Samsung jubilantly announced at this year's CES as 2015 being "just the beginning of an incredible smart TV future." And they were right. So far, it's incredibly bad.
With in the last week, Samsung has had two major issues with its SmartTV platform. The first cropped up late last week when a concerning passage in Samsung's SmartTV security policy basically told people to be careful what they say in front of the television. And as plenty of people have pointed it, it's not far from there to 1984. The ensuring PR shitstorm cause Samsung to reword its privacy policy to better explain what was really happening on the backend, but still, it's a bad look.
Fast forward about four days later, and Samsung has yet another problem. Third party apps on Samsung TVs, including Plex and Foxtel, began pushing unwanted Pepsi ads on Australian viewers' own, locally stored content. Foxtel quickly responded saying the problem was on Samsung's end and that the ads definitely shouldn't be there. Samsung Australia eventually responded that the problem had been rectified and that the company had no plans for these kinds of ads "in the near future." Comforting.
Samsung and other companies may be excited about the new Smart TV future, but after this week, a plain old dumb television is the future I'm way more comfortable with. [Ars Technica and CNET]