MELTDOWN: Samsung, Sony not-so-smart TVs go titsup for TWO days Samsung smart TVs have been turned into dumb goggle boxes for the past two days – after the devices have been unable use the internet. Coincidently, Sony smart TVs are also having troubles using the web. A Samsung spokesperson told The Register it is investigating reports that some of its web-connected tellies and Blu-Ray …
"Are you kidding? It might cover most of here, but we're just scraping the barrel compared to the average Joes out there who don't know IP from cheese."
We're a site for professional techies. We're not Samsung's tech support ;-) If you can follow the instructions, great. If not, hammer Sammy – they should be fixing this.
C.
My Samsung Blu-ray PVR is now back online - it was still broken last night, so something must have changed in the last few hours. Its DNS config points (as it has always done) to the local gateway (192.168.1.1), which some on other forums have claimed is a problem.
FWIW e1722.g.akamaiedge.net (= www.samsung.com) resolves (for me in the UK) to 184.24.107.225
The solutions suggested in the story don't seem to fix the solution given on that blog page, you need to serve a file on a webserver you control and change your local DNS to make samsung.com point to it.
It's academic now as Samsung have put the XML file back.
That's not a very smart TV if it can't cache that file and goes on strike if it can't find it.
"That's not a very smart TV if it can't cache that file and goes on strike if it can't find it."
That's not a very smart TV if it has to phone home before allowing the likes of iPlayer or Netflix to work. There's no need at all for that other than data slurping. IMV, no device should be phoning home unless it's to connect to their own app shop or their own apps. It most certainly should not fail to work with 3rd party apps via the users own BB connection, DNS etc. just because "home" isn't answering the phone.
"But this is precisly a cloud operation! The TV should be able to work without phoning home first"
Only if you take the view that everything on the interwebs is the cloud. I don't - and I therefore certainly don't class "phoning home" as a cloud thing. Although, as this case shows, it is as much of a bloody nuisance.
Actually I'm not even a teensy bit surprised, this is what happens when 20 manufacturers with multiple teams run off in 40+ directions to solve a single marketing bullet-point with no standardisation or harmonisation. It means you end up relying on the manufacturer not changing direction for a decade or so and supporting legacy infrastructure (and we know how much they love doing that).
Case in point, to watch a DVD on a tablet, Samsung produced a great little device, makes a local hotspot as well as supporting wired networks, USB, remote backup to disc, nicely packaged, fairly priced.
Except the ONLY client app you have to use is made by Toshiba(!), unsupported, hasn't had an upgrade in years, and works like a private beta or research project, sometimes you swipe the screen to navigate like a poorly implemented remote control, it handles a tap as an OK, so tapping on a link is actually pressing OK on a different link, the sound levels are consistently 6dB too low, it's a mess. They gave up on it, meaning three best I can hope for is a miserable experience until it dies.
Reminded me to stick to the standards-based stuff, it's why we have them.
I own a Samsung HomeSync media box. It is a very nice concept, but unusable as a media box. For that, I am happy with a WD Live to stream from my PC. The Samsung box is unusable because of Samsung's ignorant proprietary OS and concept of functionality. I believe that when this TV prob is sorted out, the cause will be the Samsung brain-broke designers.
I've tried WD Live, but its format support isn't up to snuff and its upscaler is the pits. I'd be more inclined to use one of those newer Pi' 2s to install Kodi (I tried it with the original B, but even with 2.1A backing it up it couldn't seem to remain stable; perhaps the stronger 2 can better handle it).
After following all the problems and issues with so called smart TVs I a waiting for newer stupid TVs to come to the market before replacing my current old stupid TV.
If I want to surf, I have computers, tables and more for such, I do not need that on a TV.
Unfortunately it seems like I will have to wait until someone comes out with reasonable priced 4K monitors that are large enough as TVs just seem to get "smarter and smarter" according to their advertising with no basic TVs available for sale.
