Day: July 3, 2016

Fixing a Samsung home theater…

D'Arque Bishop

In the previous post, I mentioned that I had repaired my Samsung home theater unit. Seeing as the issue is a common problem for this model, I figured a post detailing what I did would be useful.

(I apologize in advance for a lack of pictures; the unit is assembled and back in the home theater and it would be a pain to disassemble again.)

First, a little bit of background: we purchased a Samsung HT-E6730w back in 2012 to replace my ailing Onkyo home theater unit. It’s an integrated home theater unit, including Dolby 7.1 surround sound, wireless rear speakers, a Blu-Ray 3D player, and vacuum tubes. The purpose of the vacuum tubes was to improve the receiver’s sound quality, and are not uncommon in much higher end units.

It was working great, until several months ago. The unit started developing a fault where it would start lowering the volume on its own. It was as if the volume button was being pressed, as we could hear the beeps that indicated the front panel was being operated. It happened randomly, and we would need to fight with it via the remote. Eventually, it got to the point where it was happening frequently and we would lose the fight, ending up with no sound. I took it to Best Buy’s Geek Squad to get it fixed, but they wanted a few hundred dollars to fix it. It turned out to be a moot point anyway, as they found they couldn’t get replacement parts. So, it was sent back unrepaired.

Frustrated, I decided to do some research, and found the cause of the problem: there was a design flaw involving the aforementioned vacuum tubes. They were located right next to the front panel controls, and the heat from the tubes ended up damaging the volume controls.

Fortunately, if you don’t mind going remote-only (like we do), there IS a fix. Note that these actions WILL void your warranty (if you still have one), and done wrongly can damage your receiver. Proceed at your own risk.

You need to take the top cover off the unit first. In the middle of the mainboard is the cable connecting the front panel to the mainboard; go ahead and remove it. Then, remove the front panel via the tabs at the top, bottom, and sides.

At this point, you can see two interface ribbons that plug into the front panel circuit board. One comes from the main front panel controls, and the other from the volume controls. All you need to do is slide out the interface cable from the volume controls. In my own case, it was easy to see the damage caused to the volume touch controls; the volume down button was almost completely transparent compared to the other button.

The volume controls are fixed at this point, and you can replace the front panel and reconnect its interface cable to the mainboard. However, I seriously recommend that the vacuum tubes be disconnected at this point as well. The daughter board they’re part of is connected to the mainboard via an interface cable with a white plug right by the tubes. Just disconnect them, and the vacuum tubes will stop working as well (as well as the USB microphone port). The reason I recommend disconnecting the vacuum tubes are that they do not affect system sound as much as implied, and more importantly their heat could damage other front panel controls. I kept my vacuum tubes connected, only for the eject button to be damaged by the heat and start malfunctioning as well. To fix that, I disconnected the main front page controls’ interface cable, and then disconnected the vacuum tubes.

Since then, my receiver has worked more or less perfectly. We don’t hear any sound difference, and while the front panel controls don’t work anymore, we never used them anyway. We’re just glad we didn’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a new unit.

Hopefully if you’re having the same problem, this post is of use to you. :-)

The current state of our media entertainment…

D'Arque Bishop

As I noted six months ago, we decided to save some money by getting rid of our cable TV service.

It was a bit of a difficult decision at the time, considering how much we used the TV for background noise and how often we used our Comcast-provided DVR. However, at this point, we don’t regret getting rid of it.

One of the biggest changes we’ve made since to our setup since we got rid of the cable service was to get a Roku Streaming Stick for the living room home theater. We were very impressed with how well the Roku 1 worked on our bedroom TV; on the other hand, the installed apps on our Samsung home theater receiver were terrible. Getting the Streaming Stick solved that problem, and now the streaming services work just as well in the living room as they do in the bedroom.

Of course, apps like Hulu replaced the Comcast DVR. On the other hand, we tended to use channels like Food Network, HGTV, and Travel Channel as background noise, especially on weekends. While the broadcast networks had some similar channels, we really missed having those networks. That was solved the other day, when we learned about Sling TV, which provided all the channels we were missing for $20/month. As we rarely (if ever) DVRed those channels, it was a good deal considering how much we had been paying for cable TV service before. We’re on day three of our seven day trial, and we’ve already decided to continue the service.

If there’s been one problem, it’s been the fact that our home theater receiver has a major design flaw that caused both the volume down and eject buttons on the front panel to malfunction badly. After Geek Squad basically declared it unrepairable, I managed to take it apart and figure out a) what the problem was, and b) how to fix the issue. The receiver is working fine now with no issues. I may do a blog post later detailing what I did.

All in all, we’re pretty happy right now with our TV service. When it comes to movies, though, it’s not been as good.

To be honest, there hasn’t been all that much we’ve wanted to go out and see. It doesn’t help, either, that we have to make arrangements for Lucas if we want to go to see a movie in a theater. The last two movies we’ve seen in theaters have been Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War, and unfortunately, we didn’t like either one. While I wanted to see Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, I knew Jennifer didn’t want to see it, so I’m waiting for it to become available to rent via Amazon Instant Video. Star Trek Beyond should be out soon, but I’m not sure yet whether we’ll see that at a theater or whether we’ll wait for it to hit home video.

Of course, considering we have a decent TV and sound system, about the only kind of theater it’s worth going out to see a movie at is a dinner-and-a-movie place, and for us that’s Studio Movie Grill, considering they have locations near our house and near Jennifer’s parents’ house. The food is decent, the ticket prices are reasonable (compared to places like AMC and Cinemark), and they have low tolerance for people acting up during movies.

In the end, we’re pretty happy with how things have ended up, six months down the road. With the addition of Sling TV, the one thing that caused us to miss cable TV has been taken care of. We don’t get to see as many movies as we used to, but we’re adapting there as best we can. I think we’re doing well, and we definitely made the right decision as far as cable TV goes.