Facepalm: When you’re the proud proprietor of a top-of-the-line Samsung soundbar from 2024, likelihood is you have had a fairly tough week. The corporate has admitted {that a} crappy software program replace has managed to brick “sure” fashions from final 12 months’s soundbar lineup, turning them into expensive paperweights.
The affirmation comes straight from Jim Kiczek, the pinnacle of audio at Samsung Electronics America. In an announcement to The Verge, Kiczek referred to as it a “software program replace error” that impacted a number of the firm’s 2024 soundbars. He says Samsung is now providing free repairs for all affected models no matter guarantee standing.
For some context, reviews began flooding in final week about Samsung’s flagship HW-Q990D soundbar going haywire after a firmware replace. Homeowners complained that whereas these premium programs did energy on, they froze on the TV eARC enter. They then grew to become fully unresponsive and lower off from the Samsung SmartThings app. No quantity of resets or reboots may revive them.
The difficulty is not simply restricted to the Q990D, both. There are a lot of reviews throughout Samsung’s neighborhood boards, Reddit, and AVSForum concerning the HW-Q800D and HW-S801D fashions struggling the identical destiny.
These reviews additionally state that Samsung buyer help did not have a solution. All they stated was that the difficulty had been forwarded to the guarantee group and that they have been awaiting a response.
What makes this example significantly painful is {that a} easy software program patch would not appear to repair it this time. It seems that these bricked bars require bodily repairs to carry them again to life.
The buggy firmware replace inflicting all this audio anguish seems to be model 1020.7. A lot of Samsung’s high-end soundbars have been set to put in it routinely, which is why the difficulty unfold so quickly throughout a number of nations just like the US, Austria, Malaysia, and past.
For these with working Samsung audio system, the recommendation is to instantly flip off automated updates for now.
Whereas software program snafus occur, it is nonetheless a awful situation for many who splurged on Samsung’s spectacular 2024 soundbar lineup, just like the well-reviewed Q990D. As a substitute of theater-quality sound, they get costly silence.
