UNWANTED FIRMWARE UPDATE, CAN'T favorite My Photos

[PTSD1]

I turned off auto updates because if ain't broke, don't fix it. Apparently Samsung found a way to bypass that and push another terrible update. 

Hundreds of photos I uploaded over the past year were removed from my "favorites". And now, the interface has changed such that there is not option to favorite any of my uploaded photos. I can only favorites pictures from the Art Store. For My Photos I can only find "Matte & Filter, and Screen Settings."

1. How did Samsung bypass my no autoupdate settings? 

2. How can I get the ability to favorite my uploaded pictures?

[Blochhead]

Like the others in this string of posts, I am really really irritated that Samsung **bleep** this up. I had like 140 pictures favorited, those are lost. I can only do random display of those pictures from the favorites, so that capability is lost. I can't find a way to fave pictures from the My Photos tab. Uploading new pictures has become much harder, the normal system is not working. And to top it off, my SmartThing app is telling me that it can't connect because the TV and the phone are on different WiFi networks, which is absolutely not true. What a **bleep**g mess. I love the TV itself, but the software was always terrible and now much worse.

[SamSungTheBlues]

FYI: There is at least one other thread on this topic. People are NOT happy!

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Home-Theater/Frame-TV-no-longer-allows-photos-in-My-Album-to-be-...

[GH5759]

I suggest that we all contact the CEO's office directly with this link:

https://www.samsung.com/us/support/contact/email-the-ceo/

[HellRot]

I doubt the people at Samsung will do anything unless they get at the very least as many complaints as we can muster - directed at them, not just each other!

I've been on two other threads regarding this exact problem and popular consensus is that it is a deliberate tactic to push people to subscribe rather than just use their own art, or at least make the subscription service seem better by contrast.

If you call customer service, they will try to have you reboot your TV and "trouble shoot".  Do not waste your time.  A customer service person told me that they have no way of letting management know of the complaints that they receive?!  However, I was given this address to write to:

Frame.cs@samsung.com  

I wrote that the choices for matting personal photos/art have been reduced from six to two, and that the favorites option has been removed.  These options remain for the subscription art.  That this is bait and switch and that I would like them reinstated or be compensated.  

The response?  Everything I'd stated was ignored. Troubleshooting steps were given once again as though the problem was my TV rather than Samsung's doing.  This is "Gaslighting".

I did respond and try calling as the return e-mail had a phone number and office #.  No answer - yet, but I will keep trying.  Maybe we could all make some noise.

My apologies if I'm repeating myself. I'm so miffed that I've lost track of my posts.

[Photodoc]

I have a 60" Frame TV with a rotating mount. I have both landscape and portrait orientation photos in My Album.  Until a couple of days ago, I was able to select only the landscape photos or only the portrait photos as Favorites and then, without changing the physical orientation of the Frame TV, play a slideshow at the desirable rates of change available for Favorites (I like 3 minutes).  Without any notice, there's obviously been a software change recently. The interface appears different when working with photos in My Album and there is no longer an option to make user photos Favorites. This severely limits the usefulness of the rotating mount for slideshows from My Album.  The only option to play a slideshow with a 3 minute interval is now "display all".  The only way to accomplish that is to limit My Album to only landscape or only portrait orientation photos.  Each time you want to change to the other orientation, you have to delete all photos in My Album and load the photos of the other orientation before starting a slideshow.  As a workaround, I tried playing a slideshow directly from the USB memory stick and having one memory stick with only landscape orientation photos and another one with only portrait orientation photos.  The problem with this is that the longest interval between photos that is available this way is 20 seconds which is far too short in my opinion.  I bought this TV and mount specifically to be able to run slideshows of my photos at a relatively slow rate of change.  That was never truly easy even by using Favorites, but that option has now been taken away.  The easiest way to fix this problem for photographers would be for Samsung to simply program the option for longer intervals between slides in slideshows run from USB memory sticks.  For those of use who use our Frame TVs for our own photos and have a rotating mount, it would make things much simpler.  

[firesign]

For me this has nothing to do with frame rotation, but I also noticed that as of yesterday, they removed all the art and photos I had uploaded into My Album from the Favorites list, and I can no longer add them back to favorites. Surely this is a bug to be fixed, because only allowing Samsung's art to be included in Favorites is not worth paying a subscription for.

[kiwikurt]

I noticed this too with the recent software update. Initially all favorites were gone but as I started re-adding them most seemed to show back up. 

The items I have in My Photos can be displayed in a slideshow but as you say can no longer be added back into favorites. 

Really disappointing.

[Blochhead]

just plain crazy that they emptied out my faves and then made it impossible to re-fave them. This is seeming like gross incompetence to me.

[Ausexpat]

Same here. The option to ‘favourite’ from imported ‘ my photos’ has disappeared. Poor judgement by Samsung, poor execution ( no notification I’ve seen). And you make a good point about the subscription cost each month….now unsure if it’s worth it. 

I wonder if anyone at Samsung is aware…and if so, whether Samsung care?

[TorontoFrameTVGuy]

Same. Software change forced that now prohibits photos in my uploads from being made favorites. Completely impacted the user experience negatively for this TV.