Samsung Blu-Ray Players Suddenly Stop Working Worldwide (samsung.com) 171
New submitter wb9syn7 writes: The last two days have seen a variety of Samsung Blu-ray players worldwide suddenly cease working. The symptom is that they turn on when power is applied, whereupon they reboot themselves every few seconds endlessly. The power and eject buttons are ignored and all attempts at resetting them fail. After many owners contacted Samsung support and were told they needed to send their players in for hardware repair, Samsung appears to have admitted there is a common problem, not individual player failure. As they are all out of warranty and the reboot cycle precludes the normal software update process, we are awaiting a solution from them. A community post has hundreds of users confirming the issue across various models. We've reached out to Samsung but they have yet to comment on the matter.
Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems the most likely cause.
No. According to all the expert programmers on here, it's never the programmer's fault. These folks have been coding since stone tablets were first used and their code is never in question.
It's always their supervisor or a project manager which screws up the code.
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience it was always the marketing department who messed up the requirements.
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''t's always their supervisor or a project manager which screws up the code.''
No, you see the public just can't tell the difference between a fault, and a ''feature''.
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SHHHH, it's mean to work this way at the end of warranty, the only problem, it was not meant to happen all at the same time, fuck, fuck, fuck ;D.
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It was demoed at the end of the sprint and the product owner accepted the story.
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Huh? Their supervisor or project manager may have screwed up in hiring somebody incompetent, but somebody incompetent of course is responsible for dumb mistakes they make that go beyond the normal level of mistakes somebody competent would make. The management responsibility here is to serve as a 2nd line of defense. Also, the management responsibility includes making sure there is competent review and testing of the code before it goes to production.
As usual, when somebody really gods bad, more than one mi
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as a reminder, here's a quick cheat sheet:
- Corners are cut, but product makes billions for company: due to visionary CEO.
- Corners are cut, product randomly stops working: due to failing programmer.
Glad we cleared that up...
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Like HP and their shitty enterprise drives that quit working after 32768 hours.
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And their crappy washing machines.
We bought a Samsung washing machine and discovered that the model concerned had been regularly setting houses on fire due to a design fault that allowed the ingress of water into the electronics.
Samsung issued a recall and replaced the machine.
The replacement machine (a later model) failed within a year and (wait for it) nearly set the house on fire.
We now have a Bosch washing machine that is just soooooo much better in every way.
Perhaps Samsung make good phones (at least t
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IME everything Samsung makes is junk in some way. We are staying in a house with one of their smart TVs right now and it's aggravating all day.
I knew Samsung had officially jumped the shark when I turned on a hotel TV and found myself looking at an infomercial for a Samsung robot vacuum. As if I wanted my carpet set on fire...
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a different kind of fault because many devices sold at different times are all failing on the same day.
It's more likely an expired certificate preventing the firmware from booting. The firmware has to be signed for the BluRay DRM. The device gets the time from an NTP server and stores it in a local RTC, so it might be fixable by resetting the RTC.
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just fyi, this happened to my neighbour. a 77 year old man. He has not connected his anything to the internet because he does not have internet. Just came by to see if i could get a dvd out of his dvd player. I said, is it a samsung? he said, yup! and showed me his blu ray player. He was grateful that he didn't break it himself.
Probably his feeling will turn to anger soon enough. Hopefully they issue everyone new players, otherwise damn thats a big fuckup that will probably get the government involved. Plan
Re: Poor firmware engineering? (Score:2)
we put an kill date in so people will buy new ones (Score:2)
we put an kill date in so people will buy new ones
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More like planned obsolescence, implemented very incompetently with a fixed end-date. You know, like an engineer not really experienced in the art of subterfuge. (See, e.g. all the emission-software in diesel cars by numerous manufacturers for an example that hiding things can fail catastrophically even when a lot is riding on it...)
