I'm broke, but it's HERE! But the problem...

[bruss01]

Ok, so after the past 10 years of watching 27" CRT goodness... I screwed up my courage and resolve in the face of a bleak economy and my wife being out of work, and broke down and got a Samsung 52" LCD tv. (LN52A750 to be exact). Got no tax and free shipping, which was great because that's the ONLY way I would have been able to swing this deal. It mates up perfectly with the BD-P2550 BD player we got last month, and the PQ is STELLAR! My wife is very happy....

Except for ONE thing. We were watching it last night and every time we tried to turn the volume up or down or mute, we got "feature not available" message on the screen... WTF?! A TV without a volume control? Figured maybe a firmware glitch so I downloaded and installed the latest firmware. Hit the volume button and YAY it works, except the firmware install also re-engaged the in-tv speakers which are out of sync with my external speakers so it's time to go put that setting back to external-only.

WTF?! Now the volume control quit working AGAIN! Checked the manual and it seems that the volume control is disabled when the internal tv speakers are deactivated!

WHO THE FLYING F#%& THOUGHT THAT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?!!

Someone, please tell me this is just a bad dream and that there is SOME kind of fix for this, whether it's a setting to sync the audio so we don't get this weird echo or SOMETHING. I cannot BELIEVE that anyone thought this was a good idea. So I either have to give up on using my external speakers, or get up and go physically manually turn down my powered speakers every time I want to adjust the volume? That's crazy, that's insane. Don't suggest a receiver - that's not a solution given that I just spent my last available cent getting the TV. Please PLEASE someone offer me a usable suggestion.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I'm pretty PO'd at Samsung for a $2k tv that I can't control my own audio choices on. *fume*

And everybody raves about what a great TV this is... don't get me wrong, it's a great GREAT picture, but this (what should be) simple audio setting has me in a lather. Someone tell me I'm a ninny and that there's a simple audio setting on this unit that I'm overlooking.

Thanks.