What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
Easily 1000% my Samsung TV.
Each update somehow makes it slower, it always loads up whatever the Samsung TV app thing is before it will do anything with a menu so you can get out of it, I believe it requires a Samsung account before it will allows you to do anything, and every now and then it locks up so hard that I have to factory reset it to get it to work again.
I refuse to buy anything from Samsung ever again.
I got a Google TV box and disconnected my Samsung TV from the internet. A week later I got an email about how connecting them helps me because it sends the data and my preferences back to Samsung.
… It sends thousands of information pings each day.
Ah, there’s the problem — you connected it to the internet. I’ve had decent experiences with Samsung TVs, but I just plug them into an apple tv and let the box do the work. I’ve had to see their UI on a couple occasions though and yeah it’s trash.
same with my LG. I never connected it to the internet directly. I chose instead to plug in an rpi
Last TV I had (besides my current CRT for retro games) I used an RPi 4 (later upgraded to the 5) for a media center and a steam link (purchased for $1 during a bundle sale) so I could game off of it from my desktop. I did also have a Chromecast but honestly with a wireless keyboard I would have been fine with just the steam link.
Every consumer TV is subsidized by the advertisements they (plan to) put on it and your data they’ll sell. I bought a mid-range Samsung TV last year, used it for TV, movies, gaming, and I love it. But I haven’t connected it to the internet, I use a separate device I can easily discard if need be. Not blaming you because it’s counter-intuitive, but you can’t update consumer TVs. They know it will live in your… living… room for several years and want to make money off displaying ads. Do you really think they’ll update it to be less intrusive and show fewer ads so they make less money!?? Obviously, I just guessed right; I’m not a genius, nor do I have precognition. I’ve even heard stories about TVs connecting themselves to open networks, but I’m not sure sure I believe them…
Why oh why is your Samsung TV still connected to the WiFi? I kicked mine off WiFi within three months of getting the device and I’ve used it for four years now and it works like a charm!
If you haven’t already done this: wipe all the apps and run the cache-cleaning or whatever it is in the system menu. That should get it back down to where the memory and storage aren’t at 100% and fixes most of the problems. I’ve kept my 2017 Samsung usable that way. Also, if you have a pi-hole you can set it to use that as the DNS and block the advertising domains, retaining most of the smart functionality without all the crap.
Not a shill, but I honestly love my Samsung TV. I took it out of the box, plugged in an HDMI cable to connect it to my PC, and use it as a monitor. I’ve never connected it to my wifi, so it has no internet access. I’ve never had to enter my Samsung account info to use it.
I love my Sony. Iirc, it wanted Internet for initial setup, but I unplugged the Ethernet cable soon after. It just works and displays what I want without issue.
My girlfriend brought a tcl roku special when she moved in. That blinked a very bright white LED unless it was connected to the internet. And now whenever I turn it on, it screams and displayed a fucked up picture from my media device until I go and use the “restart tv” option.
Fucking POS.
Similar experience here. Good panel, solid colours, good angles and handles sunny rooms well. However, TV OS’s are one of the most asinine things to exist though. Never connect that thing to the internet if you can help it and it’ll work great.
Same, no account, no internet connects to my steamdeck and works perfectly
We have one of the Samsung frame TVs, it’s a nice TV, it fits a specific need for us in a bit of a weird spot in a bedroom where a regular TV would look out of place.
But man is the software trash. It’s laggy, a lot of the apps seem really poorly-optimized, and half the settings are just randomly unavailable for no apparent reason.
And since I had to install a box in the wall to hide the one connect box behind it, I kind of don’t want to use it with another streaming device, something about putting too much stuff in that box kind of rubs me the wrong way.
I heard turning off Samsung live tv and removing the app helps the performance tremendously, I have yet to try it as my wife for some reason is willing to tolerate a menu that takes over a minute to navigate one click at a time so she can keep the live tv feature, it is unusable to me
This is standard Samsung TV behaviour.
I had one and never again. Friend only just got one a few months ago and already loathes it.