Competently hidden planned obsolescence would come with a slowly increasing bricking probability after a certain date and, ideally, would be camouflaged as an implementation err
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're out of warranty, Samsung will just get the opportunity to sell them a new player, maybe send a $10 coupon or something if Marketing thinks it's a good idea.
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're out of warranty, Samsung will just get the opportunity to sell them a new player, maybe send a $10 coupon or something if Marketing thinks it's a good idea.
Until there's a huge class action lawsuit alleging that Samsung deliberately screwed it up to engineer obsolescence. Warranty limitations do not protect a company from negligence. If I have a refrigerator that is out of warranty but because of manufacturer negligence bursts into flames and burns down my house, the manufacturer is not immune from responsibility just because it's out of the warranty period.
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Yeah...about class action suits. I tried to stake my claim for one against CenturyLink yesterday. There was a website I was told to go to, but they say they don't recognize my account number even though I copied it right off my bill. So if I want in, I have to mail it in and hope that they just don't throw it in the shredder.
It seems to me like they're making it intentionally difficult to get a little of our money back, ,but maybe they just don't have any incentive to make it easy and maybe they're just
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:4, Informative)
For example in France the (translated) rule is
For new goods, the seller must prove that the item was not defective ("reversal of burden of proof") for the entire duration of the 2-year legal guarantee.
If there was a firmware timeout in there then it's probably arguable in court that the device was indeed defective for those 2 years - it just hadn't manifested. Either way I would agree with the earlier poster that this is going to cost Samsung a crap-load - either directly in repair/replacement or indirectly in flatlining sales numbers.
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:4, Informative)
In the UK design/manufacturing defects are covered for the lifetime of the product. Since this is clearly a firmware defect the retailer's options are to either fix it in a reasonable period of time (typically 28 days from when reported) or offer a partial refund based on the expected lifetime of the device, usually 6 years for electronics like this. So if it was 3 years old the buyer gets half their money back.
The burden is on the retailer, not Samsung.
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This. Some countries have expectation of performance rules as well which go beyond warranty. This was used in Australia by a 16 year old whose Xbox 360 red-ringed. The expectation was that the console last the generation and not that he'd have to replace the console mid-generation. The ACCC agreed and Microsoft was forced to fix out of warranty red-ringing xboxes at their cost.
Product not of merchantable quality (Score:2, Insightful)
The end of warranty does not signal the end of responsibility by the manufacturer. Products are required to be of merchantable quality and are purchased with the expectation of operating far longer than their warranted period, otherwise nobody would buy them.
This case is particularly clear, since several player models have stopped functioning at the same time all over the world, which cannot happen as a result of wear and tear. Since firmware cannot degrade, clearly the product
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If you are in the US, a have you bought a major appliance lately? You are basically lucky to get over a year out of a washer, dryer, or refrigerator, after which it is cheaper to replace it than repair it.
I have to throw away a 5-week old refrigerator (manufacturer is giving me a refund) because it was “unrepairable.” (A valve needed to be replaced, but there was no economical way to do it.) I also have a nice 8-year old dryer where the control board is shot... and replacing that is 90% of the c
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My friend owns the local appliance recycling shop.
I can get just about any appliance part you need for free.
If you want a "new" circuit board for your dryer, let me know:)
I'm headed there soon to get a part for my ice maker lol
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That may not be so easy - if it's the same crappy circuit board that's putting these appliances prematurely out of service, then I would expect the majority of the ones at the recycling place would also be showing up for the same reason. With older appliances you may have better luck as they are showing up for different reasons, including many that probably work just fine but someone wanted something new and shiny.
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Sadly, I tried that route, as well as checking for simple repairs to the board— at 8 years I would assume it was just a bad capacitor. No dice. Used boards go for $350, new is $500 (+50 shipping). While the motor should have life in it still (lightly used), it is next on the list of expected failures.
It is in a condo, so ventless is required which makes it harder.
Re: Product not of merchantable quality (Score:3)
$500 to replace the board on our $400 stove...
