This is my experience with a Samsung Q90T 2020 TV running Tizen Operating System (OS). I can't say it is a very good Smart TV but the picture is nice. It's riddled with privacy and stability issues. I just hope it works as a dumb TV someday because I don't see Samsung keeping the Operating System running forever. Anyhow, onto my story.

Day 1

Getting the TV plugged in and testing some 4K content. Looks good! After seeing what it does, I spent some time tinkering with the settings for picture and the adaptive environment/eco settings. This was a mistake because the TV was constantly going to full brightness and gave me a headache. Time for a break.

Day 2

This time was very frustrating. Getting the TV to run apps and work consistently was troublesome. The software would crash and do all kinds of unexpected things. At this point I started checking my firewall and disabled all privacy controls because some TV network traffic was being blocked by them. It seemed to help a little but still the Netflix app would hang the OS and make the TV unusable.

Day 3

When the TV was turned on, Netflix loaded magically. I spent some time trying to integrate the Smart TV OS (Tizen) into my home automation system. I had to connect to SmartThings and install an app on my phone. All very big-brother feeling. In the end, I didn't really gain much. What did work feels like a stack of cards waiting to crumble. I won't go into detail, but it felt like a lot of wasted time trying to get things to work that are not documented anywhere. Let's just say the Samsung API is garbage.

Day 4

I continued to use the TV. The experience has been more consistent since I disabled the filters on the firewall.

Day 5

I re-enabled the firewall and the TV started glitching again and became very broken. Apps would crash, the TV would become unresponsive; not surprising.

Day 6

The motion was horrid on this TV with default settings. It seems tinkering with Judder reduction has made it better. I have no idea why the default setting makes the motion look 8 bit.

Summary

I can't say this is a good bundle : TV + Operating System. It has a nice picture but has a temperamental OS. I recently spent some time researching how social media has been used to manipulate people and the privacy violations involved. By Samsung not allowing you to block their tracking severs is very disturbing. Also, I doubt the built-in TV software is going to last long as it is because when Samsung or any other app decides to take down a server, the software is going to start glitching. The government really needs to crack down on things like this because the industry is not self correcting.

Some of the places the TV talks to which should be blocked. (But may stop the TV from working)

.adgrx.com
analytics.plex.tv
.samsungacr.com
lcprd1.samsungcloudsolution.net
events.samsungads.com
static.doubleclick.net
config.samsungads.com
telegraph.api.hbo.com
ssl.google-analytics.com
device-metrics-us.amazon.com