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Are there any LG products that actually work properly?
Gneiss
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Two years ago my wife and I bought an LG HR-650 3D Blu-ray Player/500GB Digital Recorder with Built-in Freeview+ HD... Yes, promised the earth and delivered nothing...
When we were bought the thing it had BBC iPlayer included but we were promised other players coming soon - all in good time which meant never!
Constantly fails to record and never does if you are using iPlayer.
Restarts when exiting iPlayer.
Failed to play one disc that even a cheap Tesco player manages to play perfectly.
The remote takes forever to respond.
No search function in the EPG.
Annoying popups asking pointless questions when you are in the middle of watching something - who the f*** thought that was a good idea?
I could go on for pages, but the point is that the thing is riddled with bugs and annoyances and no attempt has been made to address them... Much like my previous LG phone not an update in sight for years. I probably should have learned my lesson from the phone and not touched them with a bargepole!
Are all their products bug ridden crap or do some of them actually work properly out the box?
When we were bought the thing it had BBC iPlayer included but we were promised other players coming soon - all in good time which meant never!
Constantly fails to record and never does if you are using iPlayer.
Restarts when exiting iPlayer.
Failed to play one disc that even a cheap Tesco player manages to play perfectly.
The remote takes forever to respond.
No search function in the EPG.
Annoying popups asking pointless questions when you are in the middle of watching something - who the f*** thought that was a good idea?
I could go on for pages, but the point is that the thing is riddled with bugs and annoyances and no attempt has been made to address them... Much like my previous LG phone not an update in sight for years. I probably should have learned my lesson from the phone and not touched them with a bargepole!
Are all their products bug ridden crap or do some of them actually work properly out the box?
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Never had a problem with either of them - unlike the Samsung Blu Ray player and the Panasonic DVD recorder which preceded them.
OK, I have an LG DVD drive in my PC that has worked without issue for years...
But then Tesco can sell a DVD player for less than £30 that works - I was thinking more of PVRs, Phones and smart TVs that sort of thing.
We bought one of the first 32" LG CRT TVs in the mid eighties?
It had an excellent picture, good speakers and a five band graphic equaliser.
It became the "second set" in 2002 when we bough a new Sony 32" CRT TV. That packed up three years ago and we replaced it with an LED TV.
This year, we decided to change the LG for a new Panasonic Viera as it would give us more space in that room, so I took the LG down to the tip. It was still in perfect working order and we'd had no trouble with it at any time.
Had a phone from them int he past which was fine and a DVD hard drive recorder that was good to.
Maybe user error?
The inability to record when using Iplayer was noted as one of the issues, as was the lack of a search function and the poor remote response.
The first model could only record one channel while watching another too, it couldn't record two channels at the same time which pretty much every other PVR can do, the later models addressed that issue I believe.
Have you checked to see if an update is available from LG's website?. It's not uncommon for fairly complex machines to have some such issues at launch and to have most fixed later through updates.
I've had an LCD TV that developed banding.
But another TV had a sound fault through the headphone socket that was clearly a design fault. It even happened on the shop model, but CS would not believe me and kept trying to fob me off that it was my cheap headphones, even though I told them the shop used good headphones and it happened on all headphones they used.
If you Google that model some of the issues are now well over TWO years old and still no sign of any update to fix them, which is totally unacceptable IMO. Even EA games sometimes manage to get their arse in gear quicker than that!
Fine any piece of equipment can have bugs when released but you expect a reputable company to release fixes as and when these issues become known. This isn't even that complex; the software only has to run on one platform ffs...
And what happened to the promised ITV player etc?
You may think it unreasonable to "whinge" about substandard products on the NET but I don't, nor do I see a time limit on that.
I've now had two products from them and neither fulfilled their initial promise...
http://doctorbeet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html
I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch of the imagination, but when I got my iPhone it just worked without having to face into the prevailing wind whilst standing on one leg!!!
The bottom line is that is what I expect from a product when I pay good money for it...
I suggest you ask ITV, almost nothing supports ITVPlayer, which leads me to believe it's a problem with ITV?.
I'd still like to know exactly how such support works?, does the broadcaster pay the manufacturer?, does the manufacturer pay the broadcaster?, does nobody pay anybody?.
Anyone have a clue?.
I have a 2013 LG Smart 3D TV, and there are no adverts on the Home/App Page. Where the advert is shown in the first illustration, I get an LG App Graphic. Neither do I have the On/Off option that is shown in the second illustration.
This set replaced my previous LG Plasma, which is now gracing my son's lounge.
Neither have been problematic in any way whatsoever.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend LG.
I don't know about ITVplayer but the situation seems rather complex with BBC Iplayer.
There's two main versions, the big screen online version used by the likes of Humax, which from my understanding Humax don't pay any charges for. When you acces the Humax portal it, of course, goes to their specially designed website, and when you click through to Iplayer it redirects to the BBC site that contains that big screen version of Iplayer.
But recently a new way of accessing it was introduced, with Freeview wanting manufacturers to access it via the MHEG red button. Unfortunately Arqiva have now introduced a charge for that service, quite an expensive annual charge it is too in the several thousand pound mark.
Digitalstream have pulled out of the UK market, so us Digitalstream users can now no longer use BBC Iplayer because Digitalstream don't feel it is economically viable to pay the annual ongoing charges required to use the MHEG Iplayer, as they no longer manufacture products for the UK specifically and they were a small player in the market. :mad:
It isn't clear though which sets "phone home" and which do not. The only way to really tell would be to do what the writer of the blog did and analyse your network traffic with something like Wireshark.
It's not so much the advertising that is the problem, it appears to be the fact that it sends lists of files on a USB device, what's been played etc. to LG somewhere, even if you turn that feature off in the menu.
Yes, but I haven't got that feature in my menu to turn off.
I have an LG plasma myself, picture quality is excellent and it's been a good buy too.
Like most major manufacturers some products are very good, others not so. The real test of any major company in my opinion, is their support when things do go wrong. Thankfully I haven't had to make use of their support yet as the few LG products I do have have been perfectly fine so far.
Ah, I wondered why the iplayer didn't work properly on my Digitalstream. The programme guide still comes up, but it gives errors when you try to access any content, and won't show anything.
I thought there was something wrong with my connection. :rolleyes:
My LG 42LN575V set does appear to 'phone home', as I was getting ads served on the Smart TV menu. I've blocked the domains that Doctorbeet discovered (on my VM Superhub), and I now don't get any ads, just the default LG banner.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25018225
Needless to say LG are now taking the situation more seriously.
It should be interesting to see how this unfolds.
I'm guessing other folks will be sniffing traffic from their smart tv's to see what is data is being collected too.
Another company that needs taking down a peg or two.
What packet sniffer is the person using? Looks like it is for mac though?
Cheers for the info.
If I could be bothered to look I expect there's probably an app for my phone.
This was a system supposedly designed to support internet catchup TV so it's pretty piss poor that not only has it never fully done so there is no evidence that they even worked on it.