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I don't think a single one of the people affected will pay to replace their blu-ray player with another Samsung model.
Re: Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:5, Informative)
''No, they're out of warranty, Samsung will just get the opportunity to sell them a new player, ''
Not exactly. The UCC protects buyers with an Implied Warranty of Merchantability. If a product fails due to no fault of the owner, due to an fault of engineering or design, the consumer is protected.
So, if I buy your widget and it functions as represented, then one day it stops functioning and I as a buyer conformed to all the instructions for usage of the device and haven't used it in any other manner than designed and instructed to, you as a seller/manufacture are responsible to restore the widgets functionality if the widget failed due to design or engineering flaws.
Many companies always attempt weaseling out of the situation and only satisfy informed buyers that present clear documentation. And, only after repeated email and elevation to other than L1 service personnel. The rest, they just upsell or scam. If you have purchased a product and used it per specification and one day it fails, and you read that thousands of others have the same results, demand restoration.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uc... [cornell.edu]
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Yup, an opportunity to sell another blu-ray player, from another company. IF this sort of thing is recognized as poor engineering at the source with no support from the company or even an actual planned obsolescence then why buy another product from that company. Time to move on and try another brand.
Re:Poor firmware engineering? (Score:4, Informative)
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Why would I ever buy *anything* from samsung after something like this happened?
Because the alternative is Sony [wikipedia.org]. Oh.. you didn't mean ever ever, you just meant, like, for a year or something.
All corporations commit these kinds of blunders every now and then. Welcome to the 21st century. It sadly hasn't turned out as well as it could have in some ways.
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Because everyone else fucks up just as badly.
Sony are worse. All the cheap brands have their own issues. I think Panasonic have so far avoided major problems although they did stop supporting YouTube on some older model devices.
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Why would I ever buy *anything* from samsung after something like this happened?
Because bugs happen and a large company 320000 employees with many internal departments and a wildly varied product slate means a problem on one device isn't at all an indication of a problem on another.
Because the 5 year old Samsung TV I have has great electronics but garbage software, the DVD player has garbage all around including the electronics, my fridge of theirs as well as a couple of other kitchen appliances have been awesome and working flawlessly for many years and they make arguably the best rat
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I'm getting my popcorn ready for the fallout of Y2038 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], T-17.5 years and counting... new vehicles should last 20 years. Doh!
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It's a feature not a bug (Score:2)
Re:It's a feature not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
Lightbulbs, printers, phones, and laptops get to do it, why not TVs too?
Lovely grade we're going down here, yeah?
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What better way to make people buy a new player from a _different_ vendor?
How do companies not TEST firmware updates first?? (Score:4)
This should be common sense.
I swear if I had a standalone bluray player I'd probably just not connect it to the Internet.
Re: How do companies not TEST firmware updates fir (Score:2)
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Are they still issuing new keys? Bluray copy protection has been completely, thoroughly cracked. There's no point issuing key updates or revocations anymore.
Re: How do companies not TEST firmware updates fir (Score:5, Informative)
No, this isn't DVD. The underlying crypto was never cracked, it's just stupidly used crypto with poor handling of key material. The cipher itself is safe, it's just AES.
However the keys are a WIPO market thing. A player that is using someone's else key is "counterfeit", when running with unauthorized certificate dumps from licensed player (CERT+MKB=>VUK). Similar thing goes on with HDCP. Chinese (Oppo etc if you want good quality) players are usually all like that. It's not because they care about consumer protection, but because they don't need to pay the BR standard licensing fees for few bytes they can grab from a rom dump elsewhere.
Conversely, "legal" players get their certs continuously revoked due to em being dumped and burned into "counterfeit" players, in a hilarious game of DRM whack-a-mole. Exact same thing occurs in pure software - to play BR+ of a new title on a PC, you need to grab current player cert from software like DVDFab, and use that to compute disk VUK.
