That’s a terrible comparison. A better one would be with another tech device like a smartphone or laptop. These don’t work like new after 5 years. My TV does.
Besides, I didn’t buy the TV for the smart features like you, I bought it because it was a good deal. I do continue to use the smart features at times even with a backup device that works better. The only functionality loss I’ve faced were new features introduced in other devices.
And no, that wouldn’t be a class action lawsuit lol. The functionality was provided by the end user paying Netflix for their service, not the TV maker. Netflix and these other software providers are the ones that have supported these apps for 5+ years. The hardware and firmware provided by the TV maker will continue to work just fine even after Netflix disables apps in certain devices.
Why would your laptop or smartphone won't work like new after 5 years? Jesus where do you live? I have 9 years old laptop still working like the first day I bought it, Smartphones too, as long as you maintain a piece of hardware it should work as long as the components allows it. All you need to do on a laptop is to send it every year to be opened clean from dust and replace cpu/gpu thermal paste and battery (batteries are consumable)... In fact I have custom firmware for my tablet from 2014 and its working much better then I bought it and its faster then some models manufactured in 2019 (benchmark tested and compared).
An LCD TV Life Expectancy is estimated at between 30,000 to 60,000 hours. The typical lifespan of a LED TV is around 80,000 - 100 000 hours. So lets take 60k as middle ground, 365 days x 6 hours a day working is 2190 hours per year, this means that the TV should be fine for 28 years. Its seems to me tech manufacturers successfully brain washed you that you need to renew your tech every couple of years, as this is what they want.
Also about the class action lawsuit, I spoke about YouTube, not Netflix. Netflix is payed monthly subscription service, so its different. YouTube is not an service, its an website, and the TV YouTube app is made by Samsung, not Google, so it is a feature, and you cannot just remove it as Samsung did for my TV. If I manually rollback to the old firmware, my YouTube app is there and it is working fine.
Furthermore my TV offered Skype app, and Samsung sold webcam for the TV at 100$, now the Skype app is removed too, and I can't do anything with this webcam. And this is only after 6 years... which is not even 30% of the Life Expectancy of the device.
This particular TV is manufactured in 2012, most TV programs today are 720p HD and a lot are FULL HD, and just a handful 4k programs exist, so there is nothing different from 2012 in terms of requirements. In fact, the CPU inside this 2012 TV and the other hardware is much much better and more capable then many 2019 "budget" smart TV's. So the hardware is more then capable to deliver what it is asked from it. When the majority of content becomes 8k and 4k, then we can speak for the need to buy something new.
Because there are people thinking like you, the manufacturers dare to increase the planned obsolescence to increase their profits and this is how we get to screw our planet with pollution.
