(NEW) Samsung Neo QLED 4K QN90B Series Smart TV (2022)

When I first received the TV, it was running firmware 1204, and initial impressions were fantastic. The peak brightness was really needed for my space, the contrast was fantastic and it was basically the best LCD I have ever seen. There were intermittent eARC issues, as other reviewers have mentioned, but a hard power cycle usually cleared those up for a few days at a time. I was eager to upgrade to the latest firmware to hopefully address this. That’s when the wheels fell off. Upon upgrading to firmware 1211.2 the eARC issue seems to be fixed, but it broke something else. THERE IS SIMPLY NO BACKLIGHT CONTROL. It remains on 100 percent, no local dimming, the brightness slider does nothing (going from 0-50 along the slider yields no change). This leaves dark scenes with a glowing grey 2007 era LCD splotchy mess. A TV 1/10th the price would have much better performance. To make matters worse, Samsung support says they have no reports of anyone else having issues, despite enthusiast AV forums having tons of issues. I have tried hours of combinations of hard resets, factory resets, adjusting picture settings relating to the backlight, and not related to the backlight, changing power settings, different picture modes that I wouldn’t normally pick, and changing it back all in a bevy of combinations. All of this in an effort to dislodge this bug that has basically ruined the TV I believe this is the problem with some of the various reviews. Some have a great experience, some have terrible ones, it’s because the software manifests issues differently on different sets running different firmware versions. Some people get the software bug that breaks the backlighting software, others dont get it. I am even ignoring the fairly bad UI in general because I will put up with a lot software-wise to get to a panel that has stunning capability. This machine is capable of producing a world class picture, and its such a shame to have this issue. SAMSUNG PLEASE FIX THIS.