Is your Samsung SMART TV down ?

[Rick Hughes]

I have a Samsung 46es6800 Smart TV.

BBCiPlayer, Ch4 player etc all complaining of no internet connection (on known good wired Ethernet connection)

Spent a fun Hr trying to reset & reload Samsung SMART Hub ... and have now found that others have same problem, there is a fire in a Samsung factory in S.Korea that has taken Samsung Smart Hub service off line.

Does this sound plausible ?

I would have expected that the TV would connect via ISP for it's media content, and certainly not have to stream via S.Korea. Fair enough you have to load app from app sore that is in S,Korea ... but once you have it, would not expect to go outside country for content.

My phone (Samsung GS4) is working fine ...

[Tim Watts]

Wonder if it has some sort of phone-home thing going on... You have just put me off buying one now!

You are right though, it should not need Samsung's services to work, maybe just to get or update apps.

That is almost pure Android - although compiled by Samsung with mods, the Samsung-y dependent bits are compartmentalised to a few apps and the FW update. The rest is straight from the Android app store.

[Rick Hughes]

I thought that but in the link I posted they said it impacted phones & tablets.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

OK here on this Samsung at 12.50 (not sure of the number - it's a 24" full HD only a few months old.)

[Andy Burns]

The LG ones were certainly caught sending info on channels viewed and USB media filenames played back to base, even when the option was disabled.

[Tim Watts]

Didn't affect my Note 3.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Watts escribió:

You'd be crazy to buy one. They're full of bugs and vulns, and you're dependent on the manufacturer to provide firmware updates. IMO it's better to get a thick TV and a separate set-top box that can be swapped out or upgraded to a more capable one.

[Griff]

I understand that this whole issue is because Samsung have provided for the possibility of non free apps on the TV, and the link to Samsung.com is to check DRM status for the app before you run it. Unfortunately this still applies even with free apps lik eNetflix, iPlayer etc.

It's a prety appalling architecture. Lest they could do is distribute it so there's more than 1 server and they could reroute with a DNS change. Or make TVs check a number of [possible websites in order and keep the servers in different places.

This has happened a few times in the 2 or so years I've had my TV and there's just nothing you can do but watch good old fashioned broadcast TV or DVDs

[Tim Watts]

I very much agree in general - I had expected more of Samsung though...

[Rick Hughes]

Came back up around 1245 ...

[Brian Gaff]

If this is right, then its obviously them being stupid by allowing all their eggs in one basket, single point of failure. Surely they must have a back up system.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Some internet radios rely on a server that gives the up to date addresses of stations, so all the user does is select the station. Could it be working this way, if so it would need to look up the link on the server which is down. Brian

[Tim Watts]

That would be sensible enough - *if* the TV cached the results as these lists do not change very often.

Cannot believe Samsung screwed up this badly!

[Rick Hughes]

Exactly what DNS should be used for

[Rick Hughes]

Unfortunately many backup systems still require a manual switch, obvioulsy things could be fully automatic (via as pointed out DNS) ... but IT managers in corporates usually want to keep control in house .. but it does allow for impcat such as this.

[Tim Watts]

Especially as noone would ever have time limited DRM apps - deal once at install time like Android and be done.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Watts escribió:

[Huge]

Not really that newsworthy, given that my several-years-old bedroom TV runs Linux - a copy of the GPL fell out of the box when I unpacked it.

[Timothy Murphy]

I've several Samsung devices - Android phone and two TV's (series 5 and 6), as well as a printer and DVD player. In my experience Samsung hardware is unsurpassed, but their software is strangely bad. However, my series 6 TV seems to have improved quite a lot recently, with 2 updates yesterday adding apps that are quite useful.

I just bought a Google Chromecast but haven't tried it yet. I'm not clear if this could be use in the same way as a set-top box? (It came with no instructions whatever.)

[Timothy Murphy]

I think Samsung Smart TVs run a version of Linux, as some Linux folder-names came up when I was playing with one. (I was trying to work out how to deal with the error message on the TV which said I needed to update Flash.)