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Comment by warble | Hacker News Reader

Wow, never once ever had an issue with HDMI, although I only go 4K at most. I never even considered it a possibility.

I wish I was in your shoes! I also had no issues with HDMI until recent years--but HDMI-eARC is so buggy on Samsung TVs, especially when being used with surround sound or a sound bar. I had no problems before I moved to a surround system/beyond ARC, but with eARC I need to reboot the TV at the wall once every two weeks or it will "forget" it's plugged into a sound system, it's very annoying. It was far worse when I first got the TV and updates have improved it somewhat, but it's still very annoying. I don't hold out hope for Samsung updating the TV for much longer, my last one from them they abandoned it after the first year. :/

Why do you keep buying from them then?

I have a Vizio V51x-J6 connected to a Samsung UN65TU7000 over HDMI-ARC and it works fine.

Not that I can really recommend the Samsung-- its UI is surprisingly, brutally slow.

Why does your sound bar connect to the TV?

To play sounds from TV?

From what source though? Antenna broadcast? Otherwise it’s better to route through the set-top box if at all possible, and that can output directly to the sound bar.

OP said they have both an Nvidia Shield and a Blu-Ray player so there is no single set-top box. Running from the TV means you catch all audio output no matter the source.

Yeah, the only device with a "passthrough" is the TV itself, via ARC. If I had a 4k capable receiver instead of the sound bar, then it could act as the hub and output everything to the TV.

Previously I did have a receiver, and no Nvidia Shield device. The TV has Android TV built in to it, so I still relied on ARC most of the time. The TV's built in functionality got too buggy (borked video, audio dropouts during loud scenes) and slow to use day to day, so I added the Shield. My receiver didn't support 4k, though, so I plugged straight into the TV and used ARC still. I since replaced the receiver and all the mid-size speakers with a 5.1 wireless soundbar to free up shelf space in that room. Since I know you're curious, the receiver got paired with a 1080p plasma TV in a guest house where it can retire with dignity, and the speakers got moved to a bedroom, connected to a pre-HDMI receiver and a cheap Bluetooth dongle.

Still video from STB is needed to be routed to TV, STB->soundbar->TV via HDMI with CEC.

My soundbar only has one HDMI port, though, so that doesn't really work.

Me too. I just put a digital TOSLink cable between my TV and the soundbar. Works a treat and it's funky knowing that audio that was produced, recorded digitally, sent across the internet, decoded by my computer, pumped to a TV and then re-encoded into laser light before being turned back into a digital electrical signal and then converted into an analog electrical signal and then played through speakers is pretty amazing.

I have a 5 year old samsung 4k with a samsung sound bar. ARC does not work reliably. It did but just stops working. I have to power cycle the TV. Change HDMI cables etc. All the normal I am an engineer, made check list, swapped parts in controlled manor stuff. Even tried another soundbar that works fine on another set. Googling tells me other have this issue and samsung does not care as it is to old (it is likely sw issue). TV is going to be replaced with much more expensive Sony as they still seem to take pride in their product quality. Oh as to the ads, never hook TV up to internet. I use an AppleTV and it just works.

I want ARC/CEC to work as I want a single remote. You loose that when using optical.

If optical works reliably, you could possibly leave both HDMI and optical plugged in to the sound bar. CEC volume control and power seems to still work with my sound bar when set to the optical input.

My setup currently has an audio drop out every few minutes. It seems to happen over both ARC and optical, though, so it's presumably just the Nvidia Shield being buggy. The UI bugs out too lately. I've had various forms of audio drop outs on that TV since at least 2020. It could be the TV corrupting the passthrough I guess. I'm not going to buy a whole new TV just to test that hypothesis.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried it and it did not work, but it was worth a try!

Cheers!

That sounds like a nightmare; TV is supposed to be the 'set it and ignore' device.

Appliance is the word, unfortunately nothing is appliance when you start adding “smart” into it.

Sure, the "DVI" subset of HDMI generally works everywhere, although I've had signal integrity issues from cheap cables in the past.

It's all the other stuff that's supposed to seamlessly integrate your components. Audio Return Channel so sound makes it to the speakers regardless of where a source is plugged in, Consumer Electronics Control so you can use one Bluetooth remote for everything, automatic power synchronization, etc.

Even 4k is a little weird, with different HDMI versions supporting different frame rates. I have a Yamaha receiver from 2014 or so that doesn't support 4k, but claims to "support" it; all you have to do is turn off the receiver and it will pass the signal through!

This thread has motivated me to try and tackle my current audio drop out problem. Every 5-10 minutes, the audio drops out for a second. I'm currently updating the firmware on my soundbar as a shot in the dark...

Well, I tried a new HDMI topology and that didn't improve things. I tried intentionally mis-configuring the TV to break ARC but still have CEC power and volume control of my sound bar, but the sound bar still defaults to ARC on power up rather than SPDIF.

I've given up on ARC completely in my setup. The Nvidia Shield remote can control sound bar volume via IR. I just successfully watched a full movie without any drop outs. Also, I may be imagining it, but the Shield feels more responsive. It seems like it must be the TV's fault. Don't buy a Sony I guess.

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