Don't forget: "Never slow down the user interface".
I have a 4K Sony television that was their flagship model when it was new, but a couple of years ago they "updated" it with a new version of its OS that looks identical but is incredibly sluggish. Not technically broken, but frustrating to use. Moving around between menu items is a good 2-3 seconds, up to 10 in some cases.
There is literally nothing I can do about this. The display panel is perfectly fine. The tuner works. The streaming works. It's not broken. It's out of warrant, so I can't evne return it.
But it feels like I've been downgraded from "flagship" to "off-brand budget TV" without any physical component ever changing.
I didn't consent to this. I didn't expect the automatic upgrade to nearly, but not quite, break my TV.
I own a LG smart TV. Wary of those and other problems I never connected it to the net. I bought it because it cost only 50 Euros more than the dumb model and the display looked much better, which should be the main point of a TV.
If I really want to do smart things with my TV I attach something I control to one of its HDMI ports (phone, tablet, laptop, Raspberry.)
I'm not thrilled about the idea of TV sets with an embedded 5G SIM that I can't disable. Worse if they'll only work if online.
I needed an all-in-one solution for streaming (Netflix, Prime, Spotify, Jellyfin, ...) so I went with an Nvidia Shield Pro on the HDMI port. Any smart TV is a dumb TV for me. I'll make it "smart" myself, the old fashioned way, as you described. One downside of HDMI is max 60 FPS, so its limited for gaming and OKish for interactive (such as navigation through menu or simple browsing) yet should be adequate for any viewing.
I have an LG OLED that has HDMI 2.1, which can do 4k120fps (at least). Unfortunately current-gen GPUs only support HDMI 2.0, so I am limited to 1440p120fps or 4k60fps for the time being.
OK, it was a limitation of HDMI, and most devices still use that old HDMI standard, so practically it still is a limitation until the new HDMI versions are more common. On my monitors, I use DP whenever I can.
The main disadvantage of DP over HDMI is that if you switch off a monitor that is connected to the computer via DP, then the computer thinks the monitor has been disconnected, and rearranges all your windows for you, so when you come back to the computer and switch the monitor back on it's all messed up. With HDMI, that doesn't happen.
Also some people have pointed out a few displayport edid emulators keep the appropriate signals up to prevent Windows from thinking the monitor is off. I haven't tested it yet as when I first ran into this problem I just switched back to DVI, but a recent Windows or nVidia update (ha - timely with the article) caused my GPU driver to constantly crash with DVI, but when I switched back to DP it now works just fine. Sigh. I guess I do need to see if I can find the right kind of EDID emulator after all.
In my case this was an advantage because my previous GPU had a bug where presence detection for HDMI was only done on boot. So if I forgot to switch my display on before UEFI or before Windows boot manager started, it would boot headless. With DisplayPort you have to unplug & replug at best (though on/off should work because of what you described, not to mention detecting a new display when it powers on).
Apparently HDMI 2.1 which specification is from November 2017 can do it.
My TV itself is even older than that, and a dumb TV doesn't need to be upgraded often. That's part of the purpose of a dumb TV; longevity.
My MBPs from 2015 also don't support it, and Apple only recently released a decent replacement for these MBPs (given the keyboard issues in previous).
My old monitor from ~2014, a BenQ, also does not support it. While I recently replaced it, it still works perfectly fine (it doesn't have FreeSync though), and achieves 144 Hz over DP.
I did the same with my Samsungs... no internet/network.
But in the new one, I can't even use it in a private LAN (for DLNA, ...)... without connecting online. Doesn't bother me too much (HDMI from PC is superior anyway), but it would be interesting to have a solution for occasional uses (like streaming from laptop, maybe phone).
It works, until I attempt to use "network" when it asks me to register online. Haven't done it, if it was mandatory it would go back as non-functional... Not sure what problems occur if you do it once but then disconnect from internet.
Yeah I made this same call. My LG Smart TV has advertisements in the menus and doesn’t have a particularly wide range of apps. So I got an Apple TV and disconnected the internet from the TV. Much better experience overall.
There will be websites that describe how to disable 5G in TVs. In some cases this will be as easy as putting strips of metal tape on the back of the case. In others you'll have to open the case to remove the 5G module or antenna.
