> Samsung explained that these sorts of ads were supposed to be opt-in only and was working with Yahoo to improve the system.
No user would opt-in to commercials, ever. I don't believe for a second this system was designed with opt-in in mind.
Whenever an ill conceived feature like this is brought to the light, it's always explained as a bug, glitch, or some screw up in engineering. Well, it's not a bug. It was specifically designed to do what it does. If anybody screwed up it's the people at the top that think smart TVs are a good idea.
Not strictly true. I use Plex, and I've opted into watching movie previews before the movie I choose actually plays.
I get to control how many, what type they are (only for new movies, etc), when. It's nice.
These are ads for other movies. But that I'm watching a movie sort of indicates I am interested in watching more movies in the future.
These TVs were supposedly pausing a movie in the middle and rolling a Pepsi commercial. I already know about Pepsi. I do not like it. But assume I did... assume I did like it, how would I ever want to watch a Pepsi commercial?
And this is true of everyone. No one who buys a $1000 Samsung television is ignorant of the existence of Pepsi. And if the ad isn't trying to inform the ignorant of a new product, what exactly are they hoping to accomplish? They're hoping to brainwash us.
That's always unacceptable. But for Samsung to tell people that they no longer own their televisions, that they're no longer allowed to control them, that's bizarre.
Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the software that would make for a good experience.
Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together.
A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many 100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years.
EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble, forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG, Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS might lead them to be an exception here)
I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.
> Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together.
I think combined printers and scanners are a much better idea than Smart TVs because (1) you get more benefit (footprint savings) from the combination with all-in-one printer/scanners than with Smart TVs, and (2) IME, printer replacement is desired more often than scanner replacement, and the printer is also the more expensive part; so you lose less by tieing replacement schedules together compared to Smart TVs, where the "brain" is the more frequently replaced part when replaced separately, but the display is the more expensive part.
If my MFC ever starts printing random ads every 'n' scans or pages printed it's going in the bin.
IF I consider buying a Samsung 'Smart' TV in the future, it better have clear abilities to disable this kind of adserving crap. In any case, I forsee some appropriate rules being added to the house firewall.
Additional thought:
Is there a Web site where you can list products or services you HAVEN'T purchased, giving the value lost to the supplier, and why you didn't buy? Might generate some interesting stats?!
Hmm...'whyididntbuy.com' is on sale for over $2K...where can I document my non-purchase of that!?
Nice idea, but then the money grabbing corporates will just use the "freely submitted user data" to shaft the rest of us by jacking up the price of any simpler / less-smart products. Unfortunately telling 'them' why they lost a sale is unlikely to help 'us' in the long run.
I had a friend whose printer wouldn't scan because it was out of ink. Needless to say she threw it in the bin and bought one that was slightly less worse.
That's true to some extent, but I think that in part, smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined music player and phones are a terrible idea. Er, that is, were widely considered a terrible idea, thanks to ubiquitous clunky software, until 2007 when Apple did it right. And ever since then it's been considered obviously beneficial that you don't have to deal with two separate physical devices.
With TVs you're not usually lugging the devices around, but the TV has to be turned on and have volume (and sometimes other settings) managed with a separate remote. Since they typically have multiple HDMI ports, while the set-top boxes you mention don't have HDMI passthrough, you're encouraged to multiplex devices from the TV too, which requires manually selecting between numbered inputs with only a dumb OSD to help coordinate things. (If you have external speakers you might use a receiver to multiplex instead, but now you have a third remote and another dumb UI, not to mention potential latency issues for gaming.) In practice, the result is that among regular users, nobody can use someone else's TV without first being coached on their particular idiosyncratic combination of remotes, let alone try to play their own content by plugging a device in or wireless streaming or something shocking like that. Supposedly HDMI CEC helps with this somewhat by letting the device control the TV; I haven't used a setup with it, but there's only so much a standard for connecting disparate devices can do.
I want one remote - with the option to use my phone or voice control if I lose the remote - and a single, good UI that controls everything. That's only going to happen with a smart TV, but maybe the right device has yet to be made.
(One potential solution to obsoletion is for a manufacturer to make the brains of the TV a separate detachable part that fits into the design, like a laptop battery. Another would be to standardize on one HDMI port per TV, with CEC support and no UI when something is plugged in, so that you're basically required to plug in a box that then takes over the experience. Yeah, like that's going to happen.)
Hardware combinations are mostly a terrible idea unlike software combinations that can be patched with updates. If your music player on your phone malfunctioned it shouldn't be a difficult remedy to push out an OTA update. Try that when your printer won't align thus relegating it to a bulky and expensive scanner (if that part still works).
There isn't a solution to devices becoming obsolete because manufacturers would sell less of a new product if the old one worked fine in perpetuity. Not only this but old iPhones, for example, run worse with new iOS versions because new versions are coded for new hardware. Hence the need to upgrade periodically. How many of us have a 486 that will run Dragon Age?
That's why I suggested making the brains of the smart TV separable - in other words, somewhat similar to the current situation, but with tighter integration between the TV display, speakers, and ports and the box. Samsung seems to be doing something like that:
It being Samsung, the hardware upgrade was apparently offered after a single year and completely redid the UI, but there's no reason the same principle can't be executed competently.
If you're the real Comex of iOS JB lore then I very much appreciate your work and you have my utmost respect.
So from what I understand about the Evolution Kit, it attaches to TVs 2012 and later and provides them with a boost to put them almost on par with 2013/2014+ TVs? Doesn't this cannibalize sales of new Smart TVs?
They already did that kind of thing, but it seems to have died off. My TV has an MHL port, and I've got an MHL roku plugged into it. One remote controls both the TV and the roku. Specific buttons get passed through to the roku. It's actually really nice.
I have a 2014 non-smart LG TV and a FireTV at home and have been fighting the "I only want a single remote" fight for quite a while. The FireTV is able to switch on the TV using HDMI CEC (and shut it off after 30 minutes of inactivity) but I'm still using the TV remote to control the speaker volume.
