Hello everyone,
I have a QLED 8K Q900RA TV, bought in October 2019 (from Komplett.no - a shop in Norway), and got a new One Connect Box replacement to fix the lack of HDMI 2.1 (only in port 4) in May 2020 (shipped free of charge, after having to wait a few months). I got a free Galaxy S10E 128GB phone (no longer valid), plus 10 years burn-in screen guarantee (had to register online right after purchase).
As far as I know, there are three different models: Q900RA (2018), Q900RB (2019) and Q950R (2019) - all three came in different screen sizes.
Special mentioning of the HDMI 2.1 port upgrade promise of the Q900RA (2018) on its product page:
RTings review: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/q900-q900r-8k-qled
Update download: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/QE75Q900RATXXU/
The purpose of this tread is to keep track of problems and solutions our TV might have/get, One Connect Box swap, software- and firmware updates, etc.
Known problems (updated 12th. February 2020):
- The One Connect Box of the Q900RA (2018 models) lacks the HDMI 2.1 port - despite a complementary upgrade to HDMI 2.1 was promised in their presentation of Q900RA on the Samsung website, it was supposed to be fixed by the One Connect Box swap (contact Samsung), note the HDMI 2.1 was only in port 4. Later it turns out that the HDMI 2.1 port even on the new One Connect Box we got swap is still not HDMI 2.1. Despite countless attempts to get a propper answer from Samsung, they are still not transparent about what kind of a port is actually installed, but it is confirmed that it is not a HDMI 2.1 port. The 2019 models should have a proper HDMI 2.1 (no OCB swap needed).
- Lack of eARC
- Lack of AV1 codec (needed for YouTube 8K compressed play)
- Problems with the YouTube app on the TV when running 1440 and 4K videos (on the TV's web browser 4K on YouTube works flawlessly !) Even 1080p videos are often defaulting to 360p.
I have gotten banned from the US forum in which there were about three threads about the 4K YouTube app problem. There is no reason for banning me as I have only reported updates with what kind of trouble I have, but when I try to access the threads and the main forum access URL it says I have "spammed" which is of course NOT true.
Hei YNO ! Det er veldig godt å ha en annen norsk her inne med samme TV-modell. Det er så mye hodebry med denne TV-en.
I do not think the port they have promised in the Samsung's own presentation of Q900RA 8K TV - for the "complementary upgrade HDMI 2.1 support" - is a real HDMI 2.1 - but some sort of "hybrid" or something.... Non of the Samsung representatives - both in the different forums and when calling/chatting or emailing - will confirm the new improved complementary upgraded port 4 is a HDMI 2.1. The last time I called and address this was sometime after I had received my new One Connect Box with the upgrade, but the person (who had to talk to a technician) clearly stated it was still a HDMI 2.0 - and when I got a moderator to address this, he would not be able to confirm it was a HDMI 2.1, but only acknowledge that it will "accept 8K 60p"...
The only one TV owner from this forum - tom99 - who has proved proof that 8K works did it through the USB port (note: not the HDMI port) with a USB memory pen attached to it - and was able to run 8K (not sure what frequency - "hz" or "p"):
https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/8k-q900r-one-connect-box-swapping-hdmi-2-1/td-p/1140213/highl...
I would also add that tom99, who has been very active in the UK forum and elsewhere about this TV-model, contacted me privately and told me he sold his TV because of the lack of a real HDMI 2.1, eARC and AV1 codec (all of which are restricted by hardware restrictions). I think the biggest flaw and disappointment of this TV is that we did not get, even though we were promised, a "HDMI 2.1", which we all assumed was the real HDMI 2.1 port - which would have solved a lot of future issues as we would have been able to connect an external device through that HDMI 2.1 port, if I was REAL. I also suspect that there are some hardware restrictions inside, on the motherboard.... Samsung claims the "HDMI 2.1 feature" of 8K 60p. solved their promise they had to us customers of the so called "complementary upgraded HDMI 2.1 support".
By the way @YNO check your PM.
Did some further investigations last night and managed to at least get 8k@60hz 10 bit (4:2:0) resolutions to work. I can also confirm that 4k@120hz is not an option. Installed the AV1 codec for Windows and ran some 8k youtube videos. They ran fine, not overly impressed with the quality, but suspects that's due to the source material.
I'm really curious to understand exactly how they managed to enable the 8k part of the HDMI 2.1 spec without the rest.
According to this calculator: 8K Data Rate Calculator | Extron
The internal processing bandwith required for 8k@60hz 10 bit 4:2:0 is 40,1 Gbps, which is already at the peak across all possible resolutions and frequencies we would expect to work according to HDMI 2.1 specs.
It makes me wonder if it is a single component in the one-connect-box picture processing component queue that can't handle 4k@120hz 10 bit 4:4:4 that is the limiting factor, or if it just laziness that they didn't implement support for the full HDMI 2.1 specs
