Q90R TV and Q90R soundbar not working correctly with ARC

[m-oc]

I have the TV and soundbar of the same name - Q90R. Presumably they are designed to work together...

If if I connect my 2 HDMI sources to the soundbar and use the HDMI ARC to connect to the TV, everything works fine except that my TV remote will switch the TV and soundbar off. However, if I switch the TV on with the TV remote, the soundbar does not switch on. Why would it switch off but not on?  This is how you are advised to set it up in the manual. 

Everything is enabled on Anynet+ CEC and the universal remotes also set up. Volume controls also work from TV remote. Just not switching on both devices together.  I also sometimes have to switch the source off/on to have it recognised.  The only way to switch on the soundbar is with its own remote. 

Interestingly, if I move my 2 HDMI sources to connect to the TV and not the soundbar, the TV remote will switch both devices on AND off and works perfectly in this regard. However, then I get unreaolveable lip sync issues and don’t even get me started on that!

Any ideas (or fixes - Samsung) gratefully received. 

[m-oc]

They are basically rude and useless at Samsung. Their definition of an “engineer” was a (nice but useless) 16 year old not even old enough to drive who came to my house. Agreed that there was an issue and took a video of it on his phone. Nothing was done following that. 

However, after ages more on the phone I managed to get an “Uplift” number. Basically a returns authorisation which you give to the retailer and they have to exchange the TV. The exchange took place today. So I need to test over the next few days. I did also notice that a software update must have come out in the last few days. I’ll report back once I’ve done more testing but I’m not hopeful. 

I would suggest to demand an uplift number and an exchange. The more it costs Samsung, the more likely they are to fix it.  Also, if the exchanges don’t fix it then it means they might recognise the issue. In the unlikely event it does fix the problem then that’s great news too!

[SeeNoWeevil]

It's certainly a bug that the TV defaults to internal speakers on startup and it's incredibly annoying. Almost as annoying as the TV turning my PS4 on every time it switches to the ARC input with my AVR on. The ARC implementation is a mess on this TV.

[primalair]

Well first I tried to escalate the behaviour of the agent via complain on the hotline and also using twitter. After a few reminders I finally got a mail from samsung where they refered to a completely different topic as my real problem and told me that they consider my complain as closed now.

The topic they referenced on was Atmos. They statet that the Q Series TV's don't support Atmos and therefore they can't do nothing for me. I think reason for this was an argument I had with a support agent before because she brought this false statement up out of nothing while we discussed my real issue. As I was already somehow upset about my current situation with the devices this statement made me somehow explode and let to an argument. Fact about that is: my current setup supports Atmos as DD+ stream out of the native Netflix app of the Q85R what is fully compatible with standard ARC so her statement was defenetely not correct what she couldn't agree to. Of couse true uncompressed Atmos is only possible with eARC because the TV doesn't support that but that wasn't the topic either. Just to have it complete. This discussion let us further to that eARC is only possible with HDMI 2.1 what was also nonsense. It's indeed part of the standard 2.1 but many manufacturer implement eARC already alongside with HDMI 2.0. Even the Soundbar Q90R got eARC capabilities with HDMI 2.0 in place but also there, realworld facts were not able to make her believe that she isn't right.

Anyway, it wasn't the reason I contacted the support at any time but it made me just feeling really bad about trying to fix my issues with someone who clearly isn't much ahead knowledgewise then I'm myself.

At least, after I clarified that they focus on a wrong topic, a support agent contacted me again, suggesting the basic steps like power reset or that I may send it for repair through my retailer. If I do that, strongly believing that this is a software problem, I just end up with a lot of effort and without any TV. Maybe they don't care but I spent a lot of money and this was first and last product I bought from Samsung.

[primalair]

Well here really everything that can go wrong goes wrong. I should receive a call from samsung between 09:30 and 10:00. After the time passed I got a mail that they couldn't call me because of a wrong number. Well, we talked few times so it's quite unprofessional what happened now again. 

@m-oc did you have any sucess with your exchanged TV? You also mentioned newer Software? What release do you mean?

[m-oc]

Hi

They exchanged my TV and it is still basically the same.  A lip sync issue with the video ahead of the sound on Dolby Digital HDMI sources when the sound is via a sound bar.

I've called them today and they say that they will escalate the issue to their support team to see if a fix can be made.  They wouldn't commit to any timeframe for this.  I would strongly suggest for you to also get your TV exchanged and then follow the same process.  I know it's inconvenient but the more people that do it, the more chance they will want to fix the issue.

I made a mistake about the firmware version, sorry.  The new TV is on 1315 and in fact it won't update to 1318, even though my old TV automatically applied the update.  So, this is also inconsistent.  I'm going to test for another day or 2 on 1315 and then will manually update to 1318 but, as my old TV had 1318 and this TV doesn't seem to want it, I don't expect it will fix anything and could even make it worse.

[userjYtfoTda0t]

Thanks for reporting. I was under the impression that the 1315 version was for the QNxxQ90R but I guess you have a QExxQ90R? Do you see any other differences in the 1315 ?

[m-oc]

I have the QE55. It seems like it shipped with this version as I don't believe it updated after initial set up. 

[m-oc]

No difference that I can see in terms of lip sync or any other improvements. 

[SeeNoWeevil]

It really agitates me how many support departments will put the customer through so much inconvenience and hassle, such as packing and returning a TV - when they could just spent TEN MINUTES replicating and confirming an obvious bug on their own internal hardware. It's a complete and utter waste of everyone's time. These things are complex, they have bugs. Users will report bugs, support need to replicate the issue and if it is indeed a problem, log it with the engineers to fix. Not mess the user around endlessly.

[primalair]

After my last support call yesterdays the responsible support engineer and me came exactly to this conclusion. He will try to replicate the behaviour on the same hardware in his lab and will give me feedback next week. There is no lack of understanding for the complexity from my side. I work myself in software development and I know that bugs happen. What I don't understand is the stubbornness of a lot of support people to acknowledge it. For me it's fine if they tell me, okay it's a bug, we pass it to the responsible dev team. Why is it so difficult to establish a proper ticketing system where I can see how the progress is about something like that. The other thing that drives me mad is the powerlessness as customer. You buy something for a *****load of money and it doesn't work like it should but you can basically do almost nothing, at least here in Switzerland. The retailer will not take it back and give me my money back, I can send it for repair what will only generate costs, effort and will leave me without TV or I can just accept and hope for a miracle.