HD Fury is working on an eARC solution for Sonos Arc - Full Audio & Atmos from any HDMI sources

So HDFury is naming their magic dongle ‘Arcana’.

Arcana for the win!

Gotta say, this is the most excited I think I’ve ever been for a dongle.

Very impressed with the speed and transparency from HDFury on this. I started following it on their support Discord channel and they’re answering questions and giving updates about it multiple times a day. Obviously they’re trying to get a product to market and make some money, but there’s a definite fan boy vibe happening as well IMO. They seem to genuinely dig this stuff which is fun to see. 

If Arcana works as promised, I think it will just about be the holy grail for me to be able to get maximum sound performance out of my Arc + Apple TV 4K setup and, importantly, get Atmos from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Disney+.

My only disappointments can’t be helped by Arcana, namely that Hulu on Apple TV bizarrely only supports stereo 2.0 (in 2020? WTF?), and Apple TV itself doesn’t support Dolby TrueHD which rules out Atmos from Plex Blu-ray rips. Hulu will hopefully get its act together and support 5.1 on ATV sooner or later, and since Apple is rumored to be coming out with a new Apple TV soon maybe it will support TrueHD (maybe, possibly?).

But, Arcana would also let me hook up a UHD Blu-ray player or an Nvidia Shield if I really, seriously need a TrueHD/Atmos fix on BD/Plex so the option is there at least. 

Again, excited and ready to buy day one!

HD fury hinted some news through the AVS forum this morning. The are approximating that the dongle will be $100 if preordered, $150 afterwards.  Not sure if those prices will stick, but I would guess that pre-ordered will be discounted. It’s not their first product and have likely done that before.

Also stated that they will have packaged deals for Arcana with one of their matrix/switches.

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/195-soundbars/3153792-hdfury-arcana-earc-adapter-sonos-arc-bose-700-soundbars-3.html

I’m making a habit of checking that thread everyday.

Also worth noting, HDFury isn’t pushing their own products too hard, openly stating that for some people their source may have a separate audio output already, or a cheaper Amazon HDMI splitter is all they need.  

Good catch, @melvimbe. I glanced at that post this morning, thought they were only answering technical questions, and missed the bit about the money. $150 isn’t a bad price for this, but at $100 pre-order they’ll get my cash instantly. 

Their stuff seems super nice… but damn it’s expensive. From what I can tell the cheapest splitter they’ve got which will work is the Integral2 which only has two inputs and is still $250. So a combined Integral2 + Arcana solution is setting me back $350 at least and only lets me hook up an ATV and a BD player. On top of what I've already paid for the Arc/One SLs/Sub/One Wall Mounts, this whole enterprise starting to get spendy fast. 

That is good to see, and there’s quite a few 4 input HDMI matrixes (sp?) on Amazon in the $50 - $100 range that claim to support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. The issue is going to be finding something that actually does what it says it will AND will play nice with the Arcana. 

I would pre-order in a heartbeat. Any ideas where the best place is to keep an eye on these things? I’m worried I will miss something on the thread! 

Between these two locations you should stay up-to-date - the HDFury team seems to be heavily active in both: 

AVSforums topic: 

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/195-soundbars/3153792-hdfury-sonos-arc-earcadapter.html

HDFury Support Discord (look in the “straight-from-the-lab” for the moment though they say that an Arcana channel will be opening soon): 

https://discord.gg/XWzPRRP

OK, thank you! 

And since many of us may well need a splitter/matrix has anyone got experience with any of these devices. There seems to be so many options. 

I was looking at this: https://www.amazon.ca/HDMI-Matrix-4x2-4K-60Hz/dp/B086WWZJLW/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=EZCOO&qid=1592850522&sr=8-3

Looks good other than no CEC (Needs a firmware update?!)

Any recommendations out there? 

You should be able to describe to this thread so you get notified whenever there is an update.  Or you could ckeck the AVS forums thread, or HD Fury’s website.  I think there will be at least a couple weeks of preorder, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

Besides making sure what ever device you settle on handles the video and audio properly, I also want to make sure that it’s easy to control.  I don’t want to use a cheap remote or have to getup on the couch and switch manually (gasp!).  It seems like HD Fury’s stuff works with universal remotes.  I’ll need to understand how that works better before making a decision.

Agreed, I don’t want to spend a fortune to make this work. Also, I don’t want to add too much complexity - when I am not at home my family just want this to work. It’s amazing how in trying to keep it simple Sonos have forced me to add complexity. 

Once we all have eARC TV’s maybe then things will be simple but for 2020 some more inputs would be nice!

That looks like a valid option to me.  The lack of CEC isn’t an issue, and if you aren’t using smart apps, lack of ARC passthrough isn’t either.  I don’t care for remote. 

One thing worth noting is that for our use case, output 1 and output always need to be the same source.  So if you want to switch from input 1 to input 2, you’ll need to switch both outputs, otherwise video and audio will be different source.    For that reason,  traditional matrix may not be the best option, unless you can lock the outputs to the same input or something.  A separate switch and splitter may also be a better option.