Tried this with Blu Ray and got for a film
Please connect the Blu Ray to the internet to authenticate the disc or something like that.
It was a bad move as nearly half an hour later the Samsung Blu Ray was still updating firmware and apps for stuff I have never used before.
I haven't seen one smart TV interface I like and LG and Samsung ones have been caught uploading stuff to the mothership.
Stupid TV (or even monitor) + Android TV stick/box + Kodi FTW. If you use Amazon, Netflix, etc... then minimal gapps as well.
Not an official Google Android TV box though, those probably have the same problem as smart TVs.
But for a more powerful solution (for fancy skins with fancy menus), use a cheap <$150 Intel NUC (with built-in IR) and OpenELEC (Linux+Kodi [previously known as XBMC]). It will play every swinging file you can throw at it (and decode it in hardware if your kit can do it), it can even decode H.265 in software if you are running something a little more beefy.
If you run Windows there are ways (addons) to use Amazon and Netflix too.
I imagine you already know all that Dan55, I was just sharing because I really like Kodi.
I've steen Intel NUCs with Windows andere Intel drivers phone home, they connect to servicegateway.intel.com for some reason. Without the Intel anti theft stuff installed.
You can learn all sorts of interesting things, watching internet traffic of things.
What's not to like about this?
Ok so I don't have one of these but I'm not interested in all this internet connectivity from my TV. It is a two-way street as we all know. So my (cough-cough) late night trip to the Hot-Babes channel will be broadcast to the mothership.
I really don't want the world and their dog to know
1) What TV Channels I watch
2) What I record for later viewing.
I see that not being able to reach the Samsung or Sony or LG Motherships as a big win win.
The problem starts when this inability to phone home stops the whole thing from working let alone as a dumb TV.
Agree, my TV manufacturer has no business monitoring my (actually rather benign, but that's my choice) viewing. Less still do they have any business installing dreadful apps like Samsung force onto my phone which through terrible design and lazy programming take clock cycles and memory on my phone even when completely unused in years. These shitty apps grow and proliferate with each generation, meaning I now have to delete stuff I want in order to accommodate stuff I don't. That'll happen to all your smart devices too, give it another year.
@Christian Berger - "Why would you even fix this?Yeah, why would people who pay for Netflix want to connect to the internet?"
Oh FFS - is it too difficult to understand that some of us have TVs with native iPlayer and Netflix apps (which, by the way has no microphone or camera) which we might actually want to use.
I'll be honest, I don't mind my TV knowing which iPlayer programme I've watched as amazingly, iPlayer already knows that too! (and they know no more about me than the TV)
I know privacy is a big issue but not everything is a privacy issue - this is about a TV seemingly so badly made that to watch YouTube, the TV has to know that it can reach an ip address that has nothing to do with YouTube.
I think the problem (on Samsung anyway) is that the Smart TV is a walled garden - it displays a page (which I'm guessing comes from a Samsung web site) of icons that you can select using your remote (including iPlayer and YouTube, but not e.g. 4OD). So if you can't reach 'samsung.com', you're really dead in the water.
Really hope this slows the rise of the Smart TV versus availability of basic models. But I doubt it! The mainstream media are fast asleep... As their are on every other tech issue, save for collating how many users Twitter / Facebook added this week.
Ad to that (deliberate pun), Samsung and LG just don't listen to their customers. They've committed themselves to the their plans of having every TV net connected by two years time. Just like the SIM card maker that didn't get hacked, they're hoping this will all blow over quickly!
Ouch!.. Help get the word out folks! .. .. Death to Smart TV's!
I will simply not give it my Wifi password and not plug it into a CAT5 cable, so unless they put a SIM and transceiver in my TV it can't ever phone home. They can want it connected all they want, but we decide whether to let it into our data network. Who cares what crappy players they put in their TVs, I would never use it anyway, they never support every codec and usually have menu systems created by morons anyway. Add in privacy issues and the choice becomes clear, just don't use those features.