Well, it looks like enough of us either can't figure out how to attach the TV to the internet, or just don't bother (like me) to the point that -- like with ad blockers -- TV manufacturers are routing around the problem. That they would subsidize a 5G cell connection in order to get direct access to your TV should be seriously concerning. But it won't be, and cries to Congress to block this sort of thing will be met with a big infusion of campaign contributions, and we'll just all have to live with it.
Ok, so if they are going to force upon us a subsidized 5G connection, what can we do to to hijack that connection & redirect it to some more useful - to the user - application?
(Also good to know that the big telcos will be rolling out 5G universally so all those 5G-connected TVs will work in every rural location, even those with coverage from only obscure CLECs
/sarc )
The part that surprises me the most with "Smart TVs", is how bad the non-smart functionality can be. It's like the 'smarter' the TV is, the slower the TV guide is.
Maybe it's because I've never owned a dedicated TV and used a lot of computer monitors, but I've always treated TV as just another kind of output device, not independent system.
They try to use "smart" features to promote their products, but instead what they do with them shortly after the purchase has exactly opposite effect.
Also some of them (Samsung) intentionally break some (or all) smart features in some cases [0]. Even if they are legally allowed to do so (And of course they do. Who reads TOS...), it makes me really uncomfortable to buy any "smart" TV. It's a pity one cannot buy a dumb TV with quality picture and sound today.
In fact, when my old TV broke down a couple of years ago (dead pixel columns), I replaced it with a 34" PC monitor. I actually paid through the nose to get less features (and more reliability).
It's a good thing that I'm blessed with a small living room, and I don't need 50" monstrosities ;)
I'm sure it does not because modern mobile OSes would alert the user to it, but even if it did, there's an easy fix: don't install the app. For when you do need Facebook, use the mobile website.
Well, okay, I do have messenger lite on my phone and use it like two times a year. It doesn't have nearly as much crap in it as the full version, and doesn't relentlessly run in the background. Also doesn't spam me with notifications about things that aren't actual messages actually sent by actual people (looking at you, "you're celebrating %d years of friendship with %s").
It's cool to live in a place where Facebook never took off, I guess?
Facebook can only listen to audio if you give it microphone permission, and even then the iOS 14 beta would have made it visible if they were turning the mic on when they shouldn't be. Even if they make you install the app they aren't using it to passively listen for ultrasonic signals from your television.
Owner of a 4K Sharp "smart" TV here. Menu is indeed incredibly sluggish. My old Zenith from the 90s has better response time, _and_ an integrated VHS player. Can't beat it.
The Sharp was the first smart TV I ever purchased. Heavily discounted at a holiday sale some years ago.
When I brought it home, I connected it to the Internet to see what all the fuss was about. They're nothing special -- you can launch your typical streaming, news, and weather apps, all from the same terrifyingly-slow UI.
A few weeks later, the TV forced an update on me. A pop-up appeared _on top of_ another (external) video source, interrupting what I was doing. There was no option to decline the update, not even "remind me later".
I decided to turn the TV off rather than be strong-armed into the update. But when I turned it back on, the update popped right up again. I tried blocking the TV's Internet access using my router, but this had no effect either. At this point I felt mostly defeated, and assumed I wouldn't be able to use the TV until I "consented" to the update.
Needless to say, the TV is not allowed to connect to the Internet anymore.
Another complaint about modern smart TVs: the remotes are horrible. I don't know if they're IR, Bluetooth, 2.4GHz radio or what, but not only must you have line-of-sight to the receiver, you must point _directly_ at it, or some inputs will be dropped.
The remotes also often have dedicated buttons for proprietary streaming services which I've carefully removed with a razor knife. There is absolutely no reason for the remote sitting on my coffee table to function as free advertisement for Netflix/Amazon/Hulu.
I understand these buttons on the TV UI, but branded buttons on the remote control? Come now. That's going to look quite silly in 15 years when some of these services are defunct, or when the TV's OS is out of support and the apps won't run anymore (like what happened to Netflix on the Wii, or YouTube on the PS3).
This is assuming the panel even lasts that long... given all the R&D that manufacturers must be pouring into unnecessary software, I can't imagine the longevity of these devices has done anything but shorten.
I continue to search for large, high-quality "dumb" panels that I can purchase, but it seems like these are mostly nonexistent in the consumer/retail space. Any dumb TVs I find are usually very small. Everything over 35" or so seems to always be a smart TV.
I do not understand why people use internal "smarts" on so-called SmartTVs at all. These companies are not software companies. They are not trustworthy, either.
