Muted speaker icon appears intermittently

This is a known issue that's been reported specifically in digital signage/commercial setups — a source on the display's internal input list is muted, even though your connected media player itself has nothing to do with it (which matches what you're seeing: nothing shows up when you remote into the player).

Here's what's likely happening and how to clear it:

Cause: Samsung displays track a mute state per-source/per-input. If one of the display's inputs (HDMI 1, HDMI 2, etc.) gets muted — even one that isn't currently active — the display will periodically flash/pop up the mute icon as a reminder, independent of what's actually playing.

What the customer should do:

1. Grab the Samsung remote (not the media player's controller) and go into the Source menu on the display.
2. Cycle through each input (HDMI1, HDMI2, USB, etc.) one at a time — look for a small mute icon next to the source name/signal indicator. That flags which input is muted.
3. On the muted source, press the Mute button on the remote to toggle it back off, or press and hold Mute for a few seconds to force-reset the mute state.
4. Check the Sound settings menu as well — make sure "Sound Output" isn't set to an external speaker/optical device that isn't actually connected, since that can also trigger a persistent mute glyph.
5. If it keeps recurring, check for a Samsung firmware update on the display — this has been reported as a display-side bug in some firmware versions, not something fixable from the player.