Funny enough, I had a single remote setup for one brief shining moment in 2008 with the second generation Apple TV; the AppleTV would switch on and off my HDMI TV using some precursor to CEC - the same sleep/wake function that modern PC monitors use - and could also control the volume using the up/down buttons on the remote by modulating the sound going over the HDMI connection. Unfortunately, Apple ripped this audio control functionality out with a software update a few months after the product was released and I was forced to break out the second remote again and eventually replaced the AppleTV. But the point is it is possible to have only one remote with an HDMI connected set top box, but that feature isn't a priority in the world of cable boxes and audio receivers.
Anyway, my experience with smart TVs is that they're a waste of money and incredibly frustrating compared to set top boxes like Roku/Chromecast/FireTV/AppleTV. On top of that, my experience with TV remotes is that I don't want manufacturers like LG, Samsung or Sony making my primary remote control. They invariably feel cheap, slow and clunky whereas Amazon/Apple and even Roku do a very good job.
The software on my 2011 Samsung "smart" TV has always sucked and is unusable. My initial reaction was that they went cheap on the processor (the network connection is hard-wired). It's just too slow to be usable and Youtube never played properly. I just want more HDMI ports at this point. I don't mind the external devices. With the revelation of the ad delivery, I have no interest in doing a software upgrade.
Yes. Look for "commercial displays". You know those industrial looking NEC monitors with the tiny bezels that are turned sideways to be departure/arrival boards in airports ?
I use one of those as a TV. Is wonderful. Will probably last 20 years. Prior to that I used a panasonic commercial plasma. Still running after 10 years.
Neither of them have any smarts whatsoever. They're not even that expensive, which makes sense because many installations use 8 or 12 of them at a time as screenwalls.
Newegg has a "large format display" category for big monitors. 46" seems to be a popular size. There's some pretty cheap 1080p ones in there, but I don't know anything about their image quality.
>Not really. Nearly every TV worth considering is also a Smart TV. There used to be several great midrange “dumb” TVs, but they’re all pretty much gone. You don’t have to use them, and you’re probably still better off getting a media streamer (since they have more content sources). As far as 3D goes, we’re starting to see good TVs that lack 3D
There are plenty of companies that sell budget TVs without Smart features. Visio, Magnavox, and even Samsung's low end TVs dont have Smart features.
If you are looking for a top of the line TV it may be hard to find (but is the display really better than a budget Samsung, are we paying extra for Smart features?).
TVs meant for commercial installations (hotels, hospitals, digital signage, etc) often either have no smart features, or have fully user-controllable smart features (e.g., think hotel menus).
I'm still using a 10-year-old 42" Panasonic Commercial Plasma, no tuner, no "smart" features, stellar picture, totally expandable, totally reliable. They stopped making them of course.
Yes. I brought one a year or so ago (40 inches I think) and it isn't smart (that is it doesn't have an internet connection option) but it does have the ability to e.g auto tune channel discovery and play music and movies from the attached usb stick (super useful feature btw) so it isn't like a tv of yesterday either.
I imagine the televisions you tend to see ads for or that are displayed most prominently in stores are those that they want to sell (no shit) and thus those tend to be the smart tvs.
I picked up a Panasonic Viera that is entirely bereft of smart features, not even a network port. About 2/3rds the price of equivalent quality screens with smart functionality, too.
That said, simply not plugging a smart TV into the network will solve most of the problems with it.
Great responses, and from reading them I realized I should have qualified as "a good or high quality display." Which many responders assumed, and there's some good direction to explore here.
Smart TVs being a good idea, all depends on who you are.
It's good for TV manufacturers, because old TVs get older faster (outdated processor / software and so on).
For consumers however, having a separate box for the "smart" part of your TV is much better, because it makes it easier to upgrade.
Personally, I prefer the dumbest possible TV. Most of the time, I don't need a new panel, all I need is an upgrade of whatever smartbox I'm using at the moment. So far my Chromecast is carrying me quite well. The biggest upgrade of my TV I'll be doing in the near future will be an upgrade to 4K and/or maybe OLED down the line.
Every "Smart TV" I've seen is like a dumbed down version of a real device like a Chromecast or an Apple TV.
How do you make something so brutally garbage, anyway? Some of these TVs take so long to register a button press you have to wonder if they aren't using a 6502 inside to power the thing.
The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. The Amiga had near flawless, real-time response and these things refresh at, maybe, a few frames per second.
Some of these TVs take so long to register a button press you have to wonder if they aren't using a 6502 inside to power the thing.
Amusingly enough, my completely dumb pair of computer monitors (also made by Samsung, but before they started making things "smart") has a 6502-based SoC driving the OSD, and there is no perceptible lag at all.
These "smart" TVs seem to be based on ARM SoCs running at few hundred MHz to 1GHz+ and probably have more processing power than a high-end desktop PC in the mid 2000s.
I think it's all because of the software - tons of bloat.
What's worse is when you do not think that the Smart TV registered your button press and you send another after a second or two. Then you'll get two keypresses queued up and fire at once and then you have exited your app/screen/etc. Yay. DirecTV's apps (even on their latest Genie DVR) are the worst - you hit the right button and wait about 8 seconds for the apps to load. Why even bother? Someone surely tests these things and sees the laggish behavior and just say, "Fuck it! Good enough! Ship it and never update it!"
Most of the time, in my opinion, and from my experience, is that non-functional requirements are never defined from their business analysts, and it's the same in many places.
A lot of places won't define performance requirements, as it's not their forethought to do so. They care about functional requirements, and if it meets those, then in their mind, their work is done. I've worked in several places (big names, too), that don't define non-functional stuff until after their beta is shipped and people start complaining.
> The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with.
I don't know about the American market. Over here (France), set-top boxen aren't so bad. And there are regular software upgrade; some of them even include games and apps.