I have a nice "smart" Samsung. But it's never even been on my network. I get streaming from an AppleTV, but insert your favorite flavor.
I have a Samsung smart TV, and it's really convenient to watch Netflix, Disney+ or Youtube straight on the TV. (We don't really watch regular TV anymore.)
Problem is: we are dependent on Samsung. If they don't support a particular streaming service, we're out of luck. And I have no doubt they have the ability to cripple our experience.
My TV is also an output device only in my A/V stack. My receiver handles all the switching duties from the various sources. I have no signal path back to the receiver from the TV, which would be necessary to get audio from any on-board streaming apps.
But that's really just a side issue, because using a well-made streaming box provides a drastically better experience than using whatever garbage $TV_Co put in.
When I bought my first Samsung Smart TV, it was on sale. It was slow as molasses, so I got an Apple TV in order to watch Netflix.
Then my TV broke down, I got a newer Samsung, and its speed runs circles around my Apple TV (2nd gen I think). The Apple TV seems painfully slow next to the Samsung Smart TV.
I wouldn’t buy a smart TV for the smart parts except for those with built in Roku support. Roku is a software company that has been making streaming devices for close to a decade.
The downside of Roku is that it is an ad infested platform from the interface to the remote. They also have a “walled garden” that would make the Apple Haters cry. They won’t allow streaming apps on their platform unless you make a deal with them. Roku has blocked many third party streaming apps on their platform.
I still prefer my AppleTV4Ks that I got free via an offer for signing up with DirecTVNow, but not enough to give up the convenience of just using the Roku for the most part.
I use a roku TV, because I already liked the roku interface, and would have bought one anyway. If something change that I don't like, I figure I could always go back to just connecting a computer to an hdmi port.
It‘s not. Instead it‘s the only reasonable way to deal with degrading batteries - a limitation all manufacturers have to deal with. Apple opted to prevent unexpected shutdowns by slightly throttling performance - the correct decision for most users, but they didn‘t tell the user about it, which of course serves as a great excuse for colorful, exaggerated headlines like the one in your linked article.
And you can get a replacement battery for $70. I got one for my 6s after two years before the whole batterygate thing started because it wasn’t holding a charge. Between my son and I, we kept it for four years. The only reason I didn’t keep it for another year was because I wanted a larger phone with a larger battery.
I literally linked an article that says they've had to settle for half a billion (!) because Apple did this without informing the users they were doing it. And Apple had an obvious financial incentive to not mention it to users. People found out almost by accident that their phones were still working well, except for a part that is replaceable (and much cheaper than a new phone).
In what world is this not a valid example of planned obsolescence?
Mistake? They made the decision to slow down devices without telling users and profited from that decision.
My iPhone 5 became slower after 1-2 years. If the battery was bad, I never noticed it (no shutdowns or anything like that). It coincided with a new iPhone and iOS version... I tried every trick, from formatting the phone to reducing animations. Then I found a thread on Apple forums about this and someone was suggesting getting a new phone!
I did buy a new phone (OnePlus One) and it's still working after ~5 years. The battery doesn't last as long, but it doesn't die when I receive a call or play a game.
Because of this, that iPhone 5 was my first and last iPhone.
It slowed down the phone a lot, not "slightly". I wasn't asked if I wanted the slow down, there was no way of disabling it, Apple didn't acknowledge it, and I had no reason to believe the battery was in a bad state.
Last year I upgraded from a mid-range phone which was almost 4 years old. It didn't have any "slow down" feature and it never shutdown, so as you can imagine, I'm not willing to give Apple a pass here.
The iOS 14 runs great on my iPhone 7. it will also run on the 6S, or the 2016 iPhone SE. The new SE will probably get OS updates for around 5 years or so.
From the article, "It said the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying peak current demands, as they aged over time.
That could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.
So, it released a software update for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE which "smoothed out" battery performance."
The alternative is that Apple could tell the user the phone battery was going bad, so they'd buy a new battery rather than a new iPhone. The other alternative is that Apple could test the battery and apply the throttling only when appropriate (rather than generically over entire models). Weirdly, both decisions contributed to Apple's bottom line. What an odd coincidence.
All apple devices I’ve used in the past years tell you when the battery is degraded to the point it needs replacement. However, especially iPhones can be in situations where the battery may still be fine for most usage, but still not be good enough to support the required power draw - for example when it’s cold outside (aka winter). I much prefer my phone to slow down in these situations over shutting down as earlier versions did.
