Question about HDMI eARC and Sonos Beam / Arc

ha ha😀 - I have that problem too - in my case it’s an ‘age’ thing. I agree that it’s worth seeing how it goes after you get the Arc as I think that will certainly resolve things as it will use CEC control. I now (stupid me) realise it’s because your Harmony remote is controlling the volume of your older Playbar using infrared and the optical connection to the TV is one way only, so no signal is sent back to the TV - so that’s why you do not see the +/- volume display, as the tv volume is not changing. Hope that makes sense.

@Ken_Griffiths 

Yeah, I think it’s a setting on the set, I vaguely recall having to select a soundbar other than Sonos for it to behave the way I want.

Weird thing is the Magic Remote controls the Sonos and gives that vol+/-/mute indicator on the screen.

I should just bite the bullet and use that but it drives me nuts that the back button doesn’t work with my cable box and there are no buttons for use with the DVR and I have to use the onscreen (...) buttons for play/pause/ff/rew.

I’m confident the Arc (or Beam) connected to the TV over HDMI-ARC/eARC will resolve the volume display issue. 👍

Picking it up in a few, will report back.

Ok so I set it up and great success, the volume and mute indicators show on the screen using the Harmony.

Until I turned the TV off and on again and now I only get the mute indicator.  Sigh.

Also, you need to have CEC enabled in order to use ARC?  Not a fan as I find it annoying if I select an input by accident i.e. PS5 and then the TV turns it on.  Also not crazy about HDMI 2 showing as a selectable input, wish I could hide it, but that’s just me being crazy.

You can always switch off CEC control on your other devices, such as the PS5 etc. then it will not power on/be controlled etc. You ‘likely’ just need to find the correct settings that suit you and the way you like to use your setup.

The HDMI-2 input cannot be hidden when it’s ‘in-use’, but that’s a TV issue, I guess, rather than a Sonos issue.

Ok thanks, I think I am good for now until the no vol +/- indicator issue drives me nuts at which point I’ll start a new thread.

Switch the Harmony activity that controls volume, to use the TV volume control instead, rather than using Sonos, as the TV will adjust/mute the volume of your new Sonos HT device over the TV’s CEC connection now and you will ‘definitely’ see the +/- volume icons on your TV display. (You don’t actually need to use infrared control for volume any more whilst the TV is ‘on’)

Oh my that worked, here take all my likes.

Thanks so much.