When did we ever say Samsung was the CI choice? I have actively gone out of my way to stay away from Samsung.

LG has been our go to for years. Take your original post and replace Samsung with LG and the OP makes much more sense. Up till about 2 years ago LG had DB9 on most every panel, the IR codesets have not changed in 10 years or more, good enough picture quality.

LG started screwing with the DB9 and IR discrete became a little more hit and miss, we added Sony to the mix.