Apple denied for years there was a slowdown of old devices under any circumstances. By not telling users, Apple encouraged users to buy new devices rather than new batteries, fraud in the moral sense (if maybe technically not in the legal sense).
They did not slow down the battery “generically over entire models”. They slowed it down when the battery was degraded. Wouldn’t it be much easier for Apple just not to issue OS updates for older phones if they wanted to encourage users to get new phones?
Making units more disposable makes perfect commercial sense. Making them overtly more disposable might figure out into customer decisions which would be bad for profits. Better be subtle about it.
In that regard, not slowing down the devices with degraded batteries would have been substantially better. The behavior before was substantially more annoying: The phone would just shut down.
That would have led to bad publicity. Worse, people could have figured out by themselves the batteries were the problem. The trick is to annoy users, not make their workflow entirely impossible, and than to give them misleading advice so they'd buy a new phone.
> It's much better with computers, though. I am able to decently run modern games on 2015 gaming PC.
Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates were and are obsessed with backwards compatibility, and _not_ breaking user programmes.
I am not sure how much the Great Man Theory applies here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory) or whether personal computers would have a culture of backwards compatibility without those two?
Intel also seems to care about backwards compatibility. (Though they needed a nudge from AMD when transitioning to 64 bit.)
In contrast, Apple and ARM seem more eager to start from a clean slate. So I can perfectly imagine a personal computer industry in an alternate universe that's happy to force people to recompile their programmes every few years; and otherwise to just abandon old binary-only software.
The winners in the competitive struggle are going to be people who don't break things. People who routinely reset their ecosystem tend to lose then get forgotten.
It isn't so much their influence as much as there is a community that is constantly searching for reliable platforms to build on.
"The winners in the competitive struggle are going to be people who don't break things."
Search for developer comments about their experiences with Rosetta 2.
Maybe Apple isn't so dumb after all, eh?
What makes the comments on speed even more impressive to me - note that the developer test machines are using a two year old CPU. Originally designed for a battery operated mobile device.
A12Z has hardware support for accelerating Rosetta 2 that is unused on iOS, so its use as the core of a developer transition kit was clearly decided well in advance.
> People who routinely reset their ecosystem tend to lose then get forgotten.
ARM seems to be doing well and they release binary incompatible chips every so often. And resetting had long been the norm in the world of games consoles.
So I wouldn't take what we observed in the personal computer industry as a universal truth. It's probably rather contingent.
I have a year-old TV from LG. Changing channels with the numeric buttons take around 4 seconds, while using the increment/decrement buttons I have to wait only one second. Strange!
There needs to be some sort of warranty on these kind of updates on devices like there. It's similar to when Google remote-bricked old Nest devices. They should be required to take responsibility for actively breaking our devices. It's a loophole in the law that this is legal.
I feel like I am at the whim of anti social behavior and conspiracies at some anonymous office with auto updates enabled. The Scrum Agile morning standups at Toaster Corp. could just as well be in my kitchen pushing user hostile features for "business reasons" or enforcing ideologically pure ways to use their toaster.
Latest-generation devices contain hardware fuses purposely designed to make prevent downgrading. I think that tells you all you need to know about the position the industry has towards downgrades and whether updates are in the interest of the user or not.
I hate DRM, and I’m a free software advocate. However, if I were in the shoes of a TV content provider who relies on DRM, I would seriously consider lobbying system designers to prevent firmware downgrades.
I wouldn’t want consumers to downgrade their systems and exploit already-patched vulnerabilities in order to circumvent DRM.
One could argue that DRM is evil and wrong, too. But then again, it enables subscriptions and renting and there’s arguably a market for both.
The problem I see is that this is a very slippery slope. There is a lot of money to be made and a lot of innovative business models to find on top of hardware that can be arbitrarily restricted. I'm not convinced at all this would stop with copy protection.
In fact, we can already see things like unskippable commercials, apps with dark patterns and deliberate anti-features, smart TVs that suddenly gain banner ads, and political conflicts being played out in app stores.
All of that stuff is only possible because consumer devices are locked down and answer first to the vendor, then to the user.
You can say that all if this is an exciting new market that unlocks enormous amounts of innovation - I just don't think this is the kind of innovation that we should want.
The DRM module could be on a separate bit of memory from the actual OS, meaning that it would stay upgraded even if the rest was downgraded. It doesn't use fuses (AFAIK anyway), but f.e. the baseband on your phone works like this.
