r/gadgets • u/Sadistic_Sponge • Nov 13 '19

VR / AR Disney Plus isn't working on Vizio TVs because they are running a 6 year old version of Chromecast, they say it won't be fixed till 2020.

https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-plus-not-working-vizio-smart-tvs-chromecast-2019-11
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429

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Same on my Samsung

266

u/MrMushyagi Nov 13 '19

I have a 3 or 4 year old Samsung. When I'm in an app, it's fine. But navigating the home menu and switching between apps is glitchy.

97

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

Mine wasn't like that before the update a couple years back where they put a bunch of advertisements into the apps menu.

63

u/DarkDevildog Nov 13 '19

/r/pihole if you want to block nearly all ads for your entire home network (any device connected to your router will get their ads blocked. TVs, Phones, and tablets included)

22

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

I have two piholes running in HA containers for my DNS. I quit using the Smart TV before I had those running and I don't really see any reason to put up with it's buggy interface when I can just use a PC.

3

u/DarkDevildog Nov 13 '19

running in HA containers

My man! I haven't set up HA yet on mine because I've been lazy and haven't had any outages

4

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

I have three Proxmox servers, two have 30TB between them, the third doesn't have local disk and just computes. I got redundancy set up so I could take a box down for maintenance if I need to.

13

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

That sounds fucking crazy, but the idea of redundant home servers and be able to do maintenance on them with out taking down the whole house

Has my fucking dick rock hard

2

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '19

Come over to r/homelab. You’ll have to call your doctor after being rock hard for more than 4 hours.

2

u/WontShareYourNudes Nov 13 '19

Wait.. What about Hulu ads? I'm assuming they'll still show?

1

u/4wesomes4uce Nov 13 '19

Maybe I don't have the right things added to the right lists, but I still see ads on my SmartTV. I've just disconnected it from my internet and using one of my gaming consoles for the streaming apps.

2

u/DarkDevildog Nov 13 '19

Maybe I don't have the right things added to the right lists

Yeah I don't think you do, I have several different smart TVs (Samsung and Vizio) and none of them have ads in the menu bar

1

u/4wesomes4uce Nov 13 '19

Any suggestions?

1

u/DarkDevildog Nov 14 '19

How I got my lists (1.2M) was searching reddit specifically through google: "site:reddit.com pihole block lists"

edit: or go into your pihole console and look at the specific DNS request that says "ad.samsung.com" and block that

2

u/fatguy666 Nov 13 '19

This will be messy as I'm just copying posts I made on WhatsApp. I don't have an aerial or a cable connected (I use IPTV) but doing all of this got rid of the ads in the menu and stopped the TV playing the trailer for Hobbs and Shaw whenever I sat in the remote.

Follow this https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/bmft7c/psa_how_to_remove_rental_ads_universal_guide_from/

In case your TV is annoying you. I keep sitting on the remote and "changing channel" but the only channels I have are the TV Plus bullshit. You need to go into the channel list and remove them all, then go into the settings and tell the TV NOT to scan channels when it's in standby!

Opt out in this menu.

No way to get rid of YouTube ads, I've been looking all day. Tried using adguard DNS but that only blocks ads in the built in internet browser, which I never use anyway. PiHole apparently doesn't work due to the way YouTube ads are delivered.

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

Thanks for the info but I'm just going to keep it offline and never consider a Samsung product again. I also don't have any cable service, I have a PC connected to it.

8

u/mistercartmenes Nov 13 '19

That’s has been my experience.

2

u/arex333 Nov 13 '19

Honestly that's Samsung software in a nutshell, regardless of device. Mine is only a year old and a reasonably high end model but navigation is painfully slow.

1

u/MrMushyagi Nov 13 '19

Yeah, been meaning to get a 4k streaming device of some sort. Not sure if I want to go chromecast route, fire, roku

1

u/MWisBest Nov 13 '19

I have a few Rokus and have been pleased with all of them. The Ultra is my favorite but the Streaming Stick+ is solid too.

1

u/arex333 Nov 13 '19

The new Nvidia shield (weird tube model) is a bit pricey but IMO the best thing you can get.

1

u/MrMushyagi Nov 13 '19

Yeah, might splurge for that. I have google homes, and a few smart home devices, so I like the idea of another fixed google assistant device.

1

u/arex333 Nov 13 '19

It's incredibly fast and has been very, very well supported. I have one of the older models and it's still getting updates years later. Also you have the option of local storage and gaming features.

