Enlarge / A promotional image for Amazon's 4-Series Fire TVs. (credit: Amazon )

A lawsuit is seeking to penalize Amazon for allegedly providing "fake list prices and purported discounts" to mislead people into buying Fire TVs.

As reported by Seattle news organization KIRO 7 , a lawsuit seeking class-action certification and filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington on September 12 [ PDF ] claims that Amazon has been listing Fire TV and Fire TV bundles with "List Prices" that are higher than what the TVs have recently sold for, thus creating "misleading representation that customers are getting a 'Limited time deal.'" The lawsuit accuses Amazon of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act.

The plaintiff, David Ramirez, reportedly bought a 50-inch 4-Series Fire TV in February for $299.99. The lawsuit claims the price was listed as 33 percent off and a "Limited time deal" and that Amazon "advertised a List Price of $449.99, with the $449.99 in strikethrough text.” As of this writing, the 50-inch 4-Series 4K TV on Amazon is marked as having a "Limited time deal" of $299.98.

Enlarge / TCL's C655 Pro TV is advertised as a quantum dot Mini LED TV. (credit: TCL )

TCL has come under scrutiny this month after testing that claimed to examine three TCL TVs marketed as quantum dot TVs reportedly showed no trace of quantum dots.

Quantum dots are semiconductor particles that are several nanometers large and emit different color lights when struck with light of a certain frequency. The color of the light emitted by the quantum dot depends on the wavelength, which is impacted by the quantum dot's size. Some premium TVs (and computer monitors) use quantum dots so they can display a wider range of colors.

Quantum dots have become a large selling point for LCD-LED, Mini LED, and QD-OLED TVs, and quantum dot TVs command higher prices. A TV manufacturer pushing off standard TVs as quantum dot TVs would create a scandal significant enough to break consumer trust in China's biggest TV manufacturer and could also result in legal ramifications.

Enlarge / A Samsung representative demonstrating Tizen OS in February. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung will provide operating system updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years, the company announced last week. The updates will first apply to some TVs released in 2023 and TVs released in March 2024.

According to Business Korea , Samsung made the announcement regarding the Tizen OS at the Digital Research Lab of Samsung Electronics' Suwon Campus in Gyeonggi Province. As spotted by FlatPanelsHD , the announcement follows previously announced plans from Samsung to provide seven years of software updates for the Galaxy S24 smartphone series.

Per Korea Economic Daily , speaking at last week's event, Samsung Electronics' president of the Visual Display Business Division, Yoon Seok-Yoon, said: "With the seven-year free upgrade of Tizen applied to AI TVs, we will widen the gap in market share with Chinese companies."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The TV business isn't just about selling TVs anymore. Companies are increasingly seeing viewers, not TV sets, as their most lucrative asset.

Over the past few years, TV makers have seen rising financial success from TV operating systems that can show viewers ads and analyze their responses. Rather than selling as many TVs as possible, brands like LG, Samsung, Roku, and Vizio are increasingly, if not primarily, seeking recurring revenue from already-sold TVs via ad sales and tracking.

How did we get here? And what implications does an ad- and data-obsessed industry have for the future of TVs and the people watching them?

Enlarge / Samsung's 2022 The Frame is one of the edge-lit TVs that RTINGs tested. (credit: Samsung)

Thin LCD-LED TVs are appealing because they're easy to find space for and are aesthetically pleasing. To stay slim, most thin TVs, like Samsung's The Frame pictured above, use edge-lit backlights. But beyond the image quality limitations of these designs, new testing from RTINGs suggests that there are inherent flaws in edge-lit TV designs that hurt durability.

Review site RTINGs has been running extreme tests on dozens of TVs and a few monitors that are meant to simulate years of use. So far, RTINGs is up to 10,000 hours of testing, which it says is equivalent to about six years of use. In a YouTube video this week, a representative for the publication's research team said that in the past few months, testing has revealed a "clear, but troubling trend" of LCD TVs with edge-lit backlights being "inherently prone to significant durability issue." She added that edge-lit TVs "fail faster than other LCD TV designs," or those with full array local dimming (FALD) or direct-lit (or global dimming) backlights.

For its torture test, RTINGs tested 11 edge-lit TVs and reported that seven of them have "noticeable" uniformity issues. Of those seven, two models are from LG, and five are Samsung TVs.

Enlarge (credit: Carl the Person/YouTube )

Smart TV owners have been subjected to a growing amount of ads and tracking. Ad fatigue, only worsened by a trend that sees streaming providers trying to force customers into subscriptions with commercials , is understandable. We’re at the point where someone would rather use a broken laptop dangling off a TV than be subjected to the watchful eye of the TV's native operating system.

Earlier this month, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware , a blogger named Carl Riis, who says he’s a software engineer, shared his DIY project, a Linux-based “smart TV.” Riis’ project doesn’t stand out because it’s the most unique, clever, or clean. In fact, if you’re the type of person willing to pay a lot for TVs with strong aesthetic appeal, like TVs that can look like artwork or appear transparent , you’ll be put off by the EarlGreyTV. The system uses an old Lenovo laptop that has a broken keyboard and is attached to a TV by a string. As Riis wrote: “This may look a little insane, but it has been a great way to keep things neat while retaining access to the laptop."

The backside of the DIY smart TV. (credit: Carl the Person/YouTube )

The laptop is broken because Riis spilled tea onto the keyboard years ago. The keyboard stopped working, making it hard to turn the laptop on and off. “I have to short two specific pins where the keyboard connects to the motherboard. For this reason, I have the back removed, which probably also helps it run less hot,” Riis wrote.

Enlarge (credit: Roku)

Roku CEO Anthony Wood disclosed plans to introduce video ads to the Roku OS home screen. The news highlights Roku’s growing focus on advertising and an alarming trend in the streaming industry that sees ads increasingly forced on viewers.

As spotted by The Streamable , during Roku's Q1 2024 earnings call last week, Wood, also the company's founder and chairman, boasted about the Roku OS home screen showing users ads "before they select an app," avoiding the possibility that they don't see any ads during their TV-viewing session. (The user might only use Roku to access a video streaming app for which they have an ad-free subscription.)

Wood also noted future plans to make the Roku home screen even more ad-laden:

Enlarge (credit: Getty )

What comes after OLED?

With OLED-equipped TVs, monitors, and other gadgets slowly becoming more readily available at lower prices, attention is turning to what the next landmark consumer display tech will be.

Micro LED often features in such discussions, but the tech is not expected to start hitting consumer devices until the 2030s . Display makers are also playing with other futuristic ideas, like transparent and foldable screens. But when it comes to technology that could seriously address top user concerns—like image quality , price , and longevity—quantum dots seem the most pertinent at the moment.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

As many as 91,000 LG TVs face the risk of being commandeered unless they receive a just-released security update patching four critical vulnerabilities discovered late last year.

The vulnerabilities are found in four LG TV models that collectively comprise slightly more than 88,000 units around the world, according to results returned by the Shodan search engine for Internet-connected devices. The vast majority of those units are located in South Korea, followed by Hong Kong, the US, Sweden, and Finland. The models are:

• LG43UM7000PLA running webOS 4.9.7 - 5.30.40
• OLED55CXPUA running webOS 5.5.0 - 04.50.51
• OLED48C1PUB running webOS 6.3.3-442 (kisscurl-kinglake) - 03.36.50
• OLED55A23LA running webOS 7.3.1-43 (mullet-mebin) - 03.33.85

Starting Wednesday, updates are available through these devices’ settings menu.