But I think this only works to an extent as, if you want your DRM not be trivially circumventable, it will be a cross-cutting concern and not easily restricted to a module.
E.g., the most secure TPM is useless if the OS simply ignores any responses and shows the movie anyway.
What you could do is to close off the whole media path: The OS only sees the encrypted media, which it sends to some combined TPM/decoding hardware, which more or less sends it directly to the screen. I believe to some extent this is what is done in practice.
You could technically see the TPM/graphics card/screen assembly as a "module" and can keep the OS separate of it - but this risks your "module" becoming so essentiall that it'll be unclear what is the dog and what is the tail.
Do you have anything you can cite in support of that, please? I've been planning to raise some of these issues with my representatives, so any solid evidence I could include might be helpful.
If you're in the EU you should have a right to send it back.
Failing that, if you have a blog, publicise that so others get put off buying that brand. Complain to them (edit: sony) directly also. Don't just sit there are take it, it's what they're relying on.
Does it really matter? If not one brand, you get screwed by another.
What we need is a push for free software in consumer electronics. Get any major manufacturer to realize that they can not differentiate on software and stick to making good hardware. The sooner they accept that Google is eating their lunch on the value-add anyway and that the best way to counter them is by commoditizing the software stack.
Were I an executive of LG or Samsung, I would just make sure that any TV could boot a custom OS and I would get it shipped with Kodi. Get whatever resources on R&D you want to keep and make sure they work on top of Kodi. Show a big fat finger to Android and let Google being forced to make their own TVs if they really want the market.
With TVs specifically, this could be a tough sell for manufacturers, because of all the hardware-enabled rights protection that is needed to watch content in certain formats now. There will be some level of exclusive access/control involved as long as those schemes are operating, and that gives them power.
Unfortunately, even if you have a right to send something back, it's not always practical.
Typically those consumer rights only protect individuals, leaving businesses (even small ones, who are at a similar disadvantage to consumers in not being able to negotiate anything with huge manufacturers/suppliers) with little if any protection.
One key difference from days gone by is that modern devices often contain large amounts of private data, which you might not be willing to hand over.
And it's all rather academic anyway if competition in that market has failed and all the major products are doing to same user-hostile things. This is normally the point where government intervention would be required, for example through legislation or regulatory action, but governments have been unwilling or unable to keep up with the pace of technological advancement.
I believe this is, at least in part, because representatives usually aren't technical experts and so may not understand the implications of modern technologies or the potential alternatives to current practice. I have reached the conclusion that until we educate those representatives and show them that people do care about these issues, the tide of increasingly user-hostile actions will only continue to rise. But of course that means people have to care enough themselves to get involved in contacting their reps or at least supporting organised campaigns, and sadly, it seems a lot of people either don't care enough to do that instead of moaning on Twitter of Facebook and then accepting their fate.
he's an individual. It was not apparently a business expense
> with little if any protection
If you're in the EU you've got protection.
> that modern devices often contain large amounts of private data
It's a TV so in this case so what (in general, perhaps, but don't most devices have encryption?)
> And it's all rather academic anyway if competition in that market has failed and all the major products are doing to same user-hostile things
And you're rolling over hopelessly as if you can't do anything. Fair enough, you get (nothing) what you give (nothing).
> because representatives usually aren't technical experts and so may not understand the implications of modern technologies or the potential alternatives to current practice
IT'S A TV! WITH CRAPPY UI RESPONSE! Stop making excuses for bad practice. Do something.
> the tide of increasingly user-hostile actions will only continue to rise
OK, let's stop here. I complain when necessary & shit gets fixed quite often. You clearly can't be bothered to fight back so you're rationalising that it's not worth it. I'm not wasting time on this.
The way you address it is unfortunate, but I think you make a salient point about the learned helplessness of a lot of people. That's what's moving companies to do ever more evil things, they're not some unstoppable force - they're just being enabled.
Thank you. And you're surely right about the way I say it - I just don't know how to put it more politely. Tips welcome on how I might not be a git! (seriously).
It is learned helplessness, or "I can't be bothered so it must be not worth trying because I'll fail anyway". I can get stuff done but I fear the worst for humanity if it just does what's easiest. And I don't mean about TVs, I mean about the future of our species and the planet.
