UPDATE (March 21): Samsung responded to Digital Trends about the firmware issue, saying “Samsung Electronics has identified a software update error as the cause of the operational issue affecting certain 2024 soundbar devices. We are taking immediate action to resolve the situation. Samsung is offering free repairs for all affected units—regardless of warranty status.”
Last week, Samsung released a firmware update — version 1020.7 — that locked the Samsung HW-Q990D, the best overall soundbar available, and other 900 series soundbars in eARC mode, rendering them useless. As originally reported by The Verge, users started posting to r/soundbars on Reddit, Samsung forums, and AVS Forum soon after the update to explain what happened. Some Digital Trends readers that are experiencing the problem also reached out to us for answers (thanks Marcel!).
A response from a Samsung forum moderator in Europe indicated that Samsung AV Product Specialists are aware of the issue and confirmed that it is the result of an OTN (Over the Network) update, which they have now suspended. According to the moderator, “If your issue is the result of an OTN update, then it will be necessary to arrange an engineer’s inspection and repair in order to get this resolved.” It’s important to note that this is aimed for those based in the UK.
We recommend that you turn off automatic updates, as it’s unknown if those updates have also been suspended in the US and Canada. Apparently, customers that did the update via USB were not affected by the problem.
Additional reports seem to show that the firmware update has also affected the 800 series soundbars (HW-Q800D and HW-S801D) as well.
Hopefully a new firmware update will be made available to fix the issue, and customers won’t need to all send their soundbars back to Samsung for service.
We reached out to Samsung for a statement and about any plans for a fix. We’ll update once we have more information.