In Canada it's like he said though. Press a button, there is just enough of a delay to wonder if you pressed it hard enough, then it starts moving... slowly.
It may have to do that often actions on set top boxes are related to accessing content, for which the software has to check permissions; these are usually embedded in the stream (think mumultiplexed), and the decoder needs to receive the frames before being able to extract the content and display it. Cable network has very high latency (compared to fiber or adsl).
If some of the credential checks are stored in a separate device (dongle, smartcard ), then it could take even longer.
> Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV?
I don't. For the same reason I don't want all-in-one desktop computers -- the display is both a substantial portion of the expense and the part that gets outdated the slowest. So, I'd rather replace the parts that provide the content to display separately from the display.
I'd rather replace my Chromecast for new functionality than replace my TV.
I don't. I bought a 55 inches LG OLED and basically connect it to a computer.
It is an amazing device for work. In 2 or tree years I will change my computer, but not my screen.
People are buying 4Ks screens today, with quantum dots LCDs and OLED you could display color for which no specification exist yet!!
In one or two years you will have devices that could use the color space.
There is very little content for 4K. No affordable computer is going to display google earth at 4Ks and 60 fps, but in the near future they will appear.
I have a Smat TV from LG and basically what it does is update itself through wifi.
I don't have Netflix to watch on it. I don't share files on the network to stream from it. I don't watch Youttube on it, either through my phone or through the TV's app. I just plug my laptop into the HDMI port, my wife watches cable (most basic package with internet), I maybe play Xbox 360 twice a year. Most of the non-smart features are also useless for me. The standard settings are so good enough for me that I only switch input ports and change the volume.
I think the opposite. Why would I buy a smart TV, pay the premium for that, get shitty software that I get stuck with for 10 years, including its obsolete hardware and processor, when I could just buy a $100 box that does the same thing if not more, made by companies who specialize in this stuff (Google, Apple, Roku, Amazon), and change it say every 3 years?
I disagree. Just like my printer, I want my display to be mostly dumb. Fewer things to break, first of all. Also, "smart" devices are usually pretty badly designed. I'll plug in my own choice of brain, thank you.
Someone at Samsung has been watching too much Black Mirror. I'm guessing Samsung has shelved the microtransactions to skip commercials...for now. This was definitely intentional and due to there being little punishment for this <s>feature</s> bug they likely wanted to see what they could get away with.
> No user would opt-in to commercials, ever. I don't believe for a second this system was designed with opt-in in mind.
The occidental mindset is heavily geared against advertising. If you got free rebate coupons, gifts, etc. as rewards for opting in, would you still refuse it?
I'm trying to say that we don't necessarily see the whole picture, and the article doesn't give hints about the purpose of that "feature".
> "The occidental mindset is heavily geared against advertising."
As opposed to the oriental mindset? Speaking as one, I'll still take no ads, thanks. IMO it's a mistake to look at East Asian cities (and the assault of advertising it presents) as some kind of preference for advertising - in the same way you can't look at LA and come away with the conclusion "wow, people really love being stuck in traffic!".
I think that people from the west tend to see the negative aspect of advertising: people over here think "annoyance" (all the answers to my provocative post were like that — yeah, small sample, not significative), whereas in Asia it seems to me (but I may be wrong) that people see the positive side: the image I have is of people thinking "opportunity of bargain". Maybe I don't understand it. Websites filled with tiny ads, streets covered with neons and shop signs, they might very well pretend. And indeed, they don't have a choice, Like LA people stuck in traffic because there are no other ways, websites are just like that and consumers have to do with it.
Its getting hard to buy something sold as a consumer TV that isn't a "Smart TV", but then, very few people need a TV, per se, these days. If your content comes from electronic devices rather than an antenna, what you really need is a monitor with HDMI ports -- and big, quality monitors are available.
[0] And, even with an antenna, you can get an external tuner.
This business practice of hiding secret drawbacks in Terms of Service need be sent to the courts and stopped. In the history of contact law, the practice has come, been outlawed, reinvented, been outlawed again, and repeated with new schemes every 10-20 year or so. Last time it was Hidden fees and surcharges, before that, incomplete prices and hidden costs. The law adapted and with it business practices, but the lure of addition revenue after sale are still going strong.
So instead of hiding costs in contracts, companies now simply takes control of the property they have sold. Same attack vector, same intent as before, and contract law is lagging behind as usually. It is extremely doubtful that this kind of TOS is legal, and without the TOS, Samsung is commercially invading peoples private property. They are not allowed to plant advertisement signs on land they don't own, and a TOS which no one reads or understand should not change that fact.
Wikipedia: "Asymmetric recognition in this way is authority without responsibility, on the side of the Master, and responsibility without authority, on the side of the Slave. And Hegel's argument is that unless authority and responsibility are commensurate and reciprocal, no actual normative statuses are instituted." (EULA=master, customer=slave.)
Smart TVs are completely unnessary. I don't want apps on my TV. Sure, apps on something connected to my TV can be nice, but even the most basic TVs have too many features.
Built-in speakers? They sound awful and I have an amp. Get rid of them.
Oh, you cropped my 1080P HDTV signal? Well, I've plugged in a computer, so I need you to display the whole frame. Oh, less than half of TVs even let you turn that feature off? Well fuck!
TVs don't need to be anything more than monitors. They can have special features, like 3D, or built-in cameras, but make it something that I can plug into something else.
How Samsung thought they could record private conversations in people's homes and push ads into their private videos without consequence is unbelievable. I will NEVER buy a smart TV.
I love my AppleTV, and I would buy an Apple TV if one came out, for a few reasons. I actually only use my ATV to watch Netflix and buy Doctor Who and Archer off iTunes, but I'd buy a TV made by Apple because I feel like they would do a good job.
My TV, when I hit the power button on the remote, takes about 5 seconds to give me any indication that it heard me; I then get another 5 seconds of the LG logo before I get dumped onto whatever input I was last on.
