
Blu-ray player keeps cycling on/off whenever plugged in - discreditable
https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Blu-ray-player-BD-JM57C-keeps-cycling-on-off-whenever-plugged-in/td-p/1278935
======
sundvor
Lol. My new flagship top of the line Galaxy phone won't let me take pictures
if a face is detected now without a 3-5 second delay from when I press the
shutter.

If subject turns around before then, the picture is instantly taken, and I'm
instantly getting photos if no faces are detected as well. I've reproduced
this across a number of conditions.

This is _great_ for the family photos..

They're really going strong with their software now.

~~~
userbinator
Look in the settings for a "face enhancement" feature and see if it can be
turned off. I bet that's what it's trying to do with the faces it detects.

[https://www.insider.com/samsung-phones-default-beauty-
mode-c...](https://www.insider.com/samsung-phones-default-beauty-mode-camera-
airbrush-2016-6)

~~~
sundvor
Turning that off was the first thing I did when I got the phone. Just checked
it's still off. Cheers though!

------
bArray
Wow, somebody at Samsung is sure having an incredibly bad day... Flashing
firmware to devices in the field is genuinely a really tough problem. Due to
space, memory and processing limitations you can end up backed into a corner
as an engineer. It may be the case where there is genuinely no way to recover
from this - turning a $10k remote software patch job into a several million
dollar product recall.

We used to have a simple rule where you always had two firmwares in storage, a
primary image and secondary image. If you see tonnes of unplanned reboots
recently you fallback to the secondary image. It can also be manually rolled
back by holding some button during boot. (Other reasons to falling back could
also be a failed hash check or bad signing for example.) To be clear, this
method also had potential flaws and two bad software updates in a row could be
bad (it tries to mark "good" firmwares, but it isn't foolproof).

I've seen other methods also make use of a minimalist boot system that is just
about enough to flash a new firmware. Stick a USB device in and hold a button
during boot for example - if no button press you pay very little in startup
time and the main application boots instead. You then * really * test this
fallback firmware to make sure it will be very reliable in the field from cold
boot.

This gets even more troubling when OTA (over the air) methods are more widely
employed too, where there may not be any exposed programming port on the
device. I remember seeing somebody brick a few hundred devices via bluetooth
before somebody said "have you tested that firmware works?" \- turns out it
was a bad unchecked-in local build...

~~~
dehrmann
> We used to have a simple rule where you always had two firmwares in storage,
> a primary image and secondary image

If you've got a 64MB image, that could be 50 cents per unit. That works out to
a non-trivial drop in margins, and Blu-ray players have gotten commoditized
enough that you might not be able to afford that. And I guarantee you it's not
just this corner. Lots of corners were cut. I assume, anyway. I don't actually
know for this model.

The funny thing is I'd happily pay $10-20 more for a Blu-ray player that had
less cost-centric engineering, the problem is consumers have no way to easily
see this.

~~~
elcritch
But could be cheaper for Samsung than recalling all of the units, no? For a
brand image the extra cost could be worth it as insurance.

~~~
bArray
FYI these companies will often set aside some % of yearly revenue for exactly
this purpose.

------
zenexer
Do not connect Samsung home media devices to the internet.[0][1][2][3] If you
really want the internet-based multimedia features, get a separate, more
secure device such as a Chromecast or Apple TV—and even those aren’t
perfect.[4]

How many times are we going to keep making the same mistakes? There is no
benefit to connecting a Samsung TV or Blu-ray player to the internet when a
$35 Chromecast works far better, has all the same features (plus more),
doesn’t break a year or two after you buy it, and is more secure. There’s just
no excuse.

[0]: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-
oper...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-operating-
system-bugs-vulnerabilities)

[1]: [https://www.consumerreports.org/televisions/samsung-roku-
sma...](https://www.consumerreports.org/televisions/samsung-roku-smart-tvs-
vulnerable-to-hacking-consumer-reports-finds/)

[2]: [https://threatvector.cylance.com/en_us/home/many-popular-
sma...](https://threatvector.cylance.com/en_us/home/many-popular-smart-tvs-
have-serious-vulnerabilities.html)

[3]: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681683/samsung-smart-
tv...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681683/samsung-smart-tv-virus-
scan-malware-attack-tweet)

[4]: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/02/chromecast-bug-hackers-
hav...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/02/chromecast-bug-hackers-havoc/)

~~~
ta17711771
Raspberry Pi + Kodi + Kore Android remote or other cheap hardware remote +
YouTube + Emby/Plex + Netflix, solves a lot of usecases for dirt cheap.

~~~
zenexer
Yup, if you’re willing to tinker, you can make a pretty nifty home media setup
for practically nothing, customized to your liking.

But for everyone else, Chromecast et al are plug-’n-play. If you’re an Apple
person and are willing to spend a bit extra, Apple TV’s UI/UX is hard to beat
without making your own system.

