Sonos Arc & Samsung TV eARC connection issues - fixed?
TV: 2020 model Samsung UE50TU8500UXXU
Just spent the morning on support calls to both Sonos and Samsung trying to get the Arc to connect with the telly through eARC. I think we might finally have made some progress.
In short, the problem was that the TV wasn’t seeing the Arc so it didn’t appear in the list of sound output options. Instead, all I could choose from was ‘TV speakers’, ‘Optical’ or ‘Bluetooth speakers’. I should’ve had the option to choose ‘Receiver (HDMI-eARC)’ too.
My first call to Samsung didn’t go well (I had to explain what a Sonos Arc was) and ended up no further on. The person referred the issue to a product expert who basically said ‘There’s a compatibility issue between the Arc and some Samsung TVs’. Like, tell me something I don’t know.
Their advice was to call Sonos and see what they had to say. I did, and we ran various diagnostics that all showed hardware was good and everything should be working fine. In fact, it sort of was at that point because the Arc suddenly started making noise. Problem was, it was only Dolby Digital 5.1 when it should’ve been Dolby Atmos. Checking the TV settings again confirmed the Arc still wasn’t being ‘seen’ through the HDMI eArc port.
So, Sonos batted it back to Samsung. And my second call was more successful. I got to speak to a product expert who remoted to the telly and did various tests/resets etc. Eventually, bingo, we have the TV picking up the Arc through the HDMI eArc port, and sending a Dolby Atmos signal (according to the Sonos app anyway). Great.
Except not. Because there are two issues still outstanding:
- The ‘pass-through’ functionality on the TV is still greyed out so I can’t select it (although the Samsung guy couldn’t work out why that wasn’t making a difference to the Atmos signal)
- Plugging in anything else to either of the two remaining HDMI ports on the TV means the Arc loses connection. So I can’t plug in my DVD player because if I do the TV doesn’t recognise the Arc anymore. Bonkers, I know. I mention this because if you’re having problems with your Samsung/Arc connection, try disconnecting everything else HDMI and seeing if that makes a difference.
An engineer is calling me in the next couple of days to try to fix these things and I’ll post an update if there is one.
An absurd situation all told, of course, but hopefully we’ll get there.