Samsung Pushes Its 4K/HDR TV Service in Europe (4k.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes 4K.com:
Samsung Electronics has announced that its premium Smart TV content service, TV Plus, is now available for users of Samsung Smart TVs in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom... Owners of eligible Samsung Smart TVs with 4K / HDR capabilities in the above-mentioned European countries now have direct access to premium 4K UHD HDR content offered by Samsung, in partnership with Rakuten TV, and can find their favorite shows using the TV Plus straightforward interface... The expansion comes at what could be considered a strategically well timed moment in the European market, given that 4K TV sales in the huge continental market are steadily growing year by year and are expected to rise to over 17 million 4K TV units shipped by the end of 2017. Meanwhile, TV Plus content has become a success in Southeast Asia since its launch, where 70% of Smart TV users in Korea are watching TV PLUS channels, and 41% of Smart TV users in Vietnam are using TV PLUS.
Samsung tv watches you (Score:3, Informative)
Subject said it all.
Re: Samsung tv watches you (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit. No cameras in New models and the mic is in the remote so if paranoid you can use a 3rd party remote.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a Samsung SmartTV.
The remote it came with never had batteries put in it.
The TV was never allowed to connect to my network.
I'm pretty sure it's never spied on me.
And before you ask why I got a Smart TV if I'm never going to use those features - it's impossible to find a TV without those features that still had other features I wanted. Luckily the smart features are pretty easy to disable. Or never enable in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck. There aren't any in my area.
(Plus I can always put the TV's MAC in my DHCP server and set it's IP to 127.0.0.1).
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone in my neighbourhood who USED to have open had mysteriously produced messages telling their owners to lock them down. I believe the printers were the funniest ones.
There are no commercial entities anywhere near me that would have an open network. Definitely not within any kind of range of my house. Unless that TV has a robotic arm that can plug itself into an ethernet port, it ain't happening.
Just what we need (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yet another streaming service but this one's tied to your hardware
What? You mean you didn't want to replace your television every other year because they purposely stopped pushing firmware updates, breaking all functionality?
You must be some kind of communist hippie who doesn't want to support landfills overflowing with capitalistic greed...
OK (Score:2)
Shooting your own foot? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The FAT tax on solid-state storage (Score:2)
How do you feel about File Allocation Tables?
I feel they're a way for Microsoft to tax users of removable storage. Once the VFAT patent (covering the method used to store long file names in FAT since Windows 95) was due to expire, Microsoft evergreened [wikipedia.org] its patent by introducing exFAT and convincing the SD Card Association to make exFAT mandatory for SDXC hosts instead of UDF.
Do Samsung 4K TVs have an SD slot or USB receptacle whose use for storage would incur a FAT tax?
Re: (Score:2)
This seems to be more of a store than a subscription streaming service. Samsung figure that if you can buy movies directly from the TV UI (which they will advertise at you and your children with no opt out) they can get some extra revenue.
Rakuten is kinda like Amazon, but coming from the East. While Amazon struggles to gain footings in east Asian countries, Rakuten struggles to succeed in the west. I think part of their problem as their confusing site where you could see all this great stuff but actually bu
Re: (Score:2)
This seems to be more of a store than a subscription streaming service. Samsung figure that if you can buy movies directly from the TV UI (which they will advertise at you and your children with no opt out) they can get some extra revenue.
Well that's what you get for plugging your tv into the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
I bet if you don't plug it in you just get adverts and nagging to connect it instead.
Internet activation required (Score:2)
I've read reports that some TVs capable of IPTV have an interstitial requiring the owner to agree to the software license agreement and activate the TV online before using it even for things other than IPTV. Until the owner connects the TV to the Internet, all it can do is display the nag screen.
"Then just buy a TV that isn't 'smart'." Good luck with that now that the cost of including IPTV has become negligible in a large TV compared to the cost of engineering and stocking a separate SKU without IPTV. Beca
Re: (Score:2)
The latest LG OLED TVs support HDR10+, Dolby Vision and Hybrid Log Gamma, which will likely cover all the final HDR standards. Haven't looked at Samsung's stuff though.
Re: (Score:1)
A childlike sense of wonder?
Re: (Score:2)
Please, someone explain that to me. Is there anything in that I *do* want to have?
Allow me to clarify. Product features these days have nothing to do with what you want. Manufacturers only give a shit about features that make them the most money.
Your needs or wants are a distant priority to that. And no, they don't care if you don't like it, because there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Re: (Score:2)
> And no, they don't care [...] because there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Well, there is. Remind myself and others that I don't *have* to shell out money for that. Sometimes there's a bit of activation energy to tunnel the barrier, but that's their trick, and *knowing* that life is always better beyond the barrier deprives them of customers.
I try to take as many as I can to the other side.
Remember the red pill metaphor?
You and your defiant opinion represent less than 1% of the customer base, which is exactly why they don't give a fuck what you think or do. You won't even be able to make a pathetic dent against those that dominate the industry.
Keep dreaming that you taking "as many as you can" to the other side is going to change a fucking thing. It won't, and my original statement stands. Consumers are lazy, and won't even expend the effort to look for a red pill, or swallow it.
Re: Why the fuck would I want this? (Score:2)
Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that 1% figure?
Yeah right (Score:1)
Quite clever (Score:2, Insightful)
There isn't that much 4k content around, which probably affects people's decision as to whether it's worth upgrading to a 4k tv set. So giving access to a significant library of 4k content to anyone buying a Samsung tv will probably get them a bunch of sales they wouldn't otherwise have had. There's no mention of cost in the article, I'm not clear if it's free for owners of the specified tv set models, but if so then it seems to be a pretty good deal.
Re: (Score:2)
I would say things like the online interface elements, the TV guide etc. do actually benefit from the 4K resolution. Basically you are getting a HiDPI or "retina" display. The Plex interface on my 4K LG smart TV is noticeably crisper than the 1080p HD interface on the TV in my bedroom.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess a good niche usage can be showing pictures from digital camera (or phone connected as USB mass storage, or an arranged folder of pictures, or on the Internet), although 16:9 is annoyingly wide.
It's something I can imagine "normal" people to do. Unless you use a computer or device with 1080p or less output, you stand a chance at seeing the additional pixels/high res. ...)
Otherwise 4K might be used to read text on the TV (web, pdf, txt,
All the TV OS are sleazy and untrustworthy - you might as well buy
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm in the US, a wasteland for broadband, even my smallish city has a regional wireless (ground based directional) at over 100mbps.
When there is content that needs, or even benefits from, more than 25-50mbps, it'll come.
Thank you for the ad, Slashdot! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, is this "news" or just ad copy? It sure does sound like product placement to me...
Re: (Score:2)
Ad copy. Slashvertizing is a thing now.