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The PS4 needs an internet connection to play regular old DVDs.
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This problem was not caused by a firmware update.
Most likely it is an internal timer overflow.
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How do companies not TEST firmware updates first??
Greedy managers, 2nd rate or overworked developers and you can't test for everything.
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Yeah, I remember when "BD Live" was supposed to be this amazing new feature that let you pull updated and expanded content from the Internet for movies that you purchased.
In reality, the movie studios just used it insert additional ads before the feature film started. I ended up pulling the Ethernet cable for that device pretty quickly.
Would this be from a bad software update? (Score:2)
There was one famed OS update to the Mac Pro that bricked every system. Nobody's system could be rebooted after the update. In-store service was required.
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If such an event occurred, surely you can provide a link to reporting about it? Otherwise, you're just full of shit.
No more... (Score:3)
Would you bother replacing? (Score:2)
Even if Samsung paid for the shipping and repairs, would you actually bother replacing something as obsolete as a Bluray or DVD player?
I chucked mine years ago.
Re:Would you bother replacing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if Samsung paid for the shipping and repairs, would you actually bother replacing something as obsolete as a Bluray or DVD player?
I chucked mine years ago.
To watch something with better video or audio quality than you get with streaming?
I started watching a movie the other day on Amazon Prime. I got about 10 minutes into it and realized that I was only getting stereo sound, remembered that I had the movie on DVD, so I switched to the DVD and finished the movie in it's full surround glory. True it's possible to stream high definition and all the surround audio channels, but frequently streaming services reduce the surround information and heavily compress the video. Watching on DVD or BlueRay generally gives me a better experience. If you are watching on a phone, tablet, or laptop, and using a set of ear buds to listen, it's not going to make a difference. If you are watching on a large screen with a decent sound system, it does - at least for me anyway.
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To watch something with better video or audio quality than you get with streaming?
Never had that issue. However, companies don't like to stream at 4K to the laptop I have my TV hooked to, for some reason. 1080p, though, from Netflix or YouTube never seems overcompressed or with bad sound. Maybe your ISP and your streaming service are fighting each other? That happens often.
Of course, if I really want 4K I just torrent something, since it's my only practical option. Quality there is usually great.
DVDs and BluRays are for ripping. DVD menu systems, unskippable adds, and all that BS c
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>>"would you actually bother replacing something as obsolete as a Bluray or DVD player?"
>"To watch something with better video or audio quality than you get with streaming?"
Or because you like 3D and have a 3D bluray player and 3D TV and invested in 3D bluray discs and want to watch them? (Good luck on FINDING a replacement 3D Bluray player, though).
Or because you have no internet connection at the moment and want to watch something you have on DVD or Bluray?
Or because you have crappy internet and
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You can still get Panasonic 3D Blu Ray players.
Mine works great, and still gets updates!
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I would agree, but there is still new content that is only available on physical disks. If that were not the case, I would have ditched my player long ago
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This! I have so many movies, including many old ones on DVD, that are well worth watching over and over. Plus, even, a VCR player for a few Truly Ancient programs (for instance: A Very British Coup, recorded from PBS many ages ago, if you can find it, get it). It's really too bad that disc players of all types have been abandoned; they'll be back, like vinyl, but probably after I'm gone.
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I started watching a movie the other day on Amazon Prime. I got about 10 minutes into it and realized that I was only getting stereo sound, remembered that I had the movie on DVD, so I switched to the DVD and finished the movie in it's full surround glory.
I've been consistently getting 5.1 sound on Amazon Prime and Disney+. (Last month I fixed up the subwoofer installed by the previous owners in our media room, so I tried Star Wars and Jurassic Park to verify it was working). It worked fine. On Amazon, I looked specifically for the "5.1 sound" in the information screen before you rent the movie.