In comparison, when I move my mouse on my computer, my Apple cinema display wakes up almost instantaneously (display), and my AppleTV goes from sleep mode to showing me the last menu I was on in less than a second (processing).
Thus, I expect an Apple television to be on and available to use within moments of my requesting it, and off as soon as I tell it I'm done.
The AppleTV 3rd Gen also maxes out at about 1W of power used[1], which means that there's no reason why the brains of a smart TV shouldn't be able to be on 100% of the time, ready at any moment to power on for incoming content, rather than having my television add 30s to the simple act of showing someone a YouTube video.
That said, Apple make their money by making high-quality, high-margin devices, and not by racing to the bottom of the price structure and selling out customers to make ends meet.
I disagree about the speakers but agree with everything else. I will not buy a "SmartTV", give me a A/V interface, that's all I want. I'll swap out Roku's or consoles or computers on the back end over standard interfaces. The rest of it is a massive security hole, and apparently also a violation of privacy.
and the disagree option is somehow missing, so they can conveniently default it to being unselected and you're "agreeing" whether or not "I Agree" is selected. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
This reminds me of Android's terrible UI for opting in to GPS snoop recording^H^H^HGoogle Location Services: You can either (disagree) OR (agree and not answer again). It is not possible to to disagree once and for all! It's like they're trying to catch you off guard.
I guess the text tries to cover both opt-in and opt-out dialog boxes, which perhaps indicates that somewhere in the admin level configuration is an option to choose which mode the service should work in.
Or Samsung and Yahoo just did not understand each other and this dialog is a collateral damage.
The whole voice recognition thing seemed to me to be an unfair storm in a teacup to me, but this.... This is beyond ridiculous. My next TV will not be a Samsung, whether they fix this or not.
Oh this is the worst part, i could once not start my viasat-app on smart-tv because samsungs, not viasats, servers were down. The workaround was to reconfigure the dns to point samsung to a local server that just said "im alive" and then i could start my apps and use them without any problems. T_T
Some people like the concept of having fewer boxes to plug in. That means fewer cords, fewer remotes, etc. Personally I would love to have a TV running a decent OS (as long as it still boots instantly).
Unfortunately TV manufactures do such a shitty job with the software. Both in terms of quality/performance/usability, and now with privacy issues and injected ads.
Exactly. If it was an option to get a smart tv that was actually competent then it wouldn't be such an easy decision to avoid them like the plague.
Though even then, I'm always going to have devices plugged into my TV. A combination of my PS3 and PC can access any of the content I might want to watch.
In theory: Nothing extra to buy and decide about. Fewer chords, boxes, remotes etc. Better integrated and unified UX between live TV/recorded TV/streaming TV/downloaded TV etc.
In practice. Very little.
I'm still waiting for someone to do smart TV right with good software (Hell, just pay a couple of the XBMC devs to port the latest version to your TV) and an open platform with support for third party and DIY software.
The TV that I wanted was not available without the smart functions. In fact, most new TVs aren't. It's not like I chose to pay extra for the smart stuff.
Its worth noting that a TV is already a combination device (though, mostly, a sensible one): display + TV tuner.
In many cases, you can get a similar display separately, branded as a "Monitor" or "Commercial Display" or something similar, with HDMI inputs, etc., but no TV tuner and no smart features.
If you are using locally-stored media, internet sources and/or a cable box as your content sources, you probably don't need a TV tuner built into your display any more than you need "Smart" features built into it.
I purposely bought a Philips smart TV this year as the only stuff I really watch is Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube and my own ripped content. This TV advertised apps for all of that and DLNA support, so I figured I wouldn't need any other boxes. I have used XBMC before and that worked great, except there is still no Netflix support, so I figured I'd try something with it built in.
Netflix works perfectly, and I really can't complain about it. The interface is very user friendly and it is very responsive. I guess it's pretty much the same as you get on an Apple TV or Amazon whatever-its-called box, but it's nice to have it built in.
YouTube works pretty well. It's sometimes a bit slow to skip to the next video, but being able to use my phone or laptop as a remote to queue up content is pretty nice.
iPlayer is pretty hopeless. If I play a SD video it plays in the wrong aspect ratio, and HD video just keeps buffering (Netflix 720p is fine though...). The interface is nice though.
DLNA started off well, the browser is pretty basic but even over wifi I was able to stream 1080p which was impressive. Then some videos I tried just crashed the player randomly after 10 minutes, so I gave up on that.
I've now got a Raspberry Pi with XBMC/Kodi running. It's a bit slow (seems to be inefficiencies of the software, as even idle in the menu it uses 80% of the CPU), but 1080p movies play back fine even over wifi. I use that in place of the DLNA on my TV and use get_iplayer to fix that. They both support HDMI CEC which means I can use just the TV remote to control the Raspberry Pi without any addons.
There are a few other things I should mention too:
The whole interface of the TV is HTML and Javascript (it runs Opera 9 under the hood) and it isn't very optimised. This means even simple things such as pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu) takes 30 seconds to load.
I specifically bought this TV and an amplifier (both Philips) that support HDMI ARC, this means that audio can be sent from the TV (or peripherals) to the amplifier via just the HDMI cable. When it works it works great, but most of the time for whatever reason it just doesn't. I ended up buying a $3 optical S/PDIF cable from eBay which works as expected (i.e. it just works) and achieves the same end goal. If I'd known it would have been this flakey, I would have just gone that route in the first place and I could have got a cheaper amplifier.
The TV also has Skype built in, and an optional camera for $100. I'm glad I didn't buy that at the same time as the TV...
So what's the purpose of a smart TV? I have no idea. I would prefer a 'dumb' TV, but it seems pretty much everything is a smart TV now.
