Connecting Several devices and making full use of the HDMI-CEC / ARC features...

  • 30 July 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 2271 views

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Hi all!

I've got a Samsung KS8000 TV and a Chromecast device connected to the HDMI ARC port. When I say to the google assistant "Ok google, play videos of cats" the chromecast turns on the TV and everything works fine...

Now, I want to upgrade the sound with a Beam...

I know it has to be connected to the same HDMI ARC port that I currently have the chromecast in.... or so I've been led to believe?

How should I connect the trio of devices so that I can still ask the G assistant to play videos on the tv so it turns the tv on and have audio coming out of the Beam?

Thanks!

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5 replies

From what I've seen on my Samsung TV, all the in hdmi inputs are CEC enabled, only one is also ARC enabled. So I think you should be ok. You may need to disconnect your chromecast while you setup the Beam, and the TV will likely need a cold reboot.

In addition to the setup instructions in the Sonos app, the below post should help.

https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/enabling-cec-on-your-tv-for-beam-6810049

Once the Beam is working with the TV, you should be able to reconnect your chromecast to a different input, but there are cases where issues occur. Your options then are either to turn off CEC on your chromecast (and it sounds like you don't want to do that) or connect the Beam to the TV using an optical connection. If you use optical, you won't be able to use any voice commands on the TV. Samsung doesn't seem to want to take many commands through the CEC connection so this may not be much of a big loss for you.
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Awesome! Thanks for the clarification....
I had an issue with my Samsung TV. Returning from standby with the Chromecast plugged in caused the audio to revert to the TV speakers. Without the Chromecast plugged in, no problem at all. This was with the Chromecast powered from a dedicated plug not via the TV.
So essentially if your TV doesn't support ARC, you lose all CEC functionality as well, or is there a workaround? (Which my TV does support)
My understanding is that ARC is a subset of the CEC implementation, so it's possible that your TV could have CEC without ARC. However, Sonos wouldn't be able to use it, as it uses the ARC implementation to communicate with the TV