Samsung Intentionally Nerfing TV Performance To Force Consumers To Upgrade.

Samsung in recent years have been caught intentionally pushing out firmware updates on their TVs in particular the higher end QLED and QD OLED models making motion processing worse, and reducing TV brightness and color quality and performance while also forcing updates to TVs when auto update is turned off.

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Background

Samsung has been at least since 2022 with the S95B QD OLED launch with each update making TV color performance, brightness and motion processing worse over time. The closer the time came to the launch of the newer models certain people and smaller YouTube channels brought it to light as it has become more egregious since it became a known issue since 2022.

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[Incident]

I had a TV the S95B at the time that was once connected online and was immediately disconnected when I realized I never needed to connect the TV to use it online. 2 months later with the TV offline, auto updates disabled, the TV began connecting online to push an update through and would go offline again. I called Samsung when my TV's image had a bad ghosting effect and always looked like everything was skipping frames and brightness was substantially reduced by over 375 nits on average.

When I called Samsung and brought it to their attention they said I cannot roll back to a prior firmware, after multiple attempts I found out the Knox security that is on Samsung devices does not allow you to choose the firmware you want to install, Samsung's website lets you download older firmwares with no way to install them.

The tech after a video call finally sent someone out to replace the mainboard and I was told if I did not let them update it I would lose my warranty. Even though he brought a mainboard with the day 1 firmware, he had to update it or I lose the warranty and would have to pay for the service to have him come and put me back in the situation that brought him out in the first place.

So he bricked the TV again and I couldn't get any assistance beyond that as my TV was basically unwatchable. After a few months of going back and forth they finally did send out a replacement which was the S95C . It was never connected to the internet at home and when I plugged my firestick into the TV, it forced an update and then similar situation happened again. After another back and forth they refused to assist further and I couldn't get any help even with the TV under warranty and it not working because of their forced updates that I never wanted and my TV was never connected to the WIFI so this never should've happened in the first place.

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[Company]'s response

If applicable, add the proposed solution to the issues by the company.

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Lawsuit

If applicable, add any information regarding litigation around the incident here.

Claims

Main claims of the suit.

Rebuttal

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Outcome

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Consumer response

The most prominate YouTuber/online personality to make light of this issue over the last several years has been Quantum TV who is a reviewer and specialty calibrator who has a newer reference standard to help bring out the most of TV's.

Links to videos going further into this topic are listed below along with some Reddit threads of consumers with similar issues.

S95B-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhopeJsrf1w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-f-VKELlps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fu4W0Q90nI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJLMCHD1ESc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j8hKQgboJk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqHdxpjLkM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnIUIGOLSnw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaFmFuRmAI4

Samsung stealing TV Brightness since at least 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LRY4Y77mE&t=1306s