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John76
Prominent Collaborator I
March 27, 2019

Sonos eARC support?

I have noticed the new Sony 950G television supports eARC and I assume we will see more televisions and soundbars following suit. I’m hoping Sonos will adapt this technology to their current lineup soon before they are left behind by their competition.

Here’s a very good explaination of the technology:

https://www.latticesemi.com/-/media/LatticeSemi/Documents/WhitePapers/AG/Lattice_eARC_WP_FINAL.ashx?document_id=52269
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    3 replies

    Keith N
    Keith N
    Sonos Staff
    March 27, 2019
    Hey there, John76. Thanks for the post and the helpful link as well. I am happy to forward this along to the team for consideration and visibility. Appreciate the feedback!
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      melvimbe
      melvimbe
      March 27, 2019
      That is a good explanation of the technology. In my mind at least, it's worth noting that eARC itself isn't going to add much value to consumers over ARC. First, you'd also must have a TV that supports eARC. Then, they only thing you're really guaranteed is Lip Sync. Sonos would not necessarily support any additional codecs, including uncompressed 5.1 (using the links chart for reference). Even when/if Sonos does support those codecs, the source needs to be in that codecs (and some of them are rather rare right now), and Sonos would need to support the speaker setup to properly experience the codec.

      My point being that I think there is still a lot of time (years) left before lack of eARC support means you've been left behind. And even then, simply supporting eARC isn't going to make much difference unless you also support additional codecs AND there is content produced in those codecs.

      My guess is that the Beam and Sonos amp do have the hardware necessary for eARC. Sonos didn't implement it yet since they can easily do firmware updates and eARC really doesn't mean anything for consumers right now. You could argue that it's even misleading, implying features that Sonos doesn't currently support.

      Just my opinion though.
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      Danny
      Wildantics
      Avid Contributor III
      March 27, 2019
      Yea I agree I hope they add it as well as lip sync issues would be solved and that alone would be worth it, all the new LG TV's this year have eArc support as well as the sony TV's. The Bose sound bars support eArc as well as the sony sound bars. I think Sonos would be crazy to not include it as it's backwards compatible so nothing lost there and would really help future proof them for quite awhile. I would jump all over it that's for sure.
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