My Sony TV works very well, I can watch Netflix and Amazon prime without powering up the PS3 or 4, show photos from my Xperia Z without cables, and get a detailed program view, far superior to the Freeview or Virgin Media offerings.
It can record to USB, I have the PS4's old 500Gb hard drive plugged in at the moment.
It's a great device, convergence is here to stay in our house.
Seems to be back up now, but thanks for the dnsmasq tip, added in case of future mishaps.
(I guess I should complain about having a single point of failure, but I'm not surprised at all, very smart the TV is not. Still, convenient to be able to use Netflix and HBO Nordic, and few local streaming services, directly from the TV. The interface sucks, but in the case of Netflix, just browse beforehand what you want to watch and add to your playlist, that is readily available from the TV app. As to privacy concerns, if someone finds out I just watched a crappy 80s horror flick, so be it. And no, I don't have a voice-enabled model, they're just plain creepy with the recent discoveries.)
Get over it. If you're willing to wear a tin hat and cut yourself off from everything to avoid being snooped on then fair enough, you have a point to be made.
If you have a debit/credit card, a drivers License, utility bills, bus pass/travelcard/oyster card, mortgage, loans or finance of any sort, mobile phone, land line, cctv outside your front door and even step foot into most shops then you're being tailed. You're an idiot if you think otherwise.
Your telly is just one more thing adding to the already massive amounts of data being collected on you. It's too late to lose sleep over it now.
Actually, it's closer to all or nothing than you think. If it ain't one thing recording you, it's another, and you have no control over what happens in public streets where it's a free-for-all. Heck, thanks to satellites and aerial photography, they can even take multiple pictures (including infrared) of a mountain retreat miles from any electricity. So no, retreating to the mountains is becoming less viable of an option.
It does seem odd that two brands were/are having the issue at the same time. And the reboot the TV advice seems right out the MS Helldesk playbook.
BTW, I'm a techie (not security nor sysadmin) but I won't own a smart TV and nor do I even attempt to give help to friends and relatives who own them. It's bad enough at times with PC help....
According to sleuths commenting on the outage, the TVs expect to talk to a machine with the IP address 23.66.247.46 to confirm they have a working internet connection.
Well, not really. As the output from host shows, the address resolves to a node in Akamai's Content Distribution Network. These things change according to time and location. Currently I get a different IP according to whether I'm coming in from home or the office (just 3km away). To expect a single address to work, and to keep working, for everybody around the world (or even just in Blighty) is optimistic.
I think your buzzword dictionary needs updating. I've been hearing the "challenge" thing for probably 15 years. Usually from management as if they're trying to hide the fact that you'll need lots of aspirin and adult beverages to deal with the latest "challenge"... err... asinine idea.
My mum got a new Toshiba smart TV recently, and the BBC iPlayer app was incredibly jerky. The novel solution was to get a Roku stick which worked perfectly. The smart TV 'functionality' will never be used again.
Why can they not get things to work correctly out of the factory?
My Samsung woks rather well. As an Amazon Prime subscriber I use Amazon Instant Video a fair bit for the inclusive content, and the HD content is really quite good. A lot of stuff I've watched and won't bother now buying on Blu Ray.
Though I do have a 76mbps connection ;)
Oh and I use the Plex app a lot which talks to my NAS media server. That thankfully worked even though the TV was showing no Internet connection.
the iPlayer app is not the best, but adequate. I prefer iPlayer on Sky HD, especially as it can download the content.
They use IP geolocation to decide on the "services" shown to you in the menus. One day it decided I was in Germany and deleted iPlayer, et al, and reconfigured the UI to provide localised German content.
According to tech support, it was the fault of my ISP and that until they were prepared to grant me a lease on an IP address that Sony recognised as being in the, UK nothing would change.
Things were resolved after a short period of time, then Sony and the BBC put a bullet in iPlayer support for good.
