Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After reading all the wonderful -- if not near fanatical -- reviews of this product, I knew I'd finally stumbled upon the solution to my poor sound from my new 55" SUHD Samsung TV. I've owned MANY Bose products through the years and they have always been second-to-none in my books. I honestly expected the same from this product. Especially considering the reviews here! I couldn't have been more wrong. Thankfully Amazon has an outstanding return policy as I know mine will be going back by the end of the week. If you're thinking of purchasing this item, please keep reading for the details... True to other reviews, the build quality of the system is stellar. Bose really outdid themselves and created a beautiful piece of stereo equipment. It's truly gorgeous. One of the big selling points to me on this system was the TV connectivity via HDMI ARC. This would allow me to connect to my TV, bypass a receiver entirely, and still have the optical out on my TV to go to a pair of wireless headphones for the Mrs and me in the evenings when the kiddos went to sleep. I connected mine via the included Bose HDMI cable and followed the instructions included. The entire process was painless and worked as advertised. I had my system up and streaming Internet Radio, Amazon Instant Videos via the Samsung App, even iTunes music from my personal Mac in no time flat. Let's call it an hour from unbox to sitting down and enjoying it. On the sound front, perhaps I was expecting too much based on all the prior reviews, but I honestly wasn't that impressed. Sure, it sounded "good" and much better than the anemic speakers Samsung put in my 55" SUHD TV, but it certainly wasn't anything to write home with. Even after the AdaptIQ calibration, I was not enamored with the sounds I was hearing. But, as I said earlier, it was better than I had, so I decided it was definitely an improvement and I'd probably just need to spend the extra money on the matching sub and surround speakers in a few days. It seemed most of the reviewers had the subs to accompany their systems anyway. Fast forward 48 hours to tonight. I came home, flipped on the TV and wanted to relax this evening and enjoy the new system. Unfortunately, I found that I had zero sound. Going through my Samsung's menus, I found all of a sudden, the speakers weren't even being recognized. Odd. Especially since it worked perfectly not but 2 hours prior with no changes made. So, being fairly technically savvy, I started right into troubleshooting mode. I unplugged/power cycled all the devices, re-checked the config in the TV menus, checked all the wires... I even did a factory reset on both the TV and the sound bar. All to no avail. Having struck out myself on resolving the issue, and now being incredibly irritated that my relaxing evening watching a show was shot, I decided to do a quick Internet Web search for "SoundTouch 300 no sound." WOW. I sure wish I would have had the foresight to have searched for that BEFORE purchasing! As it turns out, my situation was anything but unique. On Bose's own forums, there are dozens of pages of posts with users reporting the exact same scenario. Most revolve around a connection to their Samsung TV and all via the HDMI ARC connection. After months of posts to this forum, and acknowledgement of the problem by Bose, users are still without any resolution to the issue. The best work-around given has been to connect via Optical cable instead -- something I did verify fixed the issue -- but is not a solution for me given that I use my optical out for other audio devices. LONG story short... there apparently is a big and well documented, known bug in this system when used with the HDMI ARC connection -- as Bose specifically recommends you use in the setup. It appears most problems are with newer Samsung TVs, but other TVs such as Sony, Sharp and LG have been reported by users. This has rendered my system completely useless. I really wish I could give this system higher marks, but, well... being as mine is non-functional -- as is the systems of many others -- I simply cannot. I'll keep mine for another week in hope that Bose releases a fix. But if not, mine will be getting shipped back at the first of next week.