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After about a year of having issues with my Arc and  my TV, I was finally able to get them to play nicely together today by following some advice on here. I unplugged power from both, and all HDMI inputs from my TV. Plugged the power back in on both, hooked up only the Arc via HDMI to the eARC port and all was great again.
 

However, as soon as I plug my Apple TV back in via HDMI, the TV and Arc no longer communicate. Sound is output, but volume control no longer works. The Apple TV and Sony Bravia integration seems to “break” as well as the TV will no longer turn on with the Apple TV. If I connect the Sonos I after the Apple TV, the TV loses the signal from the Apple TV immediately. 
 

Anyone else run into this issue and found a way to fix it?

HDMI in general is a pain in the neck for everyone. As you make a connection the two boxes verify that each end of the connection is following copy protection rules (HDCP). Then they attempt to find common audio/video formats (EDID). Finally, they attempt to establish common control commands, such as power ON/OFF, input, Volume, Mute, etc. (CEC). HDMI-eARC sends audio on a different set of pins from regular HDMI.  Very few devices have the capability of switching to the “other” set of audio pins. ARC accepts only HDMI-ARC or HDMI-eARC.

I’m not an AppleTV user. You may have some success if you set both the TV and AppeTV to “Auto” as they negotiate formats. Another approach might be to insert a “CEC Blocker” in the AppleTV connection. This will block stray CEC commands. A side effect will be inability of AppleTV to control the TV and ARC via CEC. This is not a major loss because the TV can still control ARC and you can configure the AppleTV remote and ARC to also use IR commands.

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