> 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.
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.