What is going on with eARC update for the soundbar HW-Q90R?

[zhspence]

Hi everyone,

I need some clarification, as to be honest the Samsung support staff are hopeless with knowing anything about their own products. 

I was on chat with support enquiring about the eARC firmware update for this soundbar, he replies to me saying it doesn't have eARC?! 

the whole reason I purchased it was because of this update, I have the LG C9 which is eARC!

if they don't provide this firmware update to allow it, then this soundbar is going back for a refund. 

[SuissoNaBisso]

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@kalupator wrote:

Can anyone check if forced lip synchronization works? The eAPC protocol provides for forced synchronization of audio and video.
It is also interesting whether the sound strobe on DD (ac3) tracks has been fixed?

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So in my case, I was waiting for eARC update for my XBox one X.

When i was enabling Atmos on the Xbox (connected to TV and audio sent back to soundbar via ARC), I had a huge lip sync issue.

And now with recent eARC update, no more lip sync issue so I guess yes this is now forcing sync.

Never had any issues with AC3 tracks so I can't tell you.

[Mariscal87]

Hi,

I just updated my q70r soundbar through the smart things app and now I can see in the display eARC. I have a LG TV.

I cannot play videos with loseless dolby atmos, may I need an hdmi 2.1?

[Marko81]

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@Mariscal87 wrote:

Hi,

I just updated my q70r soundbar through the smart things app and now I can see in the display eARC. I have a LG TV.

I cannot play videos with loseless dolby atmos, may I need an hdmi 2.1?

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On the LG C9 OLED you need to set Digital Sound Out to Pass Through and eARC to On for loseless Dolby Atmos to work. Does your TV support eARC?

[Mariscal87]

Yes it does, I can see earc in the soundbar display. The problem is I have the loseless content in an usb drive

[SuissoNaBisso]

i think this was you whoa sked me on Twitter too.

LG C9 tv can only carry lossless sound from an HDMI source to HDMI output (ARC /eARC).

So you need to play your lossless conetnt from external device like Nvidia Shield for example

[Estevez1979]

Lg C9 (I own one)  internal player cannot play lossless files. You need an external player, such as nvidia shield, or blu ray player.

I do not know about other internal apps such us Plex, but Plex only can play files from a server, not from files connected to the tv USB.

[Marko81]

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@Estevez1979 wrote:

Lg C9 (I own one)  internal player cannot play lossless files. You need an external player, such as nvidia shield, or blu ray player.

I do not know about other internal apps such us Plex, but Plex only can play files from a server, not from files connected to the tv USB.

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I can confirm that internal Xplay app plays lossless Dolby Atmos from Plex server on LG C9.

[jobean]

Wow! Can you post a tutorial or maybe a link to one? I tried Plex but did not get it working.

I downloaded a lot of demo's from demolandia and digital theater and converted them with Handbrake to MP4 so I could play them from a USB stick but only Atmos works in MP4 so no DTS:X. Plex plays MKV .M2TS etc. right?

[Marko81]

Plex app on my C9 didn't work for me either. It's constantly buffering when I tried to play movies with lossless Dolby Atmos track. When playing compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 it works fine. When I switched to Xplay app (you still need Plex server on PC) all problems disappeared and now I'm able to play lossless Atmos tracks (it's 5 days trial so you can try it and see if it works for you). So, I've installed Plex server on my PC, didn't change anything in the settings, just manually added folder with movies, installed Plex app on my C9 and that's it.

It's really easy to set everything but there is tutorial if something goes wrong for you.

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https://www.howtogeek.com/252261/how-to-set-up-plex-and-watch-your-movies-on-any-device/

[SuissoNaBisso]

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@Marko81 wrote:

Plex app on my C9 didn't work for me either. It's constantly buffering when I tried to play movies with lossless Dolby Atmos track. When playing compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 it works fine. When I switched to Xplay app (you still need Plex server on PC) all problems disappeared and now I'm able to play lossless Atmos tracks (it's 5 days trial so you can try it and see if it works for you). So, I've installed Plex server on my PC, didn't change anything in the settings, just manually added folder with movies, installed Plex app on my C9 and that's it.

It's really easy to set everything but there is tutorial if something goes wrong for you.

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https://www.howtogeek.com/252261/how-to-set-up-plex-and-watch-your-movies-on-any-device/

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Are you really sure this is lossless that is being played from Xplay ?

Atmos format has the capacity t be downgraded to lossy format, meaning your soundbar will still display Atmos logo but it's only DD+ Atmos.

On other side DTS-X does not have this capacity apparently, so if you test a DTS-x file from Xplay and well see DTS-X logo ons oundbar then you're good, TV is well sending lossless signal. But if the logo does not appear on the soundbar then it means you are only sending downgraded format (lossy).

You can find DTS-X demo on Google