And you seem to have ignored my entire final paragraph, which was about what I think we need to do to improve the situation. I am doing my part; I contact my representatives to draw tech issues to their attention, for example, and I donate to various relevant campaign groups. But I am only one person, and it will take more than just me and a few people like me to effect change on the required scale.
> And you seem to have ignored my entire final paragraph
which culminated in
>> sadly, it seems a lot of people either don't care enough to do that instead of moaning on Twitter of Facebook and then accepting their fate.
which is you accepting your fate, it seems. You suggested nothing useful, only moaned that others couldn't be bothered.
In summary you built up a case of hopelessness and accused others of it.
How come I often get results when I bug manufacturers? Your apathy superpower is painful to see. Thank you but that's quite enough, I prefer to get results instead.
You are getting "results" in a Sisyphean task. The one you are responding to is talking about the larger issue.
Sure, do exercise your right as a consumer and do more than just complaining. If I ever bought something that started performing this badly I would return it as well. Problem is, what do you trade it for? I'd like to find a 50" TV with no smart TV features. Will your complaining and nagging on review sites going to make this a reality?
As long as we keep accepting only the choices provided by the status quo all you are getting is a slightly more comfortable golden cage. This is what makes GP feel powerless.
Sisyphus didn't get results, that was the point of his fate. I get results.
OK, nitpick over, I have trouble disagreeing with you. Let's try to answer that.
> what do you trade it for?
Perhaps if companies had to deal with a load of complaints, losing cash at each one, they might start to care? I can tell you that companies hate being embarrassed in public so complain loudly.
But otherwise, on another hn thread a while ago some guy said he'd bought, or would buy, a dumb monitor and link that up.
There's 2 solutions (if the latter works). Don't complain they don't solve everything instantly, they won't.
> Will your complaining and nagging on review sites going to make this a reality?
You'll never know if you don't try.
> This is what makes GP feel powerless.
I know the feeling! But I keep fighting back and I get results. Read that as you will.
Many of you US guys died to separate yourselves from the rule of us brits. Now for domestic goods you can't be bothered to rage. Doesn't seem right...
For a very low bar of "results", sure. But unless you are getting electronics with special features or without artificial restrictions imposed by the companies, I wouldn't count I managed to return a shitty TV that got shittier for another baseline shitty TV as "getting results".
> Perhaps if companies had to deal with a load of complaints, losing cash at each one, they might start to care?
They won't "lose cash". If consumers on aggregate started demanding more quality and better support from their companies, it would translate into increased costs and consequently increased prices. Business as a whole can sustain the occasional annoying customer like you, but only when you are the exception and not the rule.
> But otherwise, on another hn thread a while ago some guy said he'd bought, or would buy, a dumb monitor and link that up.
Find the price of a 40"+ monitor that can do 4k and compare with the price of TVs, see how even high-end TVs cost less than the monitors. As an exercise to the reader, correlate that with the point above.
> You'll never know if you don't try.
I won't know because I don't want to know. I simply refuse to buy the shitty crippled electronics in the first place.
> Many of you US guys
I'm not American, but I lived there long enough to understand that most people live by the "Give me convenience or give me death" mentality. I also lived there long enough to realize that money is the only thing they understand. Put these two together, and it gets really hard to expect the average consumer to work to get anything better when they have something convenient for cheap.
Like I said. "I returned a TV that was broken after a bad upgrade" does not count as an amazing feat if that is followed by "and then I got another TV that still updates itself at the mercy of the manufacturer"
And you seem determined to establish that you deserve some credit for playing the game according to the rules of the puppet masters. What OP and I are saying is that the game is rigged and that we should either (a) fight to change it altogether or (b) not play it at all.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Hard to make a list, and it's more general than just products, but taking a company to court after it screwed me over (I won which started a stream of other complainants against them once they saw it was possible), opening a machine I'd bought and finding it messed up inside and taking that back to the shop in person and telling them I wasn't going away until they fixed it (self-entitled boss was angry but they did), getting a misbehaving server from rackspace and despite their stonewalling got enough info to prove it defective so they finally replaced it (my boss was willing to live with clear performance problems out of apathy; I wasn't). There's more, some involving products rather than services but can't dig them up ATM. Helpful?
I've noticed that public feedback of this sort doesn't cross cultural boundaries.
YC News and Reddit are perfect examples. You'll regularly see NetFlix, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon staff directly responding to customer complaints on these forums. In the past, Slashdot would similarly have people in the industry commenting.
These are all US-based and predominately English-speaking organisations responding on a US-based news site in English.
