Solved! Volume Issues Samsung TV & Home Theater

[mhugger]

My circa 2018 Samsung smart TV and circa 2017 Samsung home theater system has recently been acting up. The Samsung TV remote always controlled the home theater volume (instead of seeing the TV volume up or down display on the TV, it would instead change the home theater volume control). It stopped driving the home theater a month or so ago, and only controls the TV volume. So I've been using two remotes again. At about the same time, I have also been getting intermittent speaker flakiness out of the Home Theater. Every now and then the speakers flicker from regular volume to a muted/muffled sound. Some times they stick that way for a bit, sometimes it's just a flicker to muted. Additionally, intermittently, some speakers won't work. As I type this, the right speaker is working but the center is not working. Earlier it was the left speaker. I run the "test tone" from the home theater menu that sequences through each speaker, and they all sound fine. Absolutely perplexing.

My configuration: The home theater does not have ARCC so it is connected via HDMI from Home Theater out to TV in, and then Optical from TV back to Home Theater.

Could it be a faulty optical cable? But if it was, would only some of the speakers work? I'm baffled. Any help in troubleshooting would be appreciated.

 

[Bradleybbb]

Plug the hdmi out of amp to the hdmi input on tv labeled arc ..hdmi 3 or 4 . Put tv on this input...should fix this.
All sources should be input into home theatre via the hdmi ports on back of the amp. If the tv remote controlled the volume before, it was turning the theatre volume up and down..The optical out on the tv is not variable. So the tv has an arc in..just coonect the out on theatre to it..the theatre has to have arc to make the tv display theatre volume instead of displaying the tv volume bar