Edit:
I also looked into building my own interface for it. The 'Smart TV' home screen has ads on it loaded over HTTP, so I setup my router to sent that traffic to my own server and served up a JavaScript redirect. It worked well, but I never got around to taking it further. According to the spec [0] the TV supports 1080p60 x264 at 25 Mbit/s.
How in the world can this be any better than Rasberry Pi (or some equivalent) + dumb TV?
I see an opening for a 'TV Smartify' business selling customized Rasberry Pi's (or some equivalent) that you attach to your TV, plug in with HDMI/power/network, and go. Include a custom OS ready to go, a HDMI cable, wireless Keyboard/Mouse, customer case, and a power supply and sell it upmarked as a convenience (since the target market would be those who wouldn't even know what a Rasberry Pi was).
This means even simple things such as pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu) takes 30 seconds to load.
Is that an exaggeration? 30 seconds is far beyond what I would consider unusable, and a TV which takes that long to switch between sources would be quickly returned.
No, I've used a Samsung Smart TV a few times and this is hardly hyperbole. When you "start" the TV it's in some sort of lite mode, actually going to one of the menus requires booting up the secondary operating system which can take a few minutes. Every menu is painfully slow to navigate, the interfaces are displayed at a few frames a second, and the wifi built in is beyond useless. Trouble is, it's almost impossible to buy a dumb TV as far as I can tell. You're stuck with a stupidly buggy, outdated and vulnerable system that snoops on you if you connect it to a network. Fantastic stuff.
My Sony KDL-46HX853 also has poor performance for the Source button. When turning the TV on from "standby" it displays a "Please wait" when you press the source button within the first few seconds (I haven't timed it, but it's long enough to be annoying). Apart from that, stepping through the sources is problematic, with it being laggy to respond, pausing on certain sources, and causing you to overshoot.
The next time I buy a TV, I'll try out the Source selection in a showroom first.
"Loading time" needs to be considered unacceptable by industry. It's really blatant. I was at a Subaru dealership, ready to plunk down on a brand new 2015 Impreza, when the guy told me they all have the touchscreen infotainment setup. I asked him to show it to me. We sat in the car, he turned the key, and the first thing that showed up on the screen was... a loading bar. I walked out and bought a 2011 Mazda.
Making me wait when I didn't have to before isn't acceptable. I don't have to wait with my "dumb" TV. I don't have to wait with my non-infotainment car radio. Whatever benefits you think your new product has, introducing load times makes it instantly unacceptable to me.
I found this funny because the fourth generation Mazda MX-5 (Miata) is being released this year and just the fact that it has an infotainment system jutting out of the top of the dash is causing a lot of criticism.
It's tricky because the US gov't is mandating backup cameras soon. I'm not opposed to that, per se, but car manufacturers have taken it as an opportunity to shove touchscreens into every car. Since they need some sort of screen for the camera anyway, why not slap in this infotainment system we spent all this money on?
But yeah, I'll never own a car with a TV screen in the dash. I'll stick to the used market if I have to. I've heard some manufacturers are sticking a small screen in the rear view mirror using some see-through mirror trick. That seems like a much better solution than what they did to the Miata.
Edit: Actually do you have some links to that criticism? Is it in the press? I'm super interested in the new Miata, but the screen really is a deal killer and I wonder if enough negative press would cause them to reconsider or change it for future years.
To be fair it's only being criticized heavily by Miata enthusiasts on sites like Miata.net or Jalopnik - those that want a pure sports car experience. They only account for a tiny fraction of the people who actually purchase the car.
It's not really the idea of the infotainment system that's the problem, it's the implementation. As you said, the rear view mirror would have been better received by those who understand back up cameras will be mandated but still don't want a big "iPad" on the dash. As for Mazda's infotainment system - I believe it's the same system as used on the Mazda 3 and 6 so you can look reviews on those vehicles.
You'll be able stream BBC iPlayer (as well as lots of other stuff) directly to your TV instead of having to download using get_iplayer. Nobody but me uses it yet so be prepared to find some bugs - but it should be fairly usable.
My parents recently purchased two Samsung TV's. A small (~32") one which powers off if any of the "Smart" features are used and a massive (~85") one that has some awful ghosting after only a month of use.
They replaced the 32" with a Vizio which has a terrible wifi adapter causing all videos to continuously buffer. I got fed up and installed a Chromecast. The Chromecast of course works fine, but it's much more difficult for older, non-tech people to use than a large "Smart" button on the TV remote.
Because the panels are commodities and market pressures are such that "Smart" TV features are the battleground that the manufacturers are trying to differentiate on. You can get a reference monitor, which will be the same panel as a $800 Smart TV for $4k.
I am considering [1] replacing my last TV (a 50" Panasonic reference plasma) with another reference monitor, but sadly plasma is no longer an option, unless I strike right. this. very. second.
Insofar as the Smart TV features promote instability and unusability, unwanted behavior, and privacy intrusions -- it may still be worthwhile to purchase dumb TVs even at a premium.
And if more people start avoiding Smart TVs because of the unreliability, unwanted behavior, and privacy issues -- it won't make sense for manufacturers to keep pushing them.
A bit disappointing that a hacker community's first reaction is to position against smart TVs.
Smart TVs are awesome, we just need open source firmware for them in the same way that we have DDWRT/OpenWRT, XBMC and such.
Imagine the control scheme using a wiimote-style pointer, built-in webcam, quad core CPU and an API to give you access to your viewing habits, or interface with other smart devices around your home.
Right now, I turn on my ps4 and the channel doesn't change automatically and turn on game mode, why? I have a smart TV, it should know exactly what I want to do.
I do still think this is a bug, and not intended by Samsung. My tv doesn't seem to be affected by it.
They will never be awesome. It is like having built in navigation in your car vs an iPhone. Built in is proprietary bs that will always be out of date, and hardware refreshes will take like 5+ years because how often do you get a new tv. Right now my roku runs about 1000x faster than my smart tv and is really just superior in every way. Stand alone boxes will always be better because the software will be better and hardware refreshes happen much faster.
