally, if for some reason I was forced to have a "smart" TV, I would be very certain to make sure it never gets connected to the internet.
There's also another relatively recent trend that plays into this: the idea that updates are always good and should be applied automatically. It was never the case that this was a safe practice. Updates need to be carefully evaluated before applying them.
I own a Samsung smart tv. At first I connected via wifi but then wanted a faster more reliable connection in my apartment sometimes ran a cable and switched to Ethernet. I realized that I wasn't using the smart tv functions so I ditched the Ethernet cable.
Wifi off Ethernet unplugged no big deal. Except I noticed random connections from an unknown MAC address to my wifi router during a router upgrade. So I watched it. It would connect for a day and then disconnect for weeks. I got curious and enables wifi on my tv again and guess the MAC address that was used. So even in it's wifi off but tv on state it would attempt to connect to wifi.
That's when I banned the MAC address on the router. No misc packets for you sneaky tv.
Personally I prefer using a roku and hardwiring it to the router. Easy to disconnect, faster speeds for streaming.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Since I bought my Samsung, I've received many system updates to them. Never any new features, but the performance and reliability have tanked. My TV boot loops most every time I try to start it after having not started for a while. Whoever works on the operating system for Samsung are complete idiots.
You're putting yourself at the mercy of third parties with your tv. If hulu and pandora decide to change their api and your manufacturer doesn't push an update, because it's more then a year old, then I'll see you back crying about how unfair it is.
Yep, I just had to replace my otherwise fully functional BD player, because Hulu had changed their API, and Sony no longer provided updates for this model.
The really sucky thing is that a new shiny 4k BD player lacks a lot of functionality that the cheaper old one had, like analog audio/video out, storing authentication on USB (so when re-playing an already played BD, there's no delay while it contacts the mothership) and an information display. Heck, they've even skimped on the power cable, which can no longer be disconnected/replaced. And I'm sure that after 2 years, firmware/software updates will cease. Consumerism and planned obsolescence at its worst.
So what happens if that smart tv has built in wifi, and connects to some neighbour's unprotected open access hotspot?
If I had to have a smart TV, probably the best matter of course would be having it have its own SSID and VLAN, with a connection going through a VPN so geolocation registers some other place, and so it can't find anything useful on the LAN it sits on.
Ironic that modern IoT devices have to be treated as hostile network entities in order to have decent security.
What's cool is the crap some older Vizio smart TV's pull. If you allow outbound DNS and NTP but block everything else (so that your TV clock works but it otherwise can't connect anywhere) then the TV assumes you have a full internet connection and proceeds to try to initiate contact with relevant servers. You'd expect this to fail since (since you are blocking these packets) and for it to periodically try again on some reasonable schedule.
Only Vizio in their infinite wisdom decided the appropriate retry was to DNS lookup again and if it passes then to immediately try connecting. The result is around 200 packets per second from the TV constantly the entire time its on as it rapid fire retries connections infinitely.
So if I can't buy Vizio anymore and now Samsung is out then WTF do I buy if I want a quality TV?