Viore HD 1080p 60HZ lc40vf80 for 389 at costco?

[time]

Add in the various law-suites against Samsung at the moment, their future is not looking too good.

Can I quote you on that in years to come?

I predict that the only place that Apple will get serious legal traction against Samsung is the US. No-one else has such corrupt patent law. Of course, Samsung also has some prior art:

Founded 1938, entered electronics industry in late 1960's.
Started manufacturing B&W televisions in 1970.
Started exporting color televisions in 1977, world's top selling brand since 2006.
World's top sales revenue for LCD and LED displays.
World's largest computer chip manufacturer, largest memory chip manufacturer since 1993.
In 2006, Samsung Group would have been the 35th largest economy in the world if ranked, larger than that of Argentina.

1991: Development of mobile phone handset completed.
1992: 10 millionth industrial robot produced.
1999: Developed wireless Internet phone (Smartphone), a small, multi-function phone.
2000: Launches PDA phone; TV Phone and Watch Phone Make Guinness Book of World Records.
2005: Released the world's first 7 mega pixel camera phone.

Having said all that, I'm also wary when it comes to buying Samsung products, but I think the problem decreases as you pay more. For example, not many people are going to criticize a Samsung Galaxy II, and if you want the best possible LCD television and money is no object, Samsung will be happy to oblige. Conversely, I don't much like their cheap TVs and monitors, and anecdotally find their cheap phones to be of inferior quality and design.

Is any of this surprising?

 

[Chewy509]

Can I quote you on that in years to come?

Sure can... ;-)

 

[Sol]

Like Time I've found Samsung's cheap crap to be cheap crap and their high end products to be pretty good. Except for the software side of things which seems to be just globally atrocious and I generally don't buy Samsung products for their software components. (E.g I have a Samsung phone with a 3rd party firmware and a Samsung "SMART" TV but I don't use any of the "SMART" bits.)

 

[Santilli]

The last Samsung phone I had, the Highlight was a real abortion.

The Nokia 5230 is a bit better, but maybe because it doesn't have the proprietary
software that now seems to plague phones offered by carriers like Verizon, or even T mobile.

I've had pretty good luck with Samsungs' hard drives, but now those are owned by Seagate?

What drives are we going to buy now?

And, the monitor chronicles on not so low priced computer monitors are a constant attempt to lowball features. It's almost like they are forcing you to buy a more expensive, bigger monitor to get full function.

 

[Santilli]

The last Samsung phone I had, the Highlight was a real abortion.

The Nokia 5230 is a bit better, but maybe because it doesn't have the proprietary
software that now seems to plague phones offered by carriers like Verizon, or even T mobile.

I've had pretty good luck with Samsungs' hard drives, but now those are owned by Seagate?

What drives are we going to buy now?

And, the monitor chronicles on not so low priced computer monitors are a constant attempt to lowball features. It's almost like they are forcing you to buy a more expensive, bigger monitor to get full function.

 

[Chewy509]

I generally don't buy Samsung products for their software components.

The last company I worked for, one of their software products output raw PCL for printing, before passing it onto the printer (the software has legacy components that go back to DOS 5 era). The 1 printer model that the company refused to support was Samsung printers - apparently their PCL implementation was the barely workable, which in contrast is any other printer manufacturer where their PCL implementation actually did work inline with what HP said it should be... and PCL is not a hard spec to follow.

Another example with Samsung. They added their own MTP (media transfer protocol) implementation onto their mobile phones and MP3 players which enables you to sync playlists, album art, etc between your PC and mp3 player/mobile phone. They decided to:
a, Use their own playlist metadata format, ignoring the standard playlist format.
b, Require timing variances between command and data USB packets to get album art sync working correctly.
c, Use a custom handshake protocol for device initialisation that while works in Windows, randomly works on Linux as it requires timing variances between command and data USB packets.
d, Not use the MTP implementation that comes with Andriod 3.0, but rather their own, so their devices are hard to use with anything other than Windows.

On the mobile front, they decided to:
a, ignore that the GSM AT Command set actually exists and developed their own dialling interface...
b, the device drivers are difficult to install on x64 based systems (for their non Android phones). Eg you have to do each one manually.

On printers, as mentioned before they have a barely working PCL command interpreter. The only reason (based on rumor) that their PS command interpreter works is that they didn't write it, they licensed from a 3rd party...

It really seems like Samsng can build decent hardware, but when it comes to software (be it on the PC or in firmware) they have little drive to get beyond the barely working stage.

 

[Santilli]

WOW!

Samsung=Japanese Apple ;-)

 

[Chewy509]

WOW!