That really doesn't make sense logically. The physical location of the computer doesn't affect whether it is proprietary or open source, or how frequently it will receive updates.
The navigation on your phone is probably better than the one in your car right now, but when Apple or Google take over the car system market you will have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in modern cars that have high quality software with fast update cycles. There is no reason why the same thing won't happen with TVs. In fact as mpeg, stated if you assume the firmware in your next Smart TV is open, it will be possible to run customer operating systems such as Android or XMBC giving you complete control without the external box or wires.
Edit: Though what you say about hardware refreshes is absolutely right.
Hardware refreshes are an absolute killer. I have a 2007 car, which works fine, and a 2010 iPad, which is no longer receiving OS updates. Welding the two together benefits neither.
The best compromise would be car-as-peripheral; have all the buttons map to a USB HID device connected to a flush-fit tablet dock. Just remember not to bridge the UI directly to the same CAN bus as the fly-by-wire throttle.
I have a 2300 pound, 2014 model year, gasoline powered bluetooth speaker, exactly as you suggest. In the showroom they had a "smart nav smart entertainment system" upgrade for only $1200 that was as much of a turd as the typical smart TV. Its hard to buy a dumb-stereo for a car that doesn't have BT pairing today.
Mostly I stream podcasts and audiobooks from my phone. Hit play on the phone, put the transmission in drive, thats my commute.
I think that a good point he was making has to do with " Right now".
How about we compare apples to apples and stop trying to make cases for the future, when google or apple take over the car system can mean 3-5 years from now.
> The physical location of the computer doesn't affect whether it is proprietary or open source
Yes, it does. When it comes bundled with another product, it'll be proprietary. Companies just don't bundle products to increase your freedom or their competitors power.
I agree with your general point, but my Sony TV automatically downloads firmware updates on a regular basis. The apps (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) are updated regularly, though the changes aren't always improvements.
That said, the apps on my TV are surprisingly serviceable. I can even stream video files directly to it (though an Apple TV does this with better reliability and video quality).
The only unforgivable failure is that it doesn't have a Twitch app, but neither does the Apple TV, XBox One, PS4 (it doesn't count if I can only watch PS4 games being streamed), or Wii U.
That is fine that there are firmware updates or whatever, but your smart tv is like 1000x slower than a roku 3 and doesn't have the app depth.
In 2 years it will be several more orders of magnitude worse than whatever new peripheral I have attached to my tvs, and they will have stopped updating the software on your tv because the hardware can't handle their little tv OS.
I have a few set top boxes too, but I'd like deeper integration with the tv firmware itself, and that's something that they can't do unless the firmware was open.
In which case, we could have the same regular updates you get with a roku.
People are starting to realise that the Internet Of Things Controlled By Someone Else is going to have the same petty awfulness as the web; unsolicited increasingly intrusive advertising and surveillance. Smartness becomes just another maintenance liability that requires regular security updates. I'm annoyed enough at having to update Flash again on the Win7/Media Centre PC that's my TV-watching setup.
(I put the PC in place after a series of set-top-box/PVRs from BT which came with the "BT Vision" service. That suffered from adverse updates that gradually made the interface infuriatingly slow.)
TVs really ought to pick up on HDMI activation/deactivation. I suspect the reason they don't is that it works 99% of the time but there are broken devices which would steal focus.
> A bit disappointing that a hacker community's first reaction is to position against smart TVs.
I emphatically disagree. "Smart TVs" are recognized as a bad idea, and as such are shunned. It would be disappointing _to me_ if this hacker community didn't think about whether or not new tech was appropriate, and just immediately accepted it as a great new shiny.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
I was never a fan of TV/VCR combos. If one side broke you were stuck with a clunky chimera of a device. The same is true if it becomes outdated. I've seen plenty of old TV/VCR combos hooked up to DVD players.
I'm not a fan of TV/PC combos either. The PC side will be outdated before the screen.
Smart TVs aren't awesome. They are the opposite of hacker ethos.
They are large, monolithic, proprietary, closed swiss-army knives. Hackers (by and large) like small, open, single purpose tools that they can combine however they like, in new ways not expected.
I don't have experience with any "smart" TVs, but my "DVD player" is running U-Boot and linux. If you download a "firmware upgrade" and run xxd or "strings" on it, it becomes pretty clear what OS is running.
I strongly suspect many/most "smart" TVs are running linux. (My fairly ancient DVD+VCR player runs VxWorks.)
> Right now, I turn on my ps4 and the channel doesn't change automatically and turn on game mode, why?
Mine does.
There's a really crappy HDMI protocol extension called HDMI-CEC (for Consumer Electronics Control). It allows for precisely this kind of thing. Unfortunately, because it was designed by committee, it's apparently not very good, and it's hard to actually get a setup that works with it properly. Notably, any kind of receiver in between your device and your TV usually causes it to not actually work, or for only parts of it to work (commonly, the receiver allows for power-on but blocks remote control).
In my case, I have my PS4 plugged directly onto a Panasonic TV. When I turn on my PS4, the TV turns on automatically and switches to the right input. And similarly, if I turn my TV on when it's on my PS4 input, or if I switch to the PS4 input after turning it on, the PS4 automatically turns on. Curiously, turning the PS4 off does not turn off the TV. Admittedly, this behavior can be annoying, because if I turn off my TV while it's set to the PS4 input (which is maybe 75% of the time), I can't turn it on again without the PS4 immediately booting up, even if I wanted to switch to another input. What I wish I could do is have the TV turn on automatically & switch inputs when turning on the PS4, but not the other way around. Another thing this feature does is let my TV remote control my PS4; for example, I can use the arrow buttons on my TV remote to navigate around the PS4 home screen. This is potentially useful for watching movies, although I haven't ever actually experimented with it.
