[Update: Samsung has come back to me regarding the original story below. In an official statement it strongly denies the extent of the problem as claimed by The Guardian, and has confirmed separately to me that the issue does not affect any US models. In fact, it's apparently only the UK that's affected. Here's the statement in full, with the unchanged original story below:
"Samsung is aware of a small number of TVs in the UK (less than 200) affected by a firmware update to 2017 MU Series TVs on 17th August. Once this issue was identified, the update was switched off and we’re now working with each customer to resolve the issue. Any customers affected are encouraged to get in touch with Samsung directly (0330 7267864).
We would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers."]
The curse of TV software updates has struck again. Unlike most recent update problems, though, this time it’s owners of Samsung rather than LG televisions who have been affected.
As initially reported by The Guardian, it appears that following a firmware update rolled out last Thursday (August 17), ‘thousands’ of owners of multiple models of Samsung TVs are reporting significant issues.
For some of those affected, their Samsung TV either gets stuck on one channel and won’t reply to remote control commands. For others the TV just gets stuck on the home screen, or else their TVs just won’t turn on at all.
TVs reported as affected include various models from the 2017 MU6, MU7, and MU8 ranges. So far as I can see, there haven’t yet been confirmed issues with any older generations of Samsung TVs, or any of Samsung’s 2017 QLED TVs.
It also seems that, strangely, the problems are only affecting European models; there’s no widespread chatter about similar issues on forums or Samsung community boards in other territories. Nor does it seem that the update problems are affecting every MU set; searching through other MU owner forums reveals plenty of people with MU models yet to experience any post-update problems.
Moderators on the European Samsung community boards have fed back, however, that Samsung is aware of the issue, and have also suggested that a fix has already been discovered. However, it seems at the time of writing that this fix requires an engineer visit, rather than being something that can be pushed out automatically.
As well as being inconvenient to customers already frustrated by not having a functioning TV for more than a week now, if the problem really can only be fixed by an engineer visit then sorting out everyone affected could potentially take some time.
Reports on Samsung’s European community forums also suggest that the first engineer visit designed to address the problem ended in failure, with the engineer having to take the TV away for further analysis.
I’ve contacted Samsung for an official response to this situation, and will report back if they have anything to say. Also, if you live outside Europe and have experienced similar issues following last week’s update, or you’ve experienced the same sort of issues with a Samsung model other than those listed earlier, feel free to drop me a note about it on my Twitter feed (linked to at the bottom of this article).
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