I say random, because they are questions about configuration and setup that I wouldn't, and I'm not sure there is a good reason to set it up this way. Still, in hopes of better understanding the product.



Question 1: The primary way of connecting the beam to the tv as an audio source is by the TV's hdmi arc. If you're tv doesn't have arc, or you just don't want to use it and optical isn't an option, can you use hdmi directly from the source? For example, you have hdmi out from a cable box to a splitter, which then sends hdmi to your tv, and then to the beam. The beam would receive audio and video, not the same as arc, but the video is there. Assuming the audio codec used is something Sonos can work with, would this setup work? You clearly would lose control of turning the tv on and off and other ARC functions, but would you get audio still?



Not recommending this at all, and I doubt there would be a good reason to ever use this. Just wondering if the Beam can possibly take a normal hdmi input, non-ARC.



Question 2: Say you have a setup with 2 sonos ones and the beam...3 voice control mics. If it makes more sense to enable one of the rears, and disable the other rear and the beam to be heard better, what effect will that have on voice control functionality. I would assume you can do the usual controls and control the firetv, since that's through Alexa, but would the hdmi-arc control features no longer work? Would you be able to turn the tv on/off for example?



Question 3 (discussion really): If a tv has hdmi-arc, it's only on one of the hdmi inputs. Is there a reason for that? It makes sense for the beam to use arc because of the audio component, and some of the controls. However, it also makes sense for various input sources to use arc for control purposes only. For example, my firetv will automatically turn on the tv whenever I hit a button on the firetv remote, because it's connected to ARC. I haven't tried it with my Blu-ray or cable box, but I imagine it works for them as well. So when I get the beam for this tv, I won't be able to have the control functionality from firetv and beam at the same time.



I don't know which was the designed purpose, input sources or audio outputs, but I would guess audio outputs since audio out is a feature of ARC and because you would only need one ARC channel for audio outputs. That would mean the input sources, like firetv, are using ARC because it's an easy feature to add, even if that's not the designed purpose.



Either way, it leaves a problem, minor one, of not being able to use all the control features of all your devices attached to the tv. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed in the ARC standard in the future.