Feature Request: Playbar Source Locking?.

  • 13 September 2017
  • 8 replies
  • 410 views

Userlevel 7
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Hello, been using my Playbar for a a few days now and it's excellent!.

One thing that would be handy though is "Source Lock" function, where the sorce you select in the app is always active.

As it stands I can't have TV autoplay active due to it picking up signals when my son changes Xbox games.

I turn the Playbar to TV on a night but for some reason it always changes back to Radio overnight, kids then complain they can't hear the TV in the morning.

Either a button to dissable auto switching completely, or "Lock to TV" wod be very handy!.

Cheers!.

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8 replies

I don't think your issue is a lack of feature, but figuring out what is changing the source to Radio. The playbar isn't going to just switch source (with autoplay off) unless you tell it to through the app, an alarm, or some sort of scheduled external program telling it to. (there are smarthubs and such out there that can control your system through the api)

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'Radio'? Is there actually music that starts to play in the middle of the night at a certain time from tunein or something like that?

And I don't think it's important, but I'm guessing your listening to music while your son is playing xbox with the sound muted?
Userlevel 7
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Basically I turn the TV off on a night (Playbar in TV mode), when the TV is turned on in the morning there is no sound and when you look on the Android app it is showing Absolute Radio 90's stream on pause..

I read ealier there is a "feature" that switches sources if the TV is off forore than 15 mins?

No alarms are set.

When my son is on his XboxOne and we are listening to the internet radio stream or my NAS music the Playbar will switch back to TV mode when he changes games so I had to turn TV Autoswitch off.

So basically I leave the Playbar on TV mode on a night and it decides all by itself to drop back into music streaming mode (the last thing we were listening to earlier in the night), its paused so no noise played from the Playbar.
I'm probably not the best for this since I use autoplay, but I have heard others say that the line source will not appear as a source option if it does not sense anything connected through line in. So it makes sense that turning your tv off means that the tv source doesn't exist anymore, and therefore you can't be connected to it.

So then maybe we can approach the issue by looking at why the autoplay kicks in every time an xbox game is switched. It may be worth connecting the HDMI from the xbox to a different input on the tv. TV's often have an hdmi input with ARC, that has some control features to do things like turn the tv by command through the hdmi port. If the xbox is doing something like this through the hdmi input, then I can see where it could be further triggering autoplay in the playbar. If you use a tv input that isn't ARC, then maybe you can turn on autoplay without have xbox game switches causing problem for you.

That's just a shot in the dark though. I could be completely off on that, as I really not 100% sure on how the autoplay works. I have never replicated your situation exactly, but I have had the tv on while playing a different audio source, and can't recall it just switiching to tv audio on me.
Userlevel 7
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Unfortunately my TV has no ARC, I think the XboxOne stops and restarts the audio HDMI stream when switching games, the Playbar must pick this up as actvity and initiate Autoswitching.

Other than leaving Autoplay on and manually switching the Xones audio out on/off through it's menu I don't have many options left.

I'll be first up tomorrow morning, will look at the Sonos app while switching the TV on and see what happens, I'll have to keep TV Autoplay on as the Inlaws look after our children two days a week and it needs to be seamless (can't see them navigating through the Sonos app..).
Userlevel 2
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I think the XboxOne stops and restarts the audio HDMI stream when switching games, the Playbar must pick this up as actvity and initiate Autoswitching.It does sometimes, it depends on the game. Each game can choose to use its own audio encoding, so it requires a subsystem restart. Other times, nothing happens when you switch games.
Userlevel 7
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Well I got up before the kids this morning and tested it. Playbar was in music mode (no songs selected), TV Autoplay worked fine and switched Playbar to TV mode when I turned TV on.

Put internet radio stream on, turned TV on again and it Autoplayed to TV without issues.

So I'll have to think of a way around the Xbox issue, my lad had his headset on when playing most of the time so turning the HDMI audio stream off seems easiest temp solution..
Userlevel 4
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I remember well that scenario where the babysitters don't get any sound from the TV. I don't miss it at all.
Userlevel 7
Badge +16
I remember well that scenario where the babysitters don't get any sound from the TV. I don't miss it at all.

Good for you..