Samsung=Japanese Apple ;-)

Samsung is a Korean based company... ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

 

[Santilli]

Samsung is a Korean based company... ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

That makes it even better:
Samsung=Korean Apple ;-)

I can imagine the wars, and crooked business dealings going on when those to sleaze ball companies try to screw each other out of any penny then can.

I'm sure it's the old,
"We have a contract. Now we start renegotiating all terms we agreed on in writing....on both sides."

Come to think of it, the cable stuff with the monitors, the lack of the right kind of ports, etc. smack of Apple type business model. Looks like Samsung is taking pages from Apple's
book...

 

[ddrueding]

I can second Samsung's PCL interface. After I got one of our vendors to re-write their interface to work, it still inserts 3 random characters at the top of the page. Sometimes they're there, sometimes not, but they are always different

 

[Sol]

That makes it even better:
Samsung=Korean Apple ;-)

I can imagine the wars, and crooked business dealings going on when those to sleaze ball companies try to screw each other out of any penny then can.

I'm sure it's the old,
"We have a contract. Now we start renegotiating all terms we agreed on in writing....on both sides."

Come to think of it, the cable stuff with the monitors, the lack of the right kind of ports, etc. smack of Apple type business model. Looks like Samsung is taking pages from Apple's
book...

It's not really like that. Apple make well integrated products, the software and hardware work well together, they just don't work with anything that isn't made by Apple.

Samsung make solid hardware which is generally compliant with industry standards. They use DNLA while Apple invent Airplay, they use HDMI while Apple make you use display-port or thunderbolt. (Both of which are standards, but not which anyone else really uses) And their printers do support PCL and their scanners support something vaguely standard.
Samsungs problem (or rather their customers problem) is that the software and firmware components are generally seriously half-arsed.

My Samsung TV came with a touch-screen remote (as well as a regular remote). It seems like a great idea in theory, I should be able to set up a remote for every device and have one screen with all the buttons I usually need with the less common buttons a swipe away. In practice it's basically useless, I get to scroll around a picture of the regular remote with all the buttons I never use still there and select the 1 or 2 I commonly need from 3 separate screens (Want to change the input source? Tap the source button, change to the screen with the directional buttons on it, use up and down to get to the source you want and hit enter - I wish I was joking). I can control any device I can be bothered programming the thing to control as long as I don't mind that it takes 5 taps to switch to controlling another device and even then it'll default to a screen of buttons that aren't even applicable to the type of device I'm controlling. This is a device which retails for 200 quid (Although the fact that they're giving them away suggests it doesn't sell at that price). If I could hack it and install a custom firmware I'm sure this device would be very cool, as shipped it's a bad joke.

My Samsung Galaxy S phone got a quadrant benchmark of about 700-800 when I got it and ran a bit sluggishly. A half a dozen versions of DarkiesROM later and it clears 2000 in quadrant, although to be fair I stopped noticing much difference after 1500 or so, the hardware was always this good. (The GPS is still a bit shit, but much better than it was)

 

[Santilli]

"It's not really like that. Apple make well integrated OVERPRICED products, the software and hardware work well together, they just don't work with anything that isn't made by Apple."

Essentially you are saying what I've known for a long time: Appl's desire is to completely
own your entire office, or home, appliance wise. Much as MSFT did with their ruthless monopoly of software, Apple has been actually more ruthless, attacking both software and hardware, making it impossible to use anything they don't own control, or profit from.

On top of that, they continue to release operating systems at a fast pace, designed to make obsolete both hardware and software with each upgrade. On top of this, they have a Jackboot group of lawyers trying to use the legal system to insure you don't hack your phone, etc.

The really odd part is if you are enthusiast, you REALLY have to pay through the nose to get current technology. Look at their processor markups, etc. and it makes you want to throw up. Looks like they learned pricing from Intel...

 

[Mercutio]

I bought a 40" 1080P Toshiba LCD from Amazon for $399 today. That Viore doesn't sound like such a good deal now, does it?

 

[Santilli]

It does sound like a good deal, since it's been taken back to Costco for a full refund.
It was a safe gamble.

If your Toshiba fails, you'll, at the very least, pay shipping back. That is if you can still return it.

Costco has that Toshiba 40" IIRC, but, it's about 600 dollars there. Maybe in a month or two...

 

[Mercutio]

Amazon offers free return shipping on TVs for the first 30 days. That's more than enough time for defects to become apparent.

 

[Santilli]

I've got a 1984 Porsche 928. Same deal as above. 2000 bucks? Buy it?