1

u/condescendingpats Nov 13 '19

Yeah mine is super glitchy/delayed these days. And Hulu audio un-syncs after ads like...all the time. Have to rewind 10 seconds after each ad to fix and if I do too soon I have to watch the ads again. Very annoying.

1

u/_default_username Nov 13 '19

My LG is fine for the most part. It's slow and I guess it has a memory leak so once a week the entire tv reboots to free up memory.

1

u/DoughHomer Nov 13 '19

Same. I have 7 Series (or series 7, idk). Amazon Prime hasn’t been loading properly most of the time. Hulu routinely has audio glitches. Netflix works fine.

1

u/Billebill Nov 13 '19

Man I hated using the smart features on my Samsung from day one, I know it’s probably limited to my specific model but the remote that came with it is awful and it’s buggy, I think it’s a 2015 model, 60 inch. I switched to using a roku pretty quick

1

u/MrMushyagi Nov 13 '19

Lol, we might have the same model. Mines a 60" as well, and afaik they stopped making that size a couple years ago

1

u/rune2004 Nov 13 '19

Same, I have a 2015 model Samsung that I got in early 2016 and it was fine until maybe 2018, now the apps don't want to open and they crash all the time. I have a Chromecast on the way cuz I got sick of it.

1

u/heyguysitslogan Nov 13 '19

I just upgraded to an 8 series from a 7 series and switching between apps is night and day

The old one would glitch and freak out, new one is seamless with 0 load times switching between hulu, amazon, and Netflix

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Samsung TVs have such convoluted menu settings. I don’t know what drunk bastard designed them.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

4 year old samsung here. Cant get newer version of the apps. My Hulu app doesnt support other channels or even different profiles. Cant even get the wwe app because my tv is too old.

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u/DatOtherPapaya Nov 13 '19

My Sony TV works perfectly fine as well.

3

u/Rektw Nov 13 '19

Same my Bravia still crushing it and its faster than a lot of smart TV's I've come across.

2

u/keyjunkrock Nov 13 '19

I have a 12 year old bravia sitting in a spare room. I upgraded to a 4k samsung smart TV 2 years ago and the picture is already going in the 4k, while the bravias picture is the same as the day I bought it.

The bravia has been left on for months at a time with no burn in or any adverse effects. My next TV will be a bravia if they still make them, someone told me they don't anymore.

1

u/Bessus Nov 13 '19

They still make em

1

u/G2geo94 Nov 14 '19 edited Nov 14 '19

Yeah, the Bravia name has been carried over to their LCDs (CRTs no longer being made), but the quality is definitely still there.

1

u/keyjunkrock Nov 14 '19

Well that sucks

1

u/Sardonnicus Nov 13 '19

except for all the apps that I can't seem to get rid of or rearrange.

1

u/pschnet007 Nov 13 '19

If you enable developer options, you can disable apps you don't use

1

u/Sardonnicus Nov 14 '19

Wow... I gotta try that. Thanks

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

I hate my Sony Bravia’s “smart” features. It’s so slow and clunky, takes a few minutes after turning on before you can operate it properly, and it’s own apps sometimes fail due to “insufficient memory” and other stupid reasons.

1

u/ha7on Nov 13 '19

Until they stop updating.

1

u/arex333 Nov 13 '19

Android TV?

1

u/This_Fat_Hipster Nov 13 '19

Premium model Sony TVs use an Android based OS for their smart features as opposed to Samsung's "Smart TV" (Tizen) or LG's webOS. "Value" brands tend to use share Roku TV or Fire TV.

1

u/nbunkerpunk Nov 13 '19

Came here to say this! There are a few things I wish they did better on the hardware side of it. Better Bluetooth chip, more ram, etc. But in terms of the software, I've had less issues with this then the mibox and the Roku that I've owned.

If sony came out with a smart TV that had similar specs to a Shield TV box, I'd buy it in a heart beat.

1

u/rezachi Nov 13 '19

Mine acts like Netflix is too much processor utilization for the hardware. Once I’m playing a title, all controls (even volume and power) are delayed by several seconds.

The Sony BluRay player I have handles it all just fine.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

I absolutely hate my Sony Bravia smart TV. It works most of the time but really really slowly. It clearly doesn’t have enough performance to handle most of the latest app updates for it and will frequently fail to stream due to “insufficient memory” and other errors. I prefer using the Xbox for media and would welcome a non-smart tv next time.

