anddddddddd that's the last time I buy a Samsung TV

JacobFW · December 10, 2020

So, a little backstory. Earlier this year I decided to upgrade my entertainment center. I got a 65" Samsung TV (~$500) and a Vizio 5.1 Surround Sound System (~$250). Nothing super fancy by any means, but a decent upgrade from what I had before. The surround sound system in particular I was really looking forward to, and made sure the TV was compatible with it.

So, get it setup. Have my HTPC hooked up, Switch & Blu Ray player. Find out about ARC, and get that setup, so everything can play through the sound system without needing a bunch of wires.......

Except ARC is really flaky, and I can't get it to work reliably. If I switch sources, sometimes the sound will switch right away, sometimes it switches after a few minutes, and sometimes it never switches, and even switching back to the previous source won't work, and I have to turn the tv off, power off the speakers and back on, then turn the tv back on for the sound to work again.

Just a bit irritating as you can imagine.

But, then I realized yesterday that the TV has optical out for audio, and the speakers has optical audio in. PERFECT!!! I can just have video & audio go into the TV, and then output the audio to the speaker system. And it works! So far none of the same issues with the audio not switching when the video does like I was having with ARC. Great...................

except surround sound no longer works. And so I've spent the last several hours playing around with it and researching it.

Turns out, Samsung only supports anything better than stereo if it's with ARC, over the TV tuner, or using one of the built in apps in the TV.

Apart from that.... Samsung's response is a giant FU.

So, definitely going to be awhile before I get anything to do with my entertainment system from Samsung.

SlashedM · December 10, 2020

21 minutes ago, JacobFW said:

Except ARC is really flaky, and I can't get it to work reliably

ARC for me no matter what TV has been a pain for me, but yeah I think the problem with Samsung is that the smart TV functions are on at the same time, so it kinda craps for me as well, and recently been worse than usual.