And that's the trouble with these devices, you have no meaningful control over their operation: connect to the Internet because you want, say, iPlayer and you're subject to whimsical decisions to update firmware or geographical location, Even if you avoid that, you lose most of the functionality whenever a coding assumption proves invalid and are then dependent on a relucant manufacturer issuing a firmware update.
Not that's there's such a thing as a dumb TV any more. The only reason I have a Samsung smart TV is that my previous dumbish Toshiba had to be replaced by the retailer under warranty because it can't cope with recent changes to Freeview HD and there's no sign of a firmware fix for that either...
Identical thing happened to me. Sony Blu Ray, iplayer disappeared one time. Eventually for good thanks to stupid BBC policy.
Now using a PS3 to access iPlayer, that's a horrible user-interface and again subject to logging in to Sony network just to watch BBC programs - which I am loathe to do but am putting up with for now.
I can view pictures, but mine is not on the network, saw no reason why, updates come over the air.
As I have said before I want a good tuner, a good panel, good processing, plenty of HDMI.
As to smart I have a pair of consoles better for smart than any TV, IPlayer is fine, web surfing is fine, and they are the same brand as my TV!
And they are regularly updated!
In defence of Sammy tvs, I've recently bought two smart and two dumb and they're pretty good. The one I bought for the other half streams stuff fine and can (sort of) web browse and she is happy. Being a computer geek, I haven't even connected mine to the wireless ...
Having said that, I hate problems with audio "un-sync" on Freeview ... but that doesn't seem to be a brand related problem but blamed on a more general issue with tv hardware 'unable to cope with the requirements of the data stream'. Sorry, 13 grains-per-sec on "Dave-ja vu-yesterday+1+24+7" too much? Why is there no hard sync between the video frame and the audio?
They do seem to be decent TVs brought low by this problem.
I can only guess that at the design stage, it made sense for the TV to make a check that the internet was "working" rather than a user being baffled why iplayer (for instance) wasn't working. What they hadn't put enough effort into was then being sure that this check upon which all the smart functions depended was itself dependable. I shouldn't have thunk the extra code for it to test more than one ip address would have been that much effort had they realised the weakness.
It is back up and running now, and resolving to the same address it was last night (when it failed). However, last night there were five CNAME records in the chain :-
www.samsung.com. 0 IN CNAME www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.
www.samsung.com.edgekey.net. 2616 IN CNAME www.samsung.com.akadns.net.
www.samsung.com.akadns.net. 4 IN CNAME china-www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.
china-www.samsung.com.edgekey.net. 7998 IN CNAME china-www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net.
china-www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net. 117 IN CNAME e1722.g.akamaiedge.net.
e1722.g.akamaiedge.net. 12 IN A 104.72.168.26
Whereas this morning there are only three :-
www.samsung.com. 60 IN CNAME www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.
www.samsung.com.edgekey.net. 9367 IN CNAME www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net.
www.samsung.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net. 1998 IN CNAME e1722.g.akamaiedge.net.
e1722.g.akamaiedge.net. 11 IN A 104.72.168.26
I think that's a smoking gun.
Still, it's bloody stupid having SmartHub depend on www.samsung.com or even an Internet connection - I have an app that provides nice access to content on my local media server - the missus was not happy that that was unavailable too.
Bloody stupid, but sadly not unsurprising.
I had the issue on my E Series TV, no access to internet based content, despite the internet working fine on every other device.
I'm surprised you had an issue with an app to access local content, though. I use Plex and it worked just fine - which kept the missus happy.
Mine seems to routinely lose its connection, refusing to connect to the wifi hub, which it can see, but refuses to admit it can see.
I only become aware of this on the odd occasion that I actually look at the internet through it, which is pretty rare.
I think I resolve it by restoring factory settings. I think that's what I do.I can't actually remember how I resolved it last time. There isn't anything in the instructions.
