HT-CT790 firmware update and subwoofer issues

[chomerly]

Perhaps someone can try and work this one out.

I own a HT-CT790 home cinema system.  I've owned for about a year or so and love it, but there are a couple of weird things about it that are really annoying.

The first one is the wireless subwoofer.  If I am not watching anything for a while and the home cinema system goes into sleep mode, when i turn it back on sometimes the subs bass will have dropped out completely and volume will be so low that you have to get real close to it to hear anything.  Turning off just the sub and putting it back on corrects it and I get normal volume and bass.

The second one is a bit more perplexing.  I have the sound bar connected up wirelessly to my Wi-Fi hub and I have always had it connected that way.  Whenever I have performed an update for the sound bar I've been doing it by putting the software on a USB pen drive.  I have done it over Wi-Fi once before, until recently, but it would always fail after a certain amount of time.  I figured out on the last update that I was unable to update via Wi-Fi if I connected to my 2.4ghz network.  However, if I used my 5ghz network it would update without any issue.  Can anyone explain why this is?

One other question is like to ask is about wireless satellite speakers.  Can anyone recommend any that are descent but cost effective?  I'm not looking for anything special but would like to add a couple of satellite speakers to my setup eventually.

[Win_88]

Hi chomerly,

Does the same thing happen with the sub woofer if you manually put the sound bar in stand by mode and switch it back on again?

I've looked at the sound bar manual and it says that switching to a 5.0GHz network is advised in case of issues which are usually related to interference from electrical appliances or networks so I see no reason to worry here.

Win_88

[chomerly]

I can't really recall if I've ever tried if I'm honest.  It's so random that I've gotten used to the idea of having to switch the sub on and off to deal with it.  My only concern is If I have this with just the sub will I have to do the same if I get a couple of wireless satellite speakers to add to my setup?

The wireless network updating us a bit of a strange one.  And makes no sense to me.  I can update via usb no problem.  I can update via a wired connection no problem.  5ghz WiFi?  No problem.  Using 2.4ghz WiFi to update just fails every time.  It can't be an internal memory issue as nomenofnthe other methods, except for usb, would work.  The only thing I could think of is some kind of buffer under run issue when using 2.4ghz.  Like the sound bar is trying to decompress the file before it has fully downloaded, similar to how early days of CD writing used to be when there wasn't a big enough cache.

[Win_88]

Hi again

The issue with the sub woofer shouldn't be happening so if it's too intermittent for you to observe, I'd recommend trying to reset the system to factory settings and give it enough time to determine if it's going to happen again.

I'm not sure why it was necessary to switch the network from 2.4 to 5 GHz but since Sony specifically mentioned that this would be needed in some cases puts my mind at ease with this as it indicates there could be something in the design that may warrant such a step which is, for the most part, not too drastic in my opinion.

I don't think Sony would say that it's possible to connect extra speakers to the system.

Win_88