Samsung Paywalled Muting My TV's Speakers, So I Used the Secret Service Menu
Honey, I shrunk the TV
A Q990D soundbar owner paired Samsung Music Studio 7 speakers via Q-Symphony, then hit an echo because the TV's built-in speakers ran slightly ahead of the wireless gear. Disabling those speakers is locked to 2026+ TVs, so he dug into the hidden service menu and set Max Volume to 0. The TV speakers went silent while the rest of the system kept playing.
So here I was, thinking how something like not driving a set of speakers was tied behind a paywall.
- deltarholamda
I get that running seven different kinds of cables everywhere was a bit of a faff, but honestly I miss those days now that I have to be an electrical engineer, a computer systems analyst and a network engineer just to have my TV play sounds.
(And I still have to turn the subtitles on because I can't quite hear what the people on the TV are saying.)
- roughly
“Why would Samsung do this?” Because they are a deeply, deeply consumer hostile brand. Do not buy Samsung consumer products, no matter what the feature set and price tag look like. They are not trying to provide you with a good or service in exchange for money, they are trying to take as much of your money as they can.
- asdfqwertzxcv
I went through the cabled vs wireless run around with Q-Symphony as well until I just settled on using wireless.
The main, unsolved issue was getting the Samsung remote to also work as the cable box remote. Spent 2 full days working on that, to no avail. This will be the last Samsung TV I ever buy. It's back to projectors or industry display TVs for me.