Besides the Samsung Smart Hub outage of today, also Sony's Smart TV platform is down, the company has confirmed the issue. Reports of users on Twitter continue to come in from around the world. The issues affect both TVs and Blu-ray players and due to it popular apps like NetFlix and HBO don't work. Earlier today also the Playstation Network was down for a while.
@findDirt we're already working on this Network Services issue. Please go to http://t.co/KDXjM55u9F for the latest updates. :: Yuri
— Sony Support USA (@SonySupportUSA) February 25, 2015
@yachtr62 sorry for this inconvenience, sir. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue ASAP. Thanks for your patience. :: Yuri
— Sony Support USA (@SonySupportUSA) February 25, 2015
Both the Samsung and Sony downtime are caused by fact that the Smart TV platforms connect to central servers. Once they are down, the entire platform. Like the Samsung devices, also the Sony devices don't provide clear error messages causing users to fiddle with their internet for hours or unnecessarily factory resetting their device.
Update: The outage appears to be resolving now. More and more users are reporting their Smart TV works as intended. There still has not been an official statement from Sony on the cause of the outage.