Sonos Amp with TV & Apple TV

Thanks Danny! I guess I could have googled that up because I was wondering what that arc stood for. Great info. I have been waiting for this solution for a LONG time. That’s how they need to advertise this thing, a way to get rid of the traditional home receiver

I too have a question about the single hdmi-arc port. Though my tv has an hdmi-arc port, it's also the only hdmi port (out of five) to support HDR. Thus, I can't do:

AppleTV TV Amp

if I want to retain HDR. I had assumed the Amp would act like a receiver with two ports and be capable of passing the video through to the TV like:

AppleTV Amp TV

Am I missing something? Will keeping the HDR functionality force me into getting the hdmi-optical adapter?

Thanks in advance!
Jared

Unfortunately, yes, keeping the HDR functionality forces you into getting the HDMI-ARC to optical adapter.

One does have to wonder why the TV manufacturer have only one port for both of those features, and made it the same port. Seems counterintuitive to a neophyte like me. Perhaps there's a good reason, although none comes to mind at this moment. But I'm not a Product Manager for a TV manufacturer, or an Engineer.

Am I missing something? Will keeping the HDR functionality force me into getting the hdmi-optical adapter?


For the scenario you describe, yes, you'd want to use the optical adapter. The Beam and Amp are not receivers and have no ability to passthrough video as you assumed.

If I could possibly explain in brief, ARC stands for Audio Return Channel. What's happening on your TV is that it's receiving a video signal (screen saver) from Sonos along with commands (CEC) that effectively say "Hey TV, I'm a audio speaker. Kindly send all the audio to me using the Audio Return Channel." And the TV sends the audio.

One does have to wonder why the TV manufacturer have only one port for both of those features, and made it the same port. Seems counterintuitive to a neophyte like me. Perhaps there's a good reason, although none comes to mind at this moment. But I'm not a Product Manager for a TV manufacturer, or an Engineer.

My guess is that's a slightly older model TV, designed before there really was any speakers/receivers that utilized ARC. So there really wasn't an immediate downside to putting all the 'extra' functionality on a single HDMI input. Even if jbagg22 did decide to forgo HDR and use ARC functionality, I would not be surprised if some functionality (like turning on/off and input switching) aren't supported on the TV.

Understood, and agreed, but you'd think there would be some engineer who would have spoken up and said "this is a bad idea"....and then was stomped on for trying to increase the cost of building the TV by a few cents. 🙂

Yeah this is kind of a bummer to me. The tv is 1.5 years old. It seems like to play the all-in-one solution card, the AMP should have a second hdmi port, or at least include the optical adapter like the Beam.

I just ordered the adapter - thanks for the feedback and help!

Again, the port on the Sonos Amp is an HDMI-ARC receiving port, not a passthrough port. It accepts a signal coming back from a TV on the specific HDMI-ARC pins on the HDMI cable.

You could not take a signal from any normal HDMI generating device (sat box, cable box, DVD player, game console) and plug it in to that port and get either sound or visual from it.

Yeah this is kind of a bummer to me. The tv is 1.5 years old. It seems like to play the all-in-one solution card, the AMP should have a second hdmi port, or at least include the optical adapter like the Beam.

My guess is that they didn't include the adapter with the cost of the Amp because a large portion of Amp buyer's aren't even going to hook it up to a TV, much less need the adapter.