I wonder if your experience came from an Amazon movie which specifically didn't offer 5.1 sound? Or if it came from a software configuration issue where your setup wa
Re:Would you bother replacing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not obsolete if you have the discs. I'm getting ready to watch Gangs of New York on my dvd player. Why? Because I own the disc and watch it when I want without having to go through a third party and be dependent on them giving me what I want. Nor do I have worry about being harassed if I'm still watching along with no ads nor tracking. No one but me knows I'm watching because it's not connected.
This is no different than a physical book. You never have to worry about the publisher or author knocking on your door and taking it away from you because of some issue not your fault, as has already happened [nytimes.com]. There's no tracking of what you're reading, for how long, where, etc. It's completely private.
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It's not obsolete if you have the discs. I'm getting ready to watch Gangs of New York on my dvd player. Why? Because I own the disc and watch it when I want without having to go through a third party and be dependent on them giving me what I want. Nor do I have worry about being harassed if I'm still watching along with no ads nor tracking. No one but me knows I'm watching because it's not connected.
This is no different than a physical book. You never have to worry about the publisher or author knocking on your door and taking it away from you because of some issue not your fault, as has already happened [nytimes.com]. There's no tracking of what you're reading, for how long, where, etc. It's completely private.
This. There are very few movies available on streaming services these days, with the exception of pay-by-the-movie streaming from Amazon and similar. And if you're going to pay for the content anyway, you might as well have the physical media, where no policy change is going to suddenly leave your DRM-encumbered stream unplayable. (Remember Amazon Unbox? Walmart Music?)
For things that are available for free as part of a streaming package, I stream them. I have DVDs or Blu-Rays of things that I really c
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I'll just write off the whole brand as a colossal mistake and never make that mistake again.
I've personally had failure on many fairly new Samsung products:
* $3000 Plasma TV failed in under 3 years, wouldn't boot
* Top-end smartphone failed in around 2 years with a swolen battery
* Refrigerator only 2 years old that beeps loudly every hour or two at random, as the front panel display seems to crash and reboot.
I can't imagine ever buying another Samsung product again. Total garbage quality IMO.
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WTF? Since when does a TV have to boo... nevermind - My bad. Move along.
I'm still in the flyback transformer era.
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We do live in Stupid World, don't we?
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I've pried apart countless Samsung LCD TVs and monitors to replace bulging and leaking capacitors. The capacitor plague hit just about everyone, but I was fixing Samsung crap with bad capacitors made years after everyone else managed to get that sorted out.
Their appliances are also shoddily built, but still do manage to be better than LG.
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I've had nothing but good luck with LG, FWIW. I remember when they made $20 VCRs: Lucky and Goldstar. These days, life is good.
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Unless your bluray player is a Samsung, of course... in which case, well... you may just have to go and get a new one when it stops working.
Re:Would you bother replacing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's not obsolete if you have the discs.
I have tapes, are you going to argue that tape decks aren't obsolete? Of course they are. Just because you still can use something doesn't preclude it from being obsolete.
Me, if my blu-ray player died I wouldn't replace it. I'd use the bluray player in my laptop to rip my collection onto my NAS and be done with it. Same functionality, same ownership, no obsolete hardware.
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Really? How do you play the disks you own?
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In a floppy drive.
NTP (Score:5, Insightful)
All at the same time ?
Looks like a expired certificate for boot image signing.
1) Connect them to a network with fake NTP servers serving the time from last week.
-or-
2) Open them up, remove whatever battery is on the main board for 15 sec, the start them without a network connection.
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You know, that would be so stupid and incompetent, it may very well be what happened.
Re:NTP (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hahahaha, excellent!
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Yes, it may be certificate-time related. It won't be the first time an expired certificate bit Samsung: see https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]
Given BluRay devices update themselves, and it's supposedly happened across a couple of days, it could be a firmware update.
I've experienced another time-related bug. Many years ago, I worked with software with thousands of customers. One day, all instances of the product stopped working at the same instant all around the world. It turned out the product generated glob
Re:NTP (Score:4, Insightful)
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... Robots use product blueprints ...
