Do I have a faulty eARC/ARC port?

[deanogorman]

Hi. I have a new Sony A8 OLED TV (KD55A8BU) and I cannot get audio from the eARC port for any apps - Netflix, Prime, Plex, etc.

I have it correctly connected to the HMDI1 output socket on my Receiver (Sony STR-DN1040) which is the ARC socket. Control for HDMI is switched on. Have tested with various HDMI cables and now have a brand new 2.1 cable.

TV is setup correctly - Audio out, HDMI3, eARC = auto. Interestingly, when I attempt 'Home Theatre Control', this fails with the screen below - even though my receiver is listed on it!!

I even had the opportunity to try with my neighbours Pioneer SC-LX58 which is working perfectly with his Sony A9 TV - he receives audio from the TV when watching the Netflix app. But absolutely nothing is coming through from my TV

Audio works ok from the optical connection, but is limited compared to what I would be getting from eARC.

My fear is that the HDMI port is simply faulty and I need to return the TV.

[Murph7355]

Have a look below the option that took you to that screen.

There are a number of options:

A/V Sync : try 'auto'

eARC mode : try 'auto'

Digital audio out : try 'auto 1'

You might also want to make sure Pass through mode is set to 'auto'.

You'll need to have options set on the receiver too I would think.  Including possibly not having it in any fancy "movie theatre" sound mode etc.

It took me ages and much frustration to get my Denon working properly.  Even then, up until tonight, in some apps if I paused playback, restarting the audio would cut out every few seconds until I switched the speakers to "TV" and then back to "Audio System".  The latest update fixed that (but made the YouView/Apps experience less cohesive/worse!).

"Smart" TVs.  Really

[Murph7355]

I take it back!  Reminders are now implemented!!  I missed the tiny little alarm bell in the guide

Just needs a more cohesive place for apps to be launched and it will have come good

[HannahEd01]

Hello there, try the new released update: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/oled-tvs-android-a8x_a8h-series/kd-55a8/downloads/0001712..., let me know if it worked.

[deanogorman]

OK, so it turns out that I DID have a faulty HDMI port on a brand new Sony TV. 

I did an absolute ton of troubleshooting, including purchasing different HDMI cables, borrowing my neighbours AV receiver (remember, I have a Sony!) and I even went as far as purchasing an Nvidia Shield to be 100% certain that there were no problems with the applications that I was using. 

I had to report this to the store. They would not replace it, instead they insisted that it be repaired. The reason is that I took too long to report it - 6 weeks total and this was beyond the 4 week period. I am VERY ***** off about this because I did all of the troubleshooting myself and did not expect a brand new Sony TV to be faulty and did not want to report it in case I was wrong. You’d think this would be taken into consideration, but it’s screw the customer I’m afraid. 

To make matters worse, the engineer came to replace the motherboard and after putting everything back together, the replacement motherboard was faulty - the TV would not switch on at all. He took it away to get it repaired. So, after buying a brand new Sony A8 TV, I was left with an empty hole in the wall. 

Overall, a terrible experience. I now have a repaired TV that did not work properly from day 1, yet I paid full price for it. Would you be happy with this??

Im very unhappy with Sony and the store. I will never buy from them again and it’s probably an end to me being a Sony fanboy. 

If anyone has an issue with a new Sony TV, I urge to to return it ASAP for a refund and don’t even bother to go through troubleshooting like I did. Sony quality and customer care has obviously gone downhill big time.