Why does my Toshiba TV think it’s a Samsung?
I bought a Toshiba Q smart TV from Argos and it’s fine, except that when I ask the built-in Alexa to turn on Netflix, it says: “Getting Netflix from Samsung TV”. Clearly, my TV is not a Samsung, and I’ve never had a Samsung TV. So I don’t understand what’s going on. Do you? Sameh Strauch
A Assuming there’s no forgotten Samsung equipment lurking in your smart-home setup, the answer is likely to be buried in the manufacturing process.
Toshiba is one of countless modern firms that don’t really make some of the products that carry its branding – and the company’s TV lineup is on that list. The actual manufacturing is farmed out to a variety of outfits around the world, many of which are intentionally largely anonymous to consumers. So, while you’ve bought a Toshiba-branded TV, it wasn’t actually put together by any factory directly belonging to Toshiba.
Now consider Samsung. It operates some of the world’s biggest screenpanel fabrication plants – both for itself and other brands.
That perhaps offers a clue. While we’re not saying your Toshiba TV was manufactured by Samsung, it’s possible that some of its components were.
Perhaps the factory ran into a supply issue relating to the specific part that runs the TV’S Alexa component? Or maybe an engineer neglected to press a button to update the firmware to the Toshiba branding before a production run? Toshiba and its manufacturer might know, or might not. If the problem was known, perhaps either or both decided that practically it didn’t matter and wanted to avoid the expense of rectifying – so released the products to stores regardless?
If you too decide that it’s so trifling as to not worry about it, then perhaps those involved made the ‘right’ decision.