~~~
freetonik
I find Apple TV's UX incredibly annoying and inaccessible. Gesture based
navigation with ambiguous rules, lack of clear contrast on selected items and
modal UI make me wanna ditch Apple TV, but I don't know of good alternatives.

~~~
zenexer
I prefer it primarily because it "just works". I don't use my TV often these
days, so I stopped maintaining all my custom hardware (e.g., Retro Pie). I've
found that my Chromecast can be finicky; sometimes it doesn't like to stay
connected to Wi-Fi--and it has no excuse, seeing how I'm using Google Wifi.

That being said, I do like the UI. I don't mess with it much, though; I mostly
just talk to it. It does a fairly good job of figuring out what show I'm
telling it to play. It works, it updates on its own, it doesn't brick itself,
it doesn't disconnect from the network (because it's wired in), it's
reasonably secure, it plays what I tell it to play. Good enough for me.

Depending on your use case, you might want to give Kodi a try if you're not
satisfied with the mainstream alternatives. I haven't used it in ages, but I
hear it works quite well these days.

------
gjsman-1000
Not quite related, but I picked up a used LG Blu-Ray player that claimed to
have broken Wifi. Apparently, whoever programmed the firmware set it up to use
LG's custom DNS servers, now shut down, and it had no public DNS fallback for
this situation. It's amazing how little planning there is for when an IoT
server goes down.

~~~
CamperBob2
_It 's amazing how little planning there is for when an IoT server goes down._

It's out of warranty, isn't it? Sounds like _flawless_ planning to me.

I mean, seriously. What incentive could a company possibly have to keep those
servers running five minutes after the last product shipped goes out of
support? Sure, you'll get mad and swear to buy your next IoT widget from some
other company. But that company will do the same thing, because they have
exactly the same incentives.

This will have to be fixed legislatively... and as a liberty-minded kind of
guy, I'm truly depressed by how often I find myself typing those words these
days.

------
mcshicks
Ha! This happened to mine yesterday, spent an hour doing all the resets,
googling, did a quick worthless chat with samsung support. I ended up just
going to Target and buying a Sony Blu Ray Player. I told my wife maybe
somebody might post a fix on the internet in a month or so.

~~~
m463
> worthless chat

How can they not know this is happening minutes after the update is pushed?

Is the chat farmed out to script-reading third-parties?

~~~
mcshicks
The guy asked me no questions and just said make a service request. I figured
they already knew there was nothing to do and just trying to close the chat as
quickly as possible.

~~~
m463
oh, that makes more sense.

------
Ansil849
Just musing aloud, but do we hold electronics companies to different standards
than other companies?

For example, imagine that the latest Slack update made all desktop clients
crash, and that Slack support simply said to try restarting the client. There
would be mass outrage, and the expectation of a prompt fix.

On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be much expectation of an immediate
fix from Samsung in this thread.

Or if a comparison more closer to same industry is desired, imagine if the
issue was with Netflix instead.

This makes me wonder aloud, are electronics behemoths held to lower standards?

~~~
perl4ever
Makes me wonder, are electronics simpler or more complex than software? That
is, _should_ we expect them to be better or worse?

~~~
thdrdt
Hardware is software embedded in electronics so it cannot easily be changed.

But there are electronic components that can be programmed with software.

------
g_p
Sounds like a home cinema system is also affected by a similar issue -
[https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/Audio-
Video/HT-J4500-hom...](https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/Audio-
Video/HT-J4500-home-cinema-cycling-on-and-off-
repeatedly/td-p/1811217/highlight/false)

First thought coming to mind is if this is indeed a bad firmware update as
some suggest. Or maybe an x509 certificate used internally to verify something
like firmware signatures has expired? I guess a bit of digging through these
threads might shed some light on if people accepted updates recently.

~~~
m463
cannot install update, telemetry.dat has filled the partition :)

------
kjaftaedi
I scrolled through way too many posts, and not a single person mentioning
whether they tried to reset the firmware via USB, and saw no support person
suggesting it either.

[https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/2015-blu-r...](https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/2015-blu-
ray-disc-player-j5700-series)

~~~
DrScump
I've actually used their firmware update procedure to flash the update to my
Samsung Blu-ray player when I got a movie that had unsupported codecs or
something. The procedure (download a gzipped directory onto a USB drive,
insert into USB port, boot) was well documented and straightforward (easy for
anybody who's done related things like installing an O/S), worked the first
try, and I've never missed a beat since).

I miss the days when companies cared about the longevity of their products.
Companies like IBM and Compaq were infamous for well-placed updates to
drivers, firmware, BIOS, and documentation.

------
birdiesanders
I would beg to venture expired certificate, firmware goes to validate itself,
comes back expired, crashes because this scenario wasn’t considered, repeat.