But it shouldn't need that sort of TLC.
It;s a TV, ffs.
People really should stop buying TVs with these kind of "features" in them. Manufactures are slow to fix issues related to third party "plugins" and even if they get better at it, why would I want to be able to choose only from the plugins that they happened to be able to get everyone's lawyers to agree with this week? It adds cost and complexity, and to suffer those two things for a sub-par experience is dumb. I would like a TV with many HDMI inputs, some old-timey analog ports, the ability to read the occasional USB stick, and lots of adjustment features. Not some half-baked "Smart" TV. "Oh sorry, your TV is too old to run Youtube 4.3, please buy another TV and try again."
I had the same problem the last couple of days but I'd assumed there was an issue with the TV or maybe my router had blocked it for some reason. Left it and was going to fiddle about resetting this and that, but turns out it's fine today.
It did make me think though that all the apps that need network access to work, while independent of Samsung, won't work unless the TV can talk to a Samsung server. Stuff like Netflix/Amazon should be able to work talking to their own servers even if Samsung's are down. Okay it won't be able to check for an update to the app, but fair enough.
It does also signify an end of service at some point when Samsung pulls the plug on the hub service, as they inevitably will when they come up with something new and old TVs become unsupported. While some people do buy TVs every couple of years, some keep them for 10+. Though these days they do tend to break down within 5 years. I remember TVs that used to last 20 or so and know of people still running 20+ year old CRTs.
During their UAT phase someone decided that it might be more convenient to have the TV call home to check to see if there are any software updates just as soon as it is switched on? You know, like Joe public who doesn't want, or need, to know about firmware maintenance or software updates might find it convenient not to have to know about how these things are done.
My Sammy F series and H series are both web enabled but I know better than to have any models with speech recognition or built-in webcams. I bought them to hook into my Amazon Prime acc and Plex. There is only one wire coming out of the TV in the bedroom for power. The Mrs resisted putting a Tv in the bedroom because she didn't want it taking over the room with wires snaking out all over the place. She lives in the real world where tech is supposed to enhance her quality of life because in her world a TV is supposed to entertain and be something that she can just switch on and watch The Great British bake off.
I do like a 'dumb' screen, one that happily shows footage from whatever box you plug into it, however, it has come to my attention from using various friends/family TVs & DVRs etc. that most menu systems suck balls, wether the TV is 'smart' or not.
And not only are most menus terrible to navigate, most associated remote controls for the devices are just as badly designed, it's like they got a generic button layout and shoehorned their functions into that layout, rather than starting from scratch and realising certain functions are going to be used a lot and require a larger, easier accessable button for your thumb.
I'd write 'them' a letter but I doubt they'd even read it, something along the lines of:
"Dear manufacturers, please spend more than 5 minutes designing your menu systems and remote controls, perhaps get some average people to try and use them to give feedback before you decide it's finished and sell it.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely, everyone."
Agreed! The new iPlayer UI is especially bad.
I suspect that many of the problems are a result of developing and testing in environments that are much faster and more responsive than the TV at home. In the case of my Samsung, the response to the remote is sluggish, and a UI like iPlayer that seems to load a complete new page with every key press is barely usable.
I was thinking how dumb this sounds - why bother with the "phone home" bit at all? Then I remembered this is exactly how iThings implement WiFi login portal detection - request some Apple URL; if that gets hijacked to a login page, display that before you regard the WiFi connection as "up". They do handle failure more gracefully, though: as I recall, if Apple's URL isn't reachable, it tells you the connection doesn't seem to have working Net access and asks if you want to connect regardless, or try another access point.
So, if Samsung fold, or samsung.com somehow gets taken over (court order, Nokia-style split between the different bits of company, etc) those "smart" TVs become permanently dumb barring a hack like this? Thanks Samsung. At least when other manufacturers fold, you just have to do without support and firmware updates, instead of having the kit brick itself!
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