Wi-Fi / Skype ready TV's? Love 'em hate 'em?

dealman on 20/12/2011 - 16:20

I hate it when TV companies say their Tv is wifi ready, then you decide and compare accordingly but find out later that the TV is not actually "ready" to be connected to your wifi network ,
You have to buy a 100 $ wifi dongle for this to work.

Same with Skype, Samsung & LG showed Tv's capable of two way skype calls but conveniently made it compatible only if you bought their camera . Guess how much their cameras are retailing for …. 200 $ , bloody hell at that price I can get another tablet to do skype seperately.

Why do companies treat customers like as though we are a bunch of douchebags ?

Case in point I was looking at this Panasonic TV,

PANASONIC 127CM 50" FULL HIGH DEFINITION PLASMA TV
Model Number: TH-P50U30A

Seems like an Ok deal for $899

Description says > DLNA / WiFi Ready

What does it actually mean ? its ready but needs a dongle or is it really ready ? If anyone has this model can you please clarify ?

General Discussion

Comments

  • dealman on 20/12/2011 - 16:32

    And we wonder why Aussie companies haven't got online right it took me 3 phone calls and over 15 minutes to get to somebody at discksmith who understood my query.

    When I finally got to him, he quite rudely says , you would need an extra USB dongle and when I asked him about the price , came the clincher.

    " Oh we don't carry the dongle , you would need to contact the manufacturer to get the dongle. "

  • life is a little cr… on 20/12/2011 - 16:35
    +1

    I questioned panasonic on that very issue, and was just looked at stupidly. Its about time the bundle everything together.

  • endotherm on 20/12/2011 - 17:23

    Yeah, Freeview pulled the same stunt, if you recall a while ago TV's sold in the shops had a bunch of different labels saying whether they were "ready" or not. Same as the TV manufacturers, they'd put a "HD ready" label on anything that could do HD resolutions, but it was up to you to get your own STB, they typically only had an analogue tuner if that. I'm sure they were designed to be misleading too: http://www.ard-digital.de/files/1/117/HDTV_Guetesiegel.jpg. Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDTV_Ready. Anything that says "ready" is only capable of performing the task, but you will have to provide something external to make it work, either a dongle or HD set top box etc. I believe some high-end TV's do have the wi-fi built in, but they will tell you so, they will not say it is "ready" e.g. http://ces.cnet.com/8301-31045_1-10427442-269.html.

  • 0ptus_Fail on 20/12/2011 - 18:21
    +3

    When I see that "ready" line it means to me that it will be a feature thats going to cost you a pretty penny to get working by buying an expensive add-on that is hard to get or you might as well not worry about that feature coz you wont bother to get it to work anyway.

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