Playbar keeps switching to TV.

Here’s the thing.  I work from home alone during the day.  It’s just me.  Remotes are in a small storage box when not used.  So I am certain that something else is the cause.    Sonos is sensing something else to make that switch automatically.   The fact that it happens when I am not moving about and working at my desk, the issue is not me or my TV.   This issue is “new”-ish, was not always there.   My first two years with Sonos had been pure joy.  I told everyone how amazing the product and app worked together.   As of late it is still joy… but joy with some acceptable annoyances.  Too many product and feature introductions in a single year.   Another observation is that the Sonos app (Mac, iPhone and iPad) response time has slowed down since they have added new hardware (and corresponding software updates) over the past few months.     As for the TV switching issue, I can deal with it for now.  Not sure I want to go through my whole Sonos life story when contacting customer service.   Like you experienced, I expect they will tell me to check all the default reasons it could be before they acknowledge it as a legitimate anomaly.   So we shall see.   With all that said, let it be known, I am still a huge Sonos fan, maybe just not their number one anymore.  Good luck!

Hey Guys, I’m in the same boat and it does my head in. I had the Playbar connected to the TV with optical but have unplugged it for the very same reason of the Playbar switching back to TV mode even when not wanted. I am sensing that it is from the older Sonos bars as ours is several years old now.

The software should never have been upgraded…. if it aint broke don’t fix it.

They could roll back the firmware … not easy but possible. They would have to uninstall it and re install the older version.

I don’t know what Sonos is doing even there new App sucks. There was nothing wrong with it 6 months ago.

Come on SONOS look after your customers and fix this shit !!!!

Naively I assumed that they would fix the bug in the next release. I eagerly waited while V12 sprung to life.

No such luck.

The plodding dinosaurs are no longer picked for Beta testing. I wonder cynically ifthis is so old dinosaurs’ systems do not perpetuate such idiosyncratic arrangements of a radio over playbar..

Just curious here, I checked it on my own system and it only happens when you press the volume + button when the radio is not playing, so my question is why would you press the volume + button when nothing is playing?

Damon, the Playbar is designed to be a sound bar for your TV as well as all other sonos abilities, so you would as a standard have your TV remote (volume) also controlling your Playbar. So whenever you increase the volume on your TV you are pressing the volume + button on the Playbar which then switches the Playbar from radio/music to TV. This used to never happen. The Playbar required a signal from the TV audio to switch to TV mode hence the option in setting for “TV Auto Play” and “Ungroup on Auto Play”.

Marcel75, I am aware of that. My point is it only happens when radio (or whatever music stream) is not playing, while playing music I can perfectly control volume with my IR remote without the Playbar switching to TV. Hence my question why would you press volume + while NOT playing music.

It also happens when pressing “mute”. Two reasons for “normal” systems with an optical cable between the playbar and TV:

1. If you have a one-for-all controller set to the wrong mode, you may well be trying to increase the volume on another piece of kit not connected to either Sonos or TV. When (apparently) nothing happens you pick the correct function off the 1-4-all and then do what you’d intended to - having unwittingly and silently triggered the trap
2. If you believe that the reason Sonos is not playing the selected radio station because the volume is set to minimum (as oppose to source paused). In the past a dab on the volume would bring it up if in that mode and do no harm if not - a dab on the soundbar powe switch would bring it back to life. No longer.

My system no longer has a connection between the TV and sound bar. However, the TV remote control (until this bug was introduced) could usefully be used for either - or perversely both if the radio and TV were both “on”.

Even when my TV optically fed the sound bar, I had a separate IR remote control (from a redundant TV) to operate the sound bar volume. In that way I could leave the TV internal speaker volume set to zero and control sound bar volume without TV internal sound coming on.

Finally, if you have a house with kids, remote buttons get pressed all the time. Up until this bug was introduced, this had no detrimental effect on Sonos sound selection.

I would comment that this is also happening to me on both an older PlayBar and a PlayBase. 

My setup is simple.  I have a PlayBase connected to my TV via Optical.  I then turn the TV on in the mornings and watch/listen to the news.  I leave the news channel on all day but switch the audio to live streaming radio via TuneIn on the Sonos system.  My experience is that after a completely random amount of time, the audio switches back to the TV and streaming of the radio station stops.  No remote button has been pressed, no specific amount of time has passed, no playlist has ended (since it is a live stream).  

I have not opened a case on this as I originally thought I was just losing my mind but it seems that since others are having the issue I may open a case to help push a fix along for this. 

The only other uniqueness to my setup is I do have TV AutoPlay enabled but I do this so that TV Audio starts when I turn on the TV. Since my TV is already on when I switch to radio AutoPlay should not invoke a change anytime after.

The most likely reason I your case is a momentary loss of TV audio signal.  That can occur for many reasons, most of which are raw source related. A switch to OB from studio or a satellite feed would do it. You can cure yours by turning off TV audio. I am stuffed still.

I thought I fixed the issue - however it persists 2 weeks later. I stopped using my Sonos altogether. Now I WFM in silence. It’s super frustrating that this is an issue because I’d rather sit with music in the background while I work.