Sony is headquartered in Japan. Their TV division is in Japan. They speak Japanese. They don't frequent YC News or Reddit. They don't read English-language tweets or blogs.
Similarly, it's borderline impossible to provide constructive feedback to laptop companies, because most are either headquartered in Taiwan, or constrained by the capabilities of manufacturers in Taiwan.
This has been the biggest transgression I've had to deal with from my TV. I've absolutely decided I will never purchase a Sony TV ever again and would actively recommend that others avoid them as well. It's absolutely ridiculous that such an expensive device that I've purchased is being used as billboard.
Also own a Sony TV. I forget the app I needed to disable but you can turn off many of the parts of the "home screen" if you are willing to dig through their annoying menus and scroll through long lists of apps.
The way I look at these things is like a really cheap smartphone with a really great screen. Sometimes you have to search around online to find the best way to turn on/off certain "features".
I'll soon be in the market for a new home theater TV and would prefer a high quality display with no "smart" features at all. It seems like this is now impossible to find.
Is anyone aware of a digital signage screen, or something similar, that will do 4k (preferable 120Hz) and has no network interface? Should I look into projectors instead?
I have a Sony TV, one thing I've learned with them is that you have to wipe your tv after each upgrade...
I do agree with you tough, it's still really sluggish, full of things I never asked for (icons of netflix, hulu and other stuff that I don't use) and I definitely don't feel that this TV is smart at all.
My next tv will definitely be as dumb as possible. If I needed anything smart, it will be via a pi or a similar board connected to it.
I bought a dumb Samsung in like 2006 as a display model that still works and you have a presumably newer smart TV that is basically broken because of a software update. Ridiculous.
Part of the issue is really economics. As things trend to widespread, the televisions don't compete on anything other than price. Ultimately, a panel is manufactured and they'll trend to more-or-less the same, within certain levels. What's left - ecosystem and software.
The problem is that those things just don't have value for people who get it. Now, we select devices to push content, our AppleTV/Roku/Chromecast/whatever. Those have value. They have so much value that whilst moving countries during the pandemic, I literally experience zero differences content-wise, in spite of buying a new TV. My device uses my proxy, my VPNs, and thus I have my content, worldwide. It's a much better, and more flexible system, but unfortunately it involves more work that zero.
A good reason to not connect your "smart" tv to the net. using another device, xbox or ps4 seems safer. Even though the HDMI spec allows for pass-through network connectivity, it can be disabled on ps4/xbox.
I think the general consensus is that unless you own an OLED (in which case you want to stay in the native environment for the features that will help preserve the display's longevity), it's better to grab an Android TV box and run everything through that. If you have a Z9D, I'd say it's getting old enough that that would be a decent route to take (since otherwise it's still a better TV than pretty much anything out today).
Well Roku/NowTv did the same to me - "upgraded" my box to remove functionality, namely side-loading an app, which was the only reason I bought it. We were paying for a monthly subscription and I used the box for viewing photos from my PC and format-shifted movies (which was lawful in UK at the time AFAIAA; but isn't now).
I'm not buying hardware from them if they countenance unlawfully (contravenes UK Computer Misuse Act) accessing my device and removing functionality.
Buyer beware.
Anyway, we switched to FireTv - the same app I was side-loading was in the app store, tried Netflix, it's good enough.
Honestly I don't know how much Roku were involved in the process of crippling my STB, but there are other companies so I'm just going to avoid them.
maybe take a look at projectors. they have their downsides, mine is a bit noisy, but I got me a cheap one for less than $200, just to see if its a good idea. Covers half the living room wall with a screen. Is connected to a PC, I can use my bluetooth mouse and keyboard from the tv couch, which means i can surf, download stuff or watch streams without getting up. And, of course, no ads and no bullshit udates
I have a 4K Sony television that was their flagship model when it was new, but a couple of years ago they "updated" it with a new version of its OS that looks identical but is incredibly sluggish. Not technically broken, but frustrating to use. Moving around between menu items is a good 2-3 seconds, up to 10 in some cases.
There is literally nothing I can do about this. The display panel is perfectly fine. The tuner works. The streaming works. It's not broken. It's out of warrant, so I can't evne return it.
But it feels like I've been downgraded from "flagship" to "off-brand budget TV" without any physical component ever changing.
I didn't consent to this. I didn't expect the automatic upgrade to nearly, but not quite, break my TV.