Televisions

This is a rant about televisions we've encountered while traveling recently.  I don't think I'm feeling lousy but maybe I am considering this rant and another rant in another blog entry.  Or, maybe I'm simply in a lousy mood due to a blackout causing expensive damage to some of our electronics.

In the past couple of weeks, we spent two weekends out-of-town.  In the big scheme of things, we had nice accommodations and a nice time at both places.  One place was a VRBO apartment with well above average accommodations, the other place was a Hampton Inn suite which was nicer than other Hampton Inns we've frequented over the years.  Both places were nice but the televisions were frustrating and not at all pleasing in any way especially to the eye.  The quality of the televisions did not match the quality of the accommodations.

Both of these places were furnished with Samsung televisions.  Both of these places had frustrating televisions with poor colors, poor sound and a significant lack of controls even though they were different models.  They were still Samsung televisions but different models.  

There is no doubt that I've been spoiled by the Sony televisions I've owned over the decades and especially in recent years and that has had a significant impact on my expectations.  Also, being a photographer and videographer has refined my vision for even fine nuances in quality.  Anyone who thinks a cellphone takes a photo as good as a real camera does, does not have an eye for the nuances of visual quality.  It is likely these same people who probably think Samsung makes great televisions.  To be fair, in my opinion, Samsung isn't the only relatively expensive brand selling junk.  Additionally, the two most well-known camera brands are mostly junk too, in my opinion (excluding the top tier models). 

Decades of being a musician has also refined my hearing for quality.  Both of these Samsung televisions sounded no better than a small AM transistor radio from the 1960s.  Changing the audio settings did little, if anything, to improve the quality.  On one television we encountered, it did help ever so slightly but there were no such user settings on the other.

After these two weekends spent at accommodations with Samsung televisions, I couldn't wait to get back to our televisions at home...  both Sony Bravia televisions.

The VRBO apartment had a television that was still set to a retail demo mode (so...  perhaps made the terrible mistake of purchasing a floor model?) so I had to dive into the settings to find a way to turn that off.  (Incidentally, I say that purchasing a floor model television is a terrible mistake because pixels and electronics only last so long so when you purchase a floor model that is turned on for 12 hours a day for weeks or months on end, you are purchasing a ticking time bomb before it expires into a useless door stop.)  

Back to the television that was still set up in a retail demo mode...  Have you ever tried watching a television that was in the retail demo mode?  It has marketing nonsense about features bouncing all over the screen obscuring whatever you are attempting to watch.  I eventually found the right button combinations on the remote to disable the retail demo mode.

While I was in the various groups of settings, I figured that perhaps I should try to balance out the colors and tonality to more realistic values.  The colors were far too saturated and the color temperature was far too cold.  The HDR setting was far too heavy-handed.  There is a reason why production crews work so hard to getting the lighting just right for the scene and HDR ruins all of that work.  HDR is just another stupid, useless gimmick that does nothing but ruin most productions.  

Unfortunately, the controls for these values were very basic and rather crude so there was no way to get a decent or even mildly appealing image.  What Samsung calls "warm" was more like a skewed Hue value which is not at all the same thing as a white balance setting.  The ridiculously gimmicky HDR effect never seemed to go away and I hate that look.  I keep HDR turned off on our Sony televisions...  then again, Sony provides a full suite of picture and audio controls with very fine control allowing the user to tailor their viewing experience to their tastes or to truly match how cinematographers had intended their films to appear on the screen.  In short, I find that color control on these Samsung televisions was very crude and basic and never got me to where I wanted the colors.  

Then I wanted to set a simple sleep timer...  I could find no way to set a sleep timer!  After an hour of screwing with the television, I turned it off, disgusted, and went to sleep.  The guide was so clunky that it was too frustrating trying to find a program that interested me anyway.  An hour of my life was wasted.

The next place we visited was a Hampton Inn suite which, unfortunately, also had a Samsung television.  I had the exact same problems with this television as I did at the VRBO apartment except that this Samsung television was not set to its retail demo mode which was a spot of good news.  Unfortunately, this television only had a Samsung 'hotel' remote which is a very crippled remote compared to a consumer remote.  Of course, the colors still sucked, the tonality sucked, the menus sucked, the guide was even more clunky, slow and frustrating, and the sound sucked.  

If I owned rental properties today (which, honestly, our travels have shown us that this type of business venture would be too risky today because most people today are slobs with no respect for other people's property), I'd probably furnish the properties with cheap, inexpensive televisions rather than more expensive Samsung televisions.  I can't understand why Samsung seems to be the television of choice for the hotel industry.  Honestly, I'd rather watch on a cheap, inexpensive Insignia television than a Samsung television.  Also, if someone damaged the television in my rental room, purchasing a new cheap, inexpensive brand like Insignia wouldn't be nearly as painful.  And, for what it's worth since I'm talking about cheap brands, although probably just as cheap and inexpensive as Insignia, I'm not sure I'd ever purchase a Vizio television...  ever.  

These two recent experiences with these crappy Samsung televisions reminded me of a Samsung television that Sheila and I purchased about 15 years ago.  These latest experiences while on the road in recent weeks brought me instantly back to the same feelings I had when we briefly had that Samsung television 15 years ago.  It sucked and it was unnecessarily frustrating.  After trying to come to terms with it and set it up as best as I could over the course of hours, I gave up the following morning and packaged everything up so I could return it.  

Coming back home after these two weekends out-of-town and seeing the images and video our Sony televisions provide was a joy and provided a much-needed sigh of relief.