I don't regularly use Bluetooth, though sometimes I have to turn it on for some new gizmo. I thought that's what might have happened when my 9 year old Samsung TV popped up a message box asking me if I'd like to connect to a Bluetooth device named RTS TU.
WTF. I've never even used Bluetooth with this TV except while using 3D goggles, and I haven't done that in 5 years so the batteries in all my 3D googles are dead if they haven't been turned off.
I wasn't even sure whether it was the TV or the computer that was giving this message. But I dug up my Samsung remote (which I haven't used much in years either, because I keep my TV connected to an HDMI line connected to my computer) and using an arrow button I was able to select the "NO" option.
But 20 seconds later, the same dialog popped up again. I turned it off again. And 20 seconds later, the dialog popped up again. And this kept going on for the next 45 minutes it took me to figure out how to stop it.
Finally I think to myself, maybe it's the new Asus monitor I bought for a "second monitor" in the bedroom. That's the only thing in my bedroom that has changed recently. The Asus monitor had not even been taken out of the box yet, but perhaps there is a remote or something in the box. So I moved the box to a distant room in the house.
Nope, the Bluetooth connect dialog still kept appearing. Now I'm beginning to think it has to do with the new neighbor next door who moved in yesterday. And I really don't want THEM to be connecting to my TV, which carries an audio signal from my computer which could be anything.
So I tried the "MENU" button on the Samsung remote, something I also haven't used in a long time (I prefer acessing menu features with another remote for reasons that will become clear. But for some reason I couldn't find my other remote right now, so I had to use the actual Samsung remote, which has only a few visible buttons which are often "overloaded".)
When I press the Menu button, it puts me on a number key in a number pad on the screen, and there's a bar at the top of the screen with things you can do like change channel. At the very far right of that bar at the top there's a button which says Menu.
So what I have to do is first press the menu button on the remote, then navigate 2 positions up and 1 to the side to press the Menu button on the screen, THEN I can actually access the Menu options. If I press something else by mistake, I could be stuck for quite a while trying to figure out how to get out of it. (I basically never use all these extra features of the TV and personally I wish they hadn't included them because I'm only ever selecting them by mistake and then trying to figure out how to get out of them, which often isn't easy. All I really want ever want to do is use the actual Menu, but the Menu button doesn't go there directly, it seems like it first wants to show me the wonderful extra functions of this TV which I mostly wish they hadn't included. Speaking of which, there's something actually called Extra which was apparently discontinued 4 years ago. But there are other extras in addition to that one). If I don't navigate to the Menu button on the screen fast enough, everything goes away.
 |
| Samsung screen after "Menu/Hub" pressed on Remote |
Well, before I could figure out how to do all that, the Bluetooth dialog appears again so I wasn't navigating the menu anymore, but the arrow buttons only allowed me to say YES or NO, and by the time I've done that all the Menu/Hub stuff on the screen has disappeared and I have to start all over trying to Navigate over to the actual Menu button.
If you don't know exactly what to do, and I didn't at first, you might never get to the actual Menu button on screen before the TV gives the Bluetooth dialog all over again. You have to press the button fast before the Bluetooth dialog appears all over again.
As the minutes passed (I wasted about 35 minutes on this issue, when I'd been trying to go to bed) I finally mastered the remote well enough so I could navigate to the actual Menu screen, then look at at a menu option or two, before the Bluetooth dialog appeared (every 20 seconds) and I'd have to start all over.
And doing this one bit at a time, then answering the Bluetooth dialog and starting all over, I managed to progress through the Menu options, one bit at a time. But I didn't see anything like "turn Bluetooth OFF" anywhere.
So finally I go to my computer in another room and start asking Google some questions. It seems like many other people have experienced this "My TV keeps trying to connect to neighbor's bluetooth" issue with their Samsung TV's and running into roadblocks trying to stop it.
It seems that Bluetooth is typically used by the TV to connect the sound to external listening devices like headphones. (I never use headphones and basically hate them.). So to keep the "Would you like to connect to Bluetooth Device" dialog from popping up, you have to go to the Sound options, and turn it off there.
So I went to the sound options, and it showed the RTS TU bluetooth device, and I pressed on it which brought up a pull down menu with a DELETE option.
The moment I pressed that DELETE option, the dialog "would you like to connect to Bluetooth device RTS TU" reappeared.
After again saying NO to that, I figured I hadn't selected the DELETE option fast enough, so I tried it 2 more times, starting with pressing the menu button on the remote, but each time the same exact thing happened, as soon as I deleted RTS TU, the dialog asking me whether I'd like to connect reappeared.
Somewhere in this process I finally decided that since this was sound only, I'd go ahead and let RTS TU connect just this time, and that would buy me more time in navigating menus as I wouldn't have to start all over again each time the dialog re-appeared, and it wouldn't bump me out of the menu navigating and changing process all the time. Overall this was so difficult I wondered if my TV had been hacked, and the hackers figured out how to keep me trapped because I'd never get anywhere in the menu fast enough to change it.
What finally seemed to fix the problem was that I turned something called "Multisound Output" off, and selected one of the other Sound output options (Speakers, which I never use, or optical output, which I always use.)
Or maybe I could have accomplished this without turning "Multisound Output" off but merely by selecting one of the other sound options. But since I've always had one of those other options selected, how did this even happen? I must have had Multisound Output on, because I've always been able to use the speakers AND the optical output at the same time. Then I never had any problems, because there weren't any bluetooth headphones nearby. Then a new neighbor movied in. So now I can't use Multisound Output anymore because it will be constantly asking me if I want to connect to those headphones. There should just be a way to turn off the Bluetooth...even just the Bluetooth audio (if they wanted to keep bluetooth available for 3D) without affecting the ability to have multisound output generally.
Note: I love my Samsung flat panel tv's (I didn't love their CRT monitors) for their high performance, durability, and longevity. But I've long felt their menu interfaces left a lot to be desired, though it was useful that they were generally so complete, though in this case it seems Samsung doesn't want you to be able to turn off bluetooth generally.
A good general rule is that such things should be shaken down with a lot of real life experiences before being unleashed on the public. And then every problem should be fixed, and shaken down again. This is what I have always tried to do, being the first user of my own programs. But it has often seemed in big commercial products, that is not the case. I could give endless examples.
Apple generally gets a lot of things right, though securophobia has made it increasing difficult with the Sequoia OS. You have to find the right options behind the right menus to enable just the right things to get anything to work. Apple's general problem is that they limit choices (Samsung generally does better) and make everything very opaque.
But in this case, Samsung really is limiting your choice (just turn bluetooth off dammit) and being very clumsy about it (No means No dammit, don't make me keep saying No forever). Many would have returned the TV immediately as defective if they experienced this problem in the window. It takes some clever operations and understanding to get it properly disabled to avoid having one's TV made useless by a neighbor just doing his thing.
This TV was from 2016 and one would hope this bug has been fixed by now. Or maybe it's even, gasp, an ageing issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment