samsung hd sound issues

captainhaddock

If anyone has been having sound dropouts on hd channels on their samsung tvs there's some good news, a fix has been made - but you need to contact samsung so that they will send you an update usb stick.

There doesn't seem to have been any publicity regarding the issues that have been experienced by a significant number of samsung tvs that are only 3 or 4 years old, here's the info from the BBC.


Sound issues on Freeview HD services
Having worked closely with manufacturers we have established the cause of the sound problems on certain televisions, when tuned into services on the BBC’s HD multiplex.
We are now in a position to make some changes that will help the affected televisions. These changes will be rolled out in a controlled way, starting in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London.
Although the changes have undergone testing, rolling out regionally will enable us to monitor the impact, just in case we need to reverse the changes, if unexpected problems occur.
Assuming it works successfully, we will roll out to the rest of the country in the next couple of weeks.
Technical details about the problem
Under certain audio conditions our encoders were using a technique called perceptual noise substitution (PNS) and some audio decoders were found unable to decode this. PNS is part of the MPEG4 AAC specification which the UK D-Book references. Our encoders have always been capable of using PNS but a recent update meant that PNS could be selected by the audio encoder at the audio bit rates used on Freeview.
Receiver Updates
Manufacturers are planning their own software updates in order to provide a long-term solution to this problem although we believe the updates could be some weeks away. You will need to contact your manufacturer for more details.
Please visit this page for any further updates.
Thank you for bearing with us and sorry for the inconvenience. We would also like to say thanks to all of you who provided information to us about this problem.