I am sadden but not surprised by Samsung's spying and forced ads. It has become the business model of too many companies to harvest as much as they can for their customers (ad companies) while screwing the consumer. Then, add to that the fact that every opportunity must be sieze upon as a chance to market. This is why I am a cord cutter and intend to stay that way. In fact, I rather frikkin' torrent a freely availabe OTA show like The Good Wife than sit through the almost 20 minutes of ads each hour.
What I want is an oxymoron: a dumb smart-TV. At one time this was known as a video monitor :-). I love the hardware of the new Samsung 4K displays. It's got configurable settings so I can bring into cinema calibration and get rid of the out of box candy colors. It has great electronics from streaming and upscaling and 3D. I will probably kill off all the apps after these recent revelations and use only the Netflix and Amazon apps for 4K and stream the rest from an attached USB Portable Hard Drive. I will kill the wifi and use cat 6 cabling. I've looked at the competition and have not been entirely happy. However, I am biding my time before I make the 4K plunge. Also, I just learned about Samygo roms for Samsung TV's I want to learn about their capablilities first before buying. It's too bad they don't make the cameras and microphones on the new TV's a detachable item.
