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

As long as your Comcast box actually supports Atmos from streaming apps (which it looks like the Xfinity X1 does), then Arcana should be just the ticket to get Atmos to your Sonos Arc as it totally bypasses your TV. 

For the estimated $122 pre-order price of Arcana, I highly doubt it will come with HDMI cables. But I’m just speculating. 

From HDFury’s latest updates, I can see why they’re able to move so quickly - they are the factory and their offices and fabrication facility are literally in the same building. They’re not having to shop out to a contract manufacturer which would slow things down. Very cool to see! 

HDFury’s existing products do not come with HDMI cables, so it would be surprising for Arcana to come with HDMI cables for that reason as well.  Besides the added cost, customers are going to require different lengths and quality of cable depending on their specific case.  I actually would not want another cable to throw into the spare cable box.

Their other products do have other related cables that customers are less likely to have already, so I bet it will come with USB charging cable and perhaps the power supply.

Pre-order starts today! Hooray. 
 

Can anyone advise on my AppleTV and Atmos/DTS question? I mainly use ATV as my source, for apps like Netflix but also play BluRay rips via Infuse. So some of my content is DTS. 
 

I know I’ll never get any audio if I feed a DTS signal to the Arc. So, to avoid any settings switching, my understanding is I need to ensure that any device which outputs to the Arc is sending a format that sends converting any sound data into uncompressed multichannel audio, with Atmos metadata. Does something exist that will support, say, a DTS-MA 7.1 stream and a full-fat Dolby Atmos stream? Is that MAT? Does Apple TV support this? And does Arc support it yet or is that what we’re waiting for?

They are still just collecting names of people who want to be notified when you can official put in an official preorder.  They are currently stating preorder page could be up and running as early as tomorrow or Wednesday.  They are saying that those on the list will get first crack at preorder, but I’m not exactly sure what that means, how that would be enforced.

They are also hinting that there will a ‘surprise’ additional function announce before or when prorder opens.  A few diagrams are given to hint at what that new function may be which people believe is additional ARC functionality.  Specifically that the ARCANA  HDMI output port that feeds the TV might be ARC enabled so that it can receive ARC audio from a TV (for when you’re using TV smart apps) that ARCANA can then pass on to the Sonos Arc.  That would also mean that you could connect HDMI sources that have audio codecs/formats your TV can handle directly to the other TV HDMI inputs, allowing your TV to send that audio (and TV smart apps) to the ARCANA via HDMI ARC...and passed to the Sonos Arc.  You would not need a HDMI switch for mutliple sources inf only one source requires eARC.

Some technical thoughts on that...that means the ARCANA has two potential sources of audio, either it’s HDMI source or the TV via ARC connection.  It would need to have a switching capability in order to know what audio to pass to a Sonos Arc.  That switch could be manual, meaning you’d have another item to control.  The other option is that ARCANA could have an auto switch of some kind.  It could be that if there is no audio from an HDMI source, use the ARC connection from TV, but that means you have to turn off HDMI sources.  The other is that the HDMI output from ARCANA to the TV is video only….meaning that audio coming from the TV via ARC connection should always be displayed….since you will only get audio from there if the TV is playing smart apps or HDMI source not passing through ARCANA.  If so, that would be pretty smart.

That would be a rather handy feature, although it is not confirm yet.  It could be that the connection is just CEC control.  Still useful, but not as much so.

What is  confusing some is that there is also a diagram posted involving the Sharc , which can take an ARC signal from a TV and pass it out over normal HDMI audio.  You could then pass it to an HDMI switch, passing it to ARCANA.  You’ve essentially achieved what it looks like ARCANA was trying to illustrate above...getting TV smart apps to your Sonos Arc.  It could be that HD Fury included to illustrate that you no longer need to spend $150 on a Sharc (or an HDMI switch that can do similar).  Although perhaps there are beneifits to this ‘Sharc method’ as well, as you can now control that audio through the HDMI switch. If the switch is a matrix, you could send that audio to a second audio system...perhaps in the case where you have a system that supports DTS.  Not sure that would apply to many people though. 

As an aside...one thing that could become a factor later on in the future, is the whole ARCANA setup assumes there will never be any useful video content coming from a Sonos Arc.  While it is just a screensaver now, there could be a point where Sonos generates useful video content to display on the TV, such as information on what’s currently playing.  If something like that happens, ARCANA would ‘block’ whatever that content is.   Perhaps this is something HD Fury could fix with firmware, but I doubt it.  Such a feature could possibly be something ARCANA users just don’t use, or perhaps it’s would be something for ARCANA 2.0.  All hypothetical right now.

The preorder page is up enforced with password that will fall off after 24hrs

Thanks for the update!

HDFury has opened it for everyone to pre-order.  If you have Sonos Arc and TV w/o eArc, this device is a must.  It will give you full Atmos TrueHD

https://www.hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

It’s official...Arcana starts production!  They hit the preorder quota in 24 hours and are staring production. 

You can still pre-order: https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

I’ve ordered mine.

This is the only practical way I can get Atmos out of my Arc without buying a new TV to replace my LG. No help from either Sonos or LG in this respect.

It’ll be great to finally hear what the Arc is capable of.

Just got to wait till October now (or whenever they start shipping).