KeyGood5298
New member
There is a piece at ecoustics arguing the television is absorbing work that used to belong to the receiver, and I think it is right about who it actually affects. Nobody running an Anthem with seven passive speakers and four ceiling channels is unplugging anything this year. The person being targeted is the one buying a 77 inch OLED who wants Atmos without pulling wire through a ceiling on a Saturday.
The distinction drawn is about control rather than hardware. A TV on eARC is still handing the decode off to the receiver, which decides speaker layout, bass redirection and room correction. The newer wireless setups move some of that upstream into the panel. Samsung's 2026 Q Symphony can coordinate as many as five Samsung audio devices, soundbars and Wi-Fi speakers included, and adjusts for where they sit, with SmartThings layered over the top. Sony has already made compatible BRAVIA sets active participants in its own systems, and LG and TCL are heading the same way. Apple and Google are coming at it from the streaming platform side instead.
My worry is not that the receiver dies. It is that every one of these only works inside a single brand. Buy the TV, buy their speakers, keep buying their speakers. A Denon or a Marantz will still take whatever you plug into it in ten years. A Samsung wireless system will take whatever Samsung is still selling in ten years, which is a different promise.
Has anyone here actually dropped their receiver for one of these TV led setups? I want to know whether it survived the first firmware update.
The distinction drawn is about control rather than hardware. A TV on eARC is still handing the decode off to the receiver, which decides speaker layout, bass redirection and room correction. The newer wireless setups move some of that upstream into the panel. Samsung's 2026 Q Symphony can coordinate as many as five Samsung audio devices, soundbars and Wi-Fi speakers included, and adjusts for where they sit, with SmartThings layered over the top. Sony has already made compatible BRAVIA sets active participants in its own systems, and LG and TCL are heading the same way. Apple and Google are coming at it from the streaming platform side instead.
My worry is not that the receiver dies. It is that every one of these only works inside a single brand. Buy the TV, buy their speakers, keep buying their speakers. A Denon or a Marantz will still take whatever you plug into it in ten years. A Samsung wireless system will take whatever Samsung is still selling in ten years, which is a different promise.
Has anyone here actually dropped their receiver for one of these TV led setups? I want to know whether it survived the first firmware update.