~~~
Tornhoof
The Players without Internet access are not affected. The system goes into a
bootloop after that, even after disconnecting from the net. So something is
apparently changed on the device. Maybe a temp/log file is filled with
exceptions and the disk is now full.

------
perl4ever
I had a Pixel that went into an infinite reboot loop.

The below has information I never heard of before, that it might be related to
mold growth on the circuit board??

[https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/2235808?hl=en](https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/2235808?hl=en)

------
greatgib
Does not looks like that it is an update that broke it, look at that comment:

<< Re: Blu-ray player BD-JM57C, keeps cycling on/off whenever plugged in
yesterday • last updated yesterday

I have a BD J5700, it started doing the same thing on 06/18/2020\. It has
never been connected to an Ethernet and as far as I know it has never been
updated. I believe it is a preprogrammed failure. >>

------
runnr_az
Somebody somewhere at Samsung is gonna have a long weekend

~~~
Someone1234
Assuming it is even possible to remotely recover? From the description it
doesn't sound like it ever completes startup, and there's no USB port, so I'm
not quite sure how local recovery would work?

Keep in mind this is a 2015 BluRay player, so outside a class action I doubt
Samsung will do anything and just act like they all just coincidentally
failed.

These players do have a "Hold Eject for 5 seconds" factory reset mode, but it
doesn't appear to re-flash the factory firmware, only clear the settings.

~~~
spectramax
Class action suits should require at the minimum replacement or repair of the
product in question, including shipping to the user. Otherwise, lawyers get
paid and I get $0.21 cent check in the mail.

~~~
godzillabrennus
So if that’s the route they go then by 2033 an impacted owner can register in
a 85 step process to obtain a $5 check to use toward a new blu ray player that
expires 90 days after it’s issued. Meanwhile the lawyers get to keep all the
additional proceeds.

~~~
spectramax
The sad part is that you're not wrong and I have to concede with intense
laughter.

------
jb775
Could it be an issue with surpassed time relative to when it was initially
built? A bunch of people mentioned their hardware is roughly 2 years old:
86400(seconds) * 365(days) * 2(years) = 63,072,000

~~~
dehrmann
The only things like this to look out for with sane implementations on modern
hardware are at 24 and 49 days after 2^31 and 2^32 milliseconds have passed.
At least until 2038.

------
mindslight
When is it finally going to trickle into common sense that needlessly hooking
an embedded device up to the Internet is a bad idea? An ethernet jack is an
attractive nuisance, not a feature.

~~~
exikyut
IIRC Blu-Ray players needed Internet connections to validate discs... I think?

~~~
ipython
No internet needed for the Blu-ray Discs I’m aware of. I have my Sony player
disconnected and have no problem playing movies.

~~~
m463
Not that some movies don't have an unskippable "please update your player
firmware for the best viewing experience(tm)"

------
noisy_boy
Don't these devices have one of those hardware reset holes like routers do? I
find them very useful because worst case scenario, just insert a pin and wait
for 10s which is great if your menu/software side is broken.

~~~
dehrmann
I've played with OpenWRT a lot. This might have changed, but for a long time,
routers stored the firmware on a flash chip and settings on an nvram chip.
They might be the same chip, but you can think of settings and the OS being
logically separated. The reset button reset nvram. If the vendor did an OTA
firmware update (which no one used to to) and sent a bad update, the reset
switch won't help. Some routers have recovery procedures that flash using the
bootloader (also on the flash chip, but it's obviously best not to mess with
it), downloading the firmware from a PC. If that fails, that's the end of the
officially supported options that a 80th percentile user can do.

~~~
noisy_boy
I didn't know these details - thank you.

------
jdofaz
My samsung 4k UHD Bluray player is still working ok

------
netsharc
Anyone in the 29 pages of comments figure out the problem? It seems to be full
of users saying "me too!" and moaning about "I'm not paying to get this
fixed!".

I guess today's customer forums is a version of Borges' Library of Babel, but
one with very dull contents.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
And if the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc person said to themselves “Oh look someone has
already posted about this. No need to kick up a fuss about it so I’ll be on my
way. The community managers or who ever run the forum may not flag the issue
as quickly with the next level of tech support.

But if you get an inrush of customers all saying “yo, shits broke...” The fire
alarms get trigger sooner, if it’s a bad update it can get pulled sooner to
lessen the number of affected customers and start the whole recovery process
sooner.

Sure a single high quality post from someone in the tech space who’s curiosity
made them break out wireshark and give you a detailed bug report can do
wonders. But such reports take time, you got to have someone actually decide
it’s worth there time to investigate and report back.

Or you can hear the high numbers of low detail reports and pull the fire alarm
cause shits on fire somewhere.

