Finlux, Luxor and Regal: what they ship with and what comes off

There is a television manufacturer in nearly every shop in Europe and almost nobody can name it, because it is never on the front. It is called Vestel, it is Turkish and it belongs to the Zorlu group. Its 2024 annual report describes itself as "one of the top three players in the European LCD TV market". What you see on the shelf is something else: Finlux, Luxor, Regal, Techwood, Digihome, EVVO, and also Toshiba, Telefunken, JVC, Daewoo and Hitachi.

Start with the easy one#

Finlux says it on its own website, on the history page, with nothing left to infer:

"Finlux is a brand name used by Turkish manufacturer Vestel for a line of consumer electronic related products, including flat screen LED TVs."

And on the line for 2006: "Finlux is owned by Europe's largest TV manufacturer, the Turkish electronics manufacturer Vestel, owned by the Zorlu Holding corporate group". The contact page on finlux.com gives no Finnish address at all: it gives "Vestel Trade Co., Organize Sanayi Bölgesi (OSB), 45030 Manisa/Turkey". The footer still reads "© 2017, FINLUX, Inc.".

That same history lists every owner the name has had: Iskumetalli in 1964, Lohja, Nokia in 1992 (which already built sets under Salora, Schaub-Lorenz and Oceanic), Semi-Tech in 1996, bankruptcy in 2005 and Vestel in 2006. Five owners for a brand most people take to be Finnish.

The label database does not argue#

Every television sold in the European Union has to be registered in EPREL under the name of the responsible company. Searching by brand and writing down the registrant's legal name, this is what comes out. The right-hand column is the entries signed by a company in the Vestel group:

brand         declared   downloaded   Vestel group
Telefunken       1,046          214            213
Toshiba            883          222            214
JVC                979          213            152
Finlux             508          156            113
Hitachi            265          122            122
Daewoo             244          126            126
Techwood           139           93             93
Vestel              93           72             72
Luxor               90           75             44
Digihome            41           41             41
EVVO                 5            5              5
Regal                0            0              0

It is worth saying how this is downloaded, because the left column and the middle one do not match and there is no trick to it: the EPREL API returns the declared total, but its paging does not walk the set. With page the blocks repeat, and with offset the ceiling is 50 unique entries per query, whatever the sort order. What does work are the energyClass, energyClassHDR and panelTechnology filters, so splitting the query gets you further. Counting the two control brands of the next paragraph, that is fourteen searches, 4,573 declared entries and 1,518 downloaded. Of those 1,518, 1,195 are signed by six companies in the group: Vestel Holland B.V. (674), its German branch (315), VESTEL France (135), Gruppo Industriale Vesit S.p.A. (43), Vestel Holland BV Sucursal en España (23) and Vestel Poland Sp. z o.o. (5).

For Digihome, Hitachi, Daewoo, Techwood, EVVO and the Vestel brand itself, that is 100 % of what was downloaded. Two similar brands outside the group were downloaded as a control: the 103 Salora entries are signed by Albers Trading BV and the 76 Nabo entries by Baytronic Handels GmbH. Not one from Vestel. The test works both ways.

And that legal name is no coincidence of wording: the German shop for the Vestel brand declares "Vestel Holland B.V. Germany Branch Office, Parkring 6, 85748 Garching bei München", which is exactly the company that signs 315 of the entries in the table.

Regal: zero entries and a dead domain#

Regal does not appear in EPREL. Not one entry. It does not need to: it is the group's Turkish brand and it sells in Türkiye. The annual report says "Vestel has 1,382 Vestel stores and 954 Regal sales points throughout Türkiye, as well as 9 Finlux distributors", and the outlets page gives the domain: regal-tr.com.

The domain almost everybody would type, regal.com.tr, resolves to an IP and then times out on ports 80 and 443. The one that does answer, regal-tr.com, serves its images from vestel.com.tr and has its cookie notice signed by "Vestel Ticaret Anonim Şirketi", the same company that signs the Vestel website. The brand is not even trying to hide it.

Luxor: the importer says so#

luxor.fi is the brand's Finnish site and it is on the home page: "Nykyisin Luxorin laadukkaita televisioita valmistaa Vestel ja maahantuo kotimainen Helkama Kodinkoneet", today Luxor's televisions are built by Vestel and imported by Helkama Kodinkoneet. That importer is precisely the party signing 15 Luxor entries in EPREL. Another 16 are signed by NetOnNet AB, a Swedish retail chain, and signed as the manufacturer.

The domains you would try first lead nowhere: www.luxor.se has broken TLS and over plain HTTP serves a 576-byte page titled "Luxor//Radio"; luxor.no is a sauna in Isfjorden; www.luxor.dk is an investment company. And vestel-holland.com, the domain of the name that signs 674 entries, does not resolve at all.

Eight years for the Finlux, two for the Luxor#

EPREL keeps a field, minAvailabilitySoftwareUpdatesYears, with the years of updates the responsible party promises. Across the 1,518 entries downloaded: 914 say eight years, 320 say two, nine say seven and 275 are blank.

The interesting part is that the split is not decided by the registrant but by the brand. Vestel Holland B.V. declares eight years on 67 Finlux, 110 Toshiba and 82 Telefunken sets, and two years on 11 Luxor and two Techwood. VESTEL France declares two years on 73 of the 80 Techwood sets it signs. The same company promising four times less depending on the logo on the box.

None of the three is on Google's list#

This site's directory records, for every model, the device the set reports: the platform it is built on. It comes from Google Play's list of supported devices: 2,228 televisions, 439 brands, 222 platforms.

Finlux, Luxor, Regal, Techwood, Digihome and Vestel have not a single entry. Their licensed brands do: JVC 79, Daewoo 20, Toshiba 12, Hitachi four, EVVO two, and Telefunken exactly one, the platform SW4H, which it shares with 24 other brands. JVC's SW6H carries 27 brands, and SW4H_FF carries ten.

Five operating systems under one name#

This is what really matters before you touch anything. The German shop for the Vestel brand sells, on the same television page, models with Android TV, Google TV, Fire TV and TiVo. The television menu on regal-tr.com offers Fire TV, Tivo TV, Vidaa TV and 4K Ultra HD Android TV. And Luxor's Finnish importer warns that its range includes "älytelevisioita Android- tai Linux-käyttöjärjestelmällä": some Android, some Linux.

On three of those five there is nothing ADB can do. So the brand tells you nothing, the range tells you nothing, and the only thing that works is asking the set:

adb shell getprop ro.product.device

If the command does not answer, it is not an Android TV and this piece is not yours. If it does, whatever comes out is what to look up in the directory, not the name on the front. And here is the practical part: a Toshiba package list works for the Telefunken that shares its platform, because the brand does not write the software.

What comes off and what does not#

Off without thinking: streaming apps you do not use, the free content channels on the home screen, and shop demo modes.

Check first: the recommendation engine (com.google.android.tvrecommendations), which cleans up the screen but also empties the "continue watching" row.

Leave alone: Google Play services (com.google.android.gms), the launcher (com.google.android.tvlauncher or com.google.android.leanbacklauncher) and anything starting with com.android. that you cannot identify.

All of it is reversible: a disabled package comes back with one command.

If you own one#

Send the output of adb shell getprop ro.product.device along with the brand and the commercial model. Finlux, Luxor and Regal have not one entry in Google's list, and two or three replies would settle which platforms they sit on. The same mechanism under other names is in JVC, Blaupunkt and Hyundai and in Hitachi, Sanyo and Schneider.