We already have this technology, but companies are slow at choosing it: Open Source
Complication from Latin complicationem (nominative complicatio), noun of action from past participle stem of complicare "to fold together, fold up, roll up," from com "with, together" (see com-) + plicare "to fold, weave"
With Open Source can one get just as many complications, but at least it's open and can get fixed.
Cellphones too (Score:2)
There is a malware cellphone wallpaper picture circulating around affecting android phones that causes bootlooping. This seems to be too much of a coincidence. The only solution is for Samsung to open source their firmware in my opinion.
I doubt they are going to update the firmware for all previous now out of warranty models. Or do they expect us to throw them away??
Cancel culture about to strike... (Score:2)
Planned obsolescence (Score:2)
Oopsie.
if you have to buy a new player... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the players are out of warranty, Samsung could choose not to do anything. If the answer is to buy a new player, fair enough, but it should not be another Samsung, for two reasons: 1) There's no assurance something like this won't happen again, and 2) Samsung shouldn't be rewarded for this kind of behavior.
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Many years ago a company named Sigma made low cost lenses for Canon/Nikon SLR and later dSLR cameras. Canon obviously wasn't too fond of this, since Sigma certainly undercut their prices by a wide margin. The communication protocol between camera and lens was some unpublished digital data stream, so it was only a matter of time, until Canon released a new popular camera model, the EOS 10D, with a slightly modified protocol. All Canon lenses worked flawlessly on this new model, but Sigma lenses all caused er
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1) There's no assurance something like this won't happen again
Something that can be said for any bluray player from any company that needs to be connected to the internet to receive updates.
But yes I agree, Samsung unfortunately while they make good TV hardware absolutely suck at software. I still remember when they advertised their first quad core processor in a TV for a "smoother interface". That bit of marketing put Samsung TVs on my blacklist.
I still buy a whole lot of other stuff of theirs, but no more living room electronics and I sure as heck won't touch their
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Missing: reason 0) Samsung have stopped making blu-ray players. :)
https://www.visiontimes.com/20... [visiontimes.com].
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1) There's no assurance something like this won't happen again
This is one of the many likely scenarios that drove me to avoid Blu-Ray like the plague. I have only one Blu-Ray movie (Avatar), and I only bought that many years ago because my wife wanted it as a birthday present. It came with the DVD version, and I can't tell the difference between the two. She claims that she can, which is plausible since women can generally perceive more colors than men.
But I knew exactly where Blu-Ray's encryption was leading (this is one of the many ways Blu-Ray buyers will get screw
First netflix now this? (Score:2)
The main thing that keeps me with my current Blu-ray is that it supports 3D, and I have a 3D HDTV. Not long ago the 3D blu-ray players were super easy to find, but now they are all but impossi
Well It finally happened (Score:2)
Samsung sucks (Score:3)
This is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Firmware in their TVs and players is so buggy and so annoyingly lacking in options there is no need to worry about me ever even considering any Samsung gear.
Time for a HTPC (Score:2)
Need something. The plasma TV is so old that all the apps are either stripped out of it or no longer work (Amazon, I hate you!). So not only discs but streaming all goes through the BD player. Lose that and I'll have to build a HTPC or repurpose an old laptop to watch the occasional stream. Ugh.
DRM, limited life certificates (Score:2)
Half the posts in this thread are a good argument for why you shouldn't use any DRM media services or buy hardware that depends on DRM or certificates with limited lifespan.
AKA, you're better off pirating, your pirated content wont expire and the hardware it's running on won't expire due to a encryption certificate issue or because it's manufacturer decided to deliberately brick it because someone else with the same model managed to hack it.
Now they will stop asking (Score:2)
People often asks me why I don't buy anything made by Samsung for about 10 years. Everything I have had from them had design flaws, either in firmware or hardware and failed early.