Note that getting this to work requires turning on some settings that are ordinarily disabled. I didn't even know the PS4 had this capability until I started googling for what one of the disabled settings meant. Somewhere in PS4's settings there's an off-by-default setting called "Enable HDMI Device Link". Turn this on. Then check your TV settings for something similar. On my Panasonic there were two settings "VIERA Link" and "Power on Link" which needed to be on for this functionality. On Sony TV's it's probably called "Bravia Sync".
Smart TVs' apps generally lag FAR behind the equivalent apps on a Playstation, Xbox, Roku box or similar anyway, so it's generally a better option to go with a regular TV. The money you save can more than pay for a Roku box. Or even an Xbox 360 depending on brand.
A TV without the annoying apps, added commercials, and privacy issues is a smarter choice. Stop calling them dumb TVs. They're "Smarter TVs".
You know what I'm curious about? Why so many people rail against GPL for business use, claiming it makes it more difficult to monetize a product, but then companies like Samsung and Google turn around and use GNU/Linux and other GPL code on a project and then lock it down with proprietary blobs and DRM.
Doesn't seem to really be hurting them at all, but it is certainly hurting consumers that linux is being used to abuse peoples rights.
If I buy a TV with a quad core processor in it, there is no reason I should not, if I so choose (and potentially void warranty) that I shouldn't be able to install whatever I want to on that. The only technical limitations to rooting a Samsung smart tv are artificially placed there by Samesung, and with recent updates they made it so trying to root can brick your TV!
I would love to buy a completely FOSS smart tv, but it infuriates me to know I have linux but can't do anything with it on mine.
Contrary to popular opinion, I'm increasingly convinced that RMS was just a man ahead of his time and the principles of the GPL are more important than ever to uphold.
You're right; thanks. There is a difference between "providing source code" and "providing source code that may be built and run by the user". RMS was right, about tivoization.
If I had seen this story on The Onion, I would have laughed, and thought "that would never happen in the real world". But here we are. In the real world. My mind is blown. Just WOW.
That's it, I've had it. I'm going to set my router to take all traffic from the MAC address of my TV and route it to 127.0.0.1. I'll disable the redirect when I want to check for firmware updates, but that's it.
Might want to reconsider that last part. My Vizio had an update a week or so ago that seemingly broke optical audio out. In the future, I'm leaning towards the "if it ain't broke, don't let it patch itself" mantra.
Yes. When I moved into a new apartment I would likely have clicked an add for curtains (especially if they offered to make them in my measurements) and possibly other things, what I got was months of ads for a particular aparment listing site - completely worthless although I considered clicking their ads just to cost them money.
I have disabled adblocker on facebook so that I can laugh at their stupid ads for bad products but the day a really good offer turns up I will totally be willing to click it. The reasons ads have gotten such a bad reputation is that most marketing agencies are more interested in having sex and playing golf than making better ads (told to me by actual marketing people) I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook would make at least twice their current revenue if they tried to optimize how companies targeted ads rather than chasing 0.1% conversion optimizing.
Only because they're unique and don't get repeated for months on end. If you could show me a unique ad every time, I might be ok with it. But in general, I see the same shit day in and day out and that's what's annoying about it.
I actually watch some of the ads on YouTube Channels that I like (Provided the ads are moderately interesting). It is a small sacrifice to pay to get content that I like for free.
This sounds humorous, but it's also true; this will damage Samsung's reputation and affect everything sold under the name, not just televisions. The little bit of extra revenue goes to one division, but hurts the others, and they should take action to defend themselves. I would certain hesitate before buying a Samsung-branded phone, watch or VR headset now.
Thing is, they are probably working together already. Witness the samsung-phone-only video inputs that started appearing on TVs and monitors for the last few years.
Just a continuation on a theme, and I'd expect this to become a bigger thing. I imagine that advertising will continue to move closer and closer to the consumer and away from the "medium". Until recently, media ads were essentially controlled by the networks (whether radio or TV), but I would expect the trend to be towards cutting them out of it a bit.
In-game advertising is already a ~$1bn/year thing, and this seems a logical extension of that. Imagine if your TV could insert ads depending on exactly what you were watching, based on your specific habits--it's an ad company's wet dream. Coca Cola wouldn't have to spend the time figuring out which programs to advertise to, they could target specific customers without having to go to a second-order of research (who do we want to advertise to, and where are they?). That second step is completely cut out.
I hate it, but I could definitely see a trend in this direction. Isn't this essentially exactly what Google Glass is about? If Google can figure out exactly what you're looking at, exactly where you are and draw conclusions from that data, they have extraordinarily valuable information for advertisers.
This trend is nothing new, and is one of the main reasons that video CPMs for digital media are as high as they are. Sites like Youtube can bring a wealth of targeting data to the table, and Google is obviously very good at making that as accurate as possible. It is one of the main reasons behind their big push to get you logged-in whenever you use a Google service, device, browser, app, etc. A single GUID to link behavior across everything. One ring to rule them all so speak ;)
The brand new xmax 2014 Samsung SmartTVs models come with a crippled firmware. Many features are disabled until you connect to the internet and "update". You cannot even use the menu bar (smart hub) and therefor cannot access USB devices. For me this was the only time I attached the TV to the internet. The two different remotes have entirely different navigation buttons and changing a sender with the "mouse remote" is a nightmare. But LG and other TV manufactures are not better. Suggestion: Remove the dozens of buttons on your remote and scrap your complicated menu structure.
I would buy an Apple TV (a television screen, not the box) in a second - at least Apple (and Google) understand how to design an user interface. A simple remote like the second generation iPod touch wheel would be enough. Or a dumb TV, but they are already hard to find - and then you have to use at least two remotes with dozens buttons as well.
Step 1: Buy a projector.
Step 2: Buy a roku box, or a used laptop.
Step 3: Buy a decent pair of speakers.
Step 4: Set it all up.
Step 5: Enjoy a large screen that is also portable, and that probably cost significantly less than the same-size TV would have.