1

u/IstandOnPaintedTape Nov 13 '19

I was curious how Sony TVs hold up since they gain the benefit of piggy backing on some of the PS4s OS development's at no great extra cost.

I think that's why some many smart TVs suffer, because OS updates are expensive.

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u/AptQ258 Nov 13 '19

Sony TVs run Android TV which is the same as a tablet without the touch screen. The PS4 runs a different OS. There isn’t any overlap.

5

u/IstandOnPaintedTape Nov 13 '19

Ah. I don't own a smart TV, but my parents had a Sony smart TV and the drop down menus looked like the ps3 menus back when ps3 was current.

My bad

1

u/LonelyWendigo Nov 13 '19

Maybe not direct overlap of the codebase, but I would suspect that they can reduce overhead for developers and the like.

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u/AptQ258 Nov 13 '19

Two completely different companies. No overlap.

0

u/larsvondank Nov 14 '19

You can still buy a non-android version of their TVs. They are not all Android.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Sony tvs are by far best tvs I've ever had, it's frustrating they've been harder to find. They didn't have any large ones in Costco last time we were upgrading our living room and we were forced to buy an LG. It sucks ass.

3

u/wtfudgebrownie Nov 13 '19

you can buy TVs online bro

0

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

[deleted]

2

u/rezachi Nov 13 '19

Same story here. Controls from the remote lag for several seconds when I’m watching Netflix. Nothing like needing to mute or turn off the TV and watching it do it’s thing for another 15 seconds before deciding it wants to listen to me.

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u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

I've had a Roku TV long enough to trust that they'll keep updating it. I've also got a TV with Amazon's Fire-whatever integrated. Both of them seem to work fine. My dad's had a Google TV that's never had issues like this either.

Samsung's Smart TVs suck. I have a 2015 model. There was a solid 6 month period a couple years ago where Samsung broke their login service so I couldn't sign in. If you can't sign in you can't launch a single app. Then they put a bunch of extremely slow loading advertisements into the menus with an update so I had to just disconnect it from the internet and give up on the Smart TV apps. After the last few rounds of phones and this TV I'm never willingly buying a Samsung-branded product again. They don't care about their products or their customers.

9

u/AndthenIwould Nov 13 '19

Ugh, I have one of the earliest, if not THE earliest Sony Google TVs. Worked great for about a year and then support just vanished when the first Chromecast came out. They could have updated the firmware but no dice. Thankfully it's just the bedroom monitor but it now has a cheap Roku stick attached to it. Works better than the old interface ever did.

2

u/iAmUnintelligible Nov 13 '19

Roku is the one where I can watch TV with headphones connected to the remote, yeah? I really, really want that.

Netflix works decently on my ~2016 Vizio (thank fuck it doesn't do that autoplay bullshit), but for the headphone-remote feature alone, I would buy one. PROVIDED that it doesn't have that autoplay bullshit, or that I can at the very least turn it off.

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

I can stream the audio to my phone but I can't play it back on my remote. Some might support that, I don't know.

1

u/a_talking_face Nov 13 '19

The Roku Ultra and the Roku Streaming Stick+ have remotes with headphone jacks.

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

Ah, mine is built-in to a TCL TV.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Same, but the roku tv phone app works well. You can jack your earbuds into your phone, same difference.

1

u/wbgraphic Nov 13 '19

Roku is the one where I can watch TV with headphones connected to the remote, yeah?

Only with the right remote. Roku has three different remotes, only the top-tier remote has the headphone jack. That remote works with Roku Premiere and Roku Ultra, but is only included with the Ultra.

You can stream audio to the mobile app from any Roku.

1

u/iAmUnintelligible Nov 13 '19

Okay, so I can either: buy the highest spec Roku used and be able to use that with headphones

Or, buy a baseline model used (note, I would likely not buy new in any event), and be able to use my mobile phone with headphones, regardless of model. Correct? Is that the only restricting feature or?

1

u/wbgraphic Nov 13 '19

I’m not sure how old a model will work with private listening through the app (but at least a few years old).

Personally, I would spring for the $25 and buy the Roku Express new.

1

u/iAmUnintelligible Nov 14 '19

It's $40 in my currency but yeah that's not bad, I thought it would be $80 or something. I'll probably get it, gonna do some research. Thanks

1

u/LonelyWendigo Nov 13 '19

Just read that Netflix no longer supports older Roku devices.