Good blackout curtains. Pretty much anything with HDMI input will do, honestly... I generally get projectors from places that recycle office furniture, you can get a 4000 lumen XGA projector for $75 that way.
I prefer LCD over DLP because they degrade more gracefully.
This is why I am not keen on smart TV's. They are getting too smart for what they should do. Voice control? Why? Otis slower and more annoying than a simple remote. Streaming content? Unless this is the One True TV the company will make, they will quickly drop support for it. Then, when FooBarTube (tm) comes out and is the new Netflix, good luck getting the software for it.
Do what I do: buy the TV for the nice screen and get a Roku 3. Your life will get easier.
I've become convinced there's no such thing as an "opt-in" feature. There are only obfuscated opt-out "features" that companies claim they meant to make "opt-in" as a way of mollifying the few who figure out who is to blame for the "feature". Meanwhile, the silent majority watches the advertising and Samsung watches the ad bucks roll in.
Isn't the solution to this just not having an internet-connected TV? I don't know about any of you but of the TVs I've used to run apps, the ones with an Xbox/PS or Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV run YouTube/Netflix/etc. a lot better than the ones that run these apps natively.
Not really. Dad installed smart TVs in his beach house (he figured it was easier than wiring up DVD players and Rokus in 10 rooms). While the apps do work, they are slow, clunky, and the UX is never as good as that which is delivered on dedicated streaming devices. The configuration is always buried, so switching accounts is an exercise in futility. So, he just leaves his Roku account signed in and deals with the clutter in his personal watch list.
At least in my case the apps for Netflix and Amazon get a lot of use. Netflix support was one of the key features I wanted when purchasing my current SmartTV.
No? I use my TV purely as monitor from a few HDMI video sources. Of course the TV malware could still scan for open wifi's and leak my information even if I haven't connected it to any of the other networks. Btw. Does HDMI standard allow data relay, so they could use connected devices to relay the data to 3rd parties over alternate network connections?
The only "Smart" feature I use on mine is Amazon Prime Video, and that's just because Amazon are too damn stubborn to support Chromecast streaming. The app on the TV is slow, clunky, and occasionally decides it doesn't feel like playing any video today.
Unless you go second hand, price of tech product does not drop. An entry level camera, phone, monitor is not yesterday high end model that dropped in price, it is a brand new model that can be made cheaper. We tend not to notice it, because basically entry level CPU and RAM is faster than older high end. But that is very visible when there is optic involved ( like camera, projectors, ... ) or other intangible ( DRM ink, size for mobile phone, smart feature )
For example - you don't like 16:9 monitor. Tough luck, you need to look at monitor produced for image professional to find something else ( well last time I looked for a monitor, which was some time ago ) Another one: in the middle of the camera pixel race, there were sweet spot models that just go replaced the year after and would end up on EBay for more than their original price.
So, all TV from cheap to expensive will become "smart". If you want a non-smart one will probably need to look at TV made for niche sectors, for a premium.
First of all, outbound filtering. You might want to look into it. I'm installing outbound filters for all my friends and family, with stuff like this it's not hard to help them see the benefit.
Second, what's the big deal? If it only takes 15-30 minutes for an ad to appear, simply return the TV the first time it displays one. I could understand the outrage if the TV waited until after the return period had expired before doing this, but this doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Return it and blog about your experience, naming and shaming the manufacturer, and share your experience with your friends and family as well so they can avoid the same mistake.
Shame on you Samsung for thinking it would ever be appropriate to insert advertisements into the consumer's own content.
Edit: As an afterthought, I wonder how the TV behaves if it can't access the Internet to download said Ads. Anyone with experience able to speak to this?
Basically, buy a NUC or 4K Android XBMC/Plex box, and use Smart TVs as dumb TVs with HDMI 2.0 input. BTW, I have just bought a Samsung UHD TV so it's completely necessary for me now...
Or do all of that and buy a dumb TV instead of the "smart" TV, putting the ~$200 savings into the NUC or other box. No sense in paying for a component you'll never use.
The salesperson conned my MiL into buying a smart TV, and/or it was the only one available. She doesn't have internet, she's just not into it.
I could imagine a TV refusing to operate until its connected to the internet to upload your viewing habits and download new ads... but the smart TVs from a year or two ago were not that aggressive.
I would never connect one to my LAN. How can I know its security holes and upgrades and issues, how do I unbrick it once it inevitably gets owned, how do I virus scan or otherwise clean it up, its just too difficult and complicated compared to my simpler system. As long as they still operate without ever having a wifi connection, I'll be OK.
Edited to add, "the tv asked for my wifi password so I told it, what could possibly go wrong?" is going to be the next decades "someone on the internet asked me for my bank account number so I told him, what could possibly go wrong?" Right up there with browser toolbar installers.
If you do all your shopping in brick-and-mortar stores that only carry expensive Samsung and LG TVs, I'd believe that. But there's a wealth of "dumb" TVs available online and even in big-box stores like Best Buy and Walmart.
I'd say if someone is savvy enough to know they don't want a "smart" TV, they will know where to look for a good deal.
That's at the budget end of the spectrum, but there are non-"smart" 4K TVs among the better brands as well. This site has reviews of several low to high-end 4K TVs:
Well of course they fucking are. YOU'RE THE PRODUCT, punters. They're selling you. This isn't new. They've been a bit clumsy this time and you've noticed, but nothing will change.
The usual line is "If you're not paying for simething, you're the product.". As a follow-up, if I am paying for something, I certainly expect not to be the product.
No user would opt-in to commercials, ever. I don't believe for a second this system was designed with opt-in in mind.
Whenever an ill conceived feature like this is brought to the light, it's always explained as a bug, glitch, or some screw up in engineering. Well, it's not a bug. It was specifically designed to do what it does. If anybody screwed up it's the people at the top that think smart TVs are a good idea.