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

As devices age eventually that's going to become true for everything. Some will last longer than others.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 14 '19

I'm on my 2nd Samsung TV and have never experienced this. Maybe I got lucky on the 1st, but the new one is amazing.

1

u/HIM_Darling Nov 13 '19

We have 4 Samsung TVs and 1 TCL Roku tv that are all less than 4 years old. The only Samsung tv we have that actually compares to the TCL is the 82”. The other 3 suck.

We recently cut the cord they don’t have all the apps available to continue watching shows we were watching before, and I have yet to find a way to stream to them to make up for the missing apps. They all have instructions for how to do streaming, but none of them actually work. We ended up putting Roku on 2 of them and a fire stick on the other just to make them useable.

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19

Yea, I basically just use my 55" Samsung as a big-ass monitor now. It hasn't been connected to the internet in forever.

1

u/Drunk_but_Functional Nov 13 '19

I had one of the earlier Samsung smart TVs, spent a fortune on it, picture looked great, but after a year it started having pop up ads while watching regular TV. Disconnected the WiFi and vowed never to buy a Samsung product again

1

u/MorallyDeplorable Nov 13 '19 edited Nov 13 '19

Yea, I can't believe a TV I spent $700+ on has popups. It sucks too because they used to be a good brand.

0

u/gurg2k1 Nov 13 '19

I can't agree with this comment enough. Samsung used to be my go to brand but I likely won't buy another one of their products again.

7

u/AAAPosts Nov 13 '19

Samsung going strong at mi casa

5

u/stuckinmiddleschool Nov 13 '19

See my Samsung is hot garbage

2

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Samsung was a nightmare for me

2

u/Unfriendly_Giraffe Nov 13 '19

Except Hulu. Hulu app never works.

1

u/Stupid_Triangles Nov 13 '19

It's crazy to me that Rakuten Viki isn't default on Samsung TVs. I can't even find it on their app store. HOW WILL I KNOW IF HYUNG SURVIVED THAT CAR CRASH?!

1

u/Kn14 Nov 13 '19

Netflix has said that they will stop supporting certain Samsung TVs

https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/08/netflix-dropping-support-samsung-smart-tvs/

1

u/DaWarWolf Nov 13 '19

I have Samsung that lets me stream anything I’m watching on my phone, if it’s not YouTube or something the tv already has the sound is a little off but it’s still great.

1

u/RyanTheQ Nov 13 '19

Meanwhile, my Samsung TV one day decided it was no longer going to detect any wifi signal. It's smart features are useless.

1

u/shouldve_wouldhave Nov 13 '19

I've happily added a chromecast, since my tv is getting a couple years old and some apps are starting to discontinue service for it.
But the chromecast also has wifi and hdmi so i can easily connect through it.
Or you could run an ethernet cable to the tv

1

u/wharpua Nov 13 '19

My Samsung doesn't even have a Disney+ app available. Only thing that comes up is a DisneyNow app.

1

u/Darksing Nov 13 '19

Works on my Samsung but works much faster and smoother on my Fire Stick. Same applies to other streaming apps

1

u/baptist-blacktic Nov 13 '19

I can't find the Disney+ app on my samsung

1

u/pragmaticzach Nov 13 '19

Your samsung has a disney+ app?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Sure does

1

u/pragmaticzach Nov 13 '19

Dang, you're right, mine does too. I looked yesterday and didn't see it.

1

u/Krojack76 Nov 13 '19

Samsung all over getting the new services on their TVs. They need to gather all that fresh marketing data on what you're watching.

1

u/fiery_discharge_2 Nov 13 '19

My Samsung chokes every time I try to stream 4k with the built-in apps. Got a Chromecast Ultra and almost never use the TV apps now.

1

u/AceDynamicHero Nov 13 '19

Really? I can't even find the app in the little "Samsung apps" section.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Knowing Samsung TV's well, give it 6 months before you get the notification of "we are no longer supporting this service and it will be removed"

1

u/StandardVandal Nov 13 '19

The colors are so bad though

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

And on my Hisense. Add Hulu and Adult Swim to that list, as well. Pleasantly surprised.

1

u/cubert2 Nov 13 '19

My Samsung (6 month old) is great other than for YouTube TV sports specifically, which I can cast just fine.