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Switching back to Sony TV sound after playing music

  • 28 November 2018
  • 7 replies
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M
Hi all, new to the forum but first time poster. Never had any issues with Sonos products so never felt the need to ask a question.

I have recently purchased the Beam, very impressed with its sound etc. but what is really bugging me is being able to switch back to TV audio after playing music through the Beam? I’m connected via ARC HDMI

I see many similar questions on here but none of the answers have helped me. I don’t have Alexa enabled as I have kids and they just shout Alexa all day so that isn’t an option for me. That leaves me with the Sonos app. I click on the Beam then “browse” and that’s where I become stuck. I keep pressing TV but nothing happens. The only way to get TV sound back through the Beam is turning the TV off by the plug, not even turning off via standby helps. It’s pretty poor from Sonos really I must admit. I have tried all settings in TV and app but had no success.

I wondered if anyone had any other ideas? I actually upgraded from a Bose system, never had these issues. If I knew of these problems I probably would of stuck with it. Please help
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Best answer by Chris 28 November 2018, 00:56

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7 replies

Chris
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Of course App naturally and Alexa the easy way. Next best bet would be turn TV power off and back on. That would re-trigger the TV autoplay of the beam. Oh I see your standby still sends signal to Beam.

Only thing else you could do is some type of hardware button to send that signal to switch. I'm not sure how you expect the Beam to know you want to switch it back to TV if you don't want to use Alexa or the app.
Respect the Queue (1)Move (2)Beam (1)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1)Connect:Amp (3)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings
Chris
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
You could walk up to Beam - turn on the Alexa, tell it to switch, and turn Alexa back off. Or pull out the hdmi cable and plug it back in (I guess you could get an hdmi switch to switch it from tv and back).

Your issue vs. Bose seems to be that Bose had a remote.
Respect the Queue (1)Move (2)Beam (1)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1)Connect:Amp (3)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings
M
Of course App naturally and Alexa the easy way. Next best bet would be turn TV power off and back on. That would re-trigger the TV autoplay of the beam. Oh I see your standby still sends signal to Beam.

Only thing else you could do is some type of hardware button to send that signal to switch. I'm not sure how you expect the Beam to know you want to switch it back to TV if you don't want to use Alexa or the app.

Accidentally clicked answerd to your post, how do I undo that as my query hasn’t been answered.

Sorry, I do use the app, it’s just Alexa I don’t use. Is telling Alexa to switch back to tv different to telling the Beam to switch back to TV on app? I thought it would be the same signal request?

I do think the problem is my TV does not completely power off when on standby so the HDMI signals are not reset. As I say, only way is to completely unplug TV and plug in again. Is this something that may be sorted with an update? Not sure I can live with this
M
This post has not been answered, please undo the “answered” on this post
Airgetlam
I'm honestly not sure if unmarking it as answered can be done, even by the moderators. But most of the folks who read these forums tend to ignore it.....in my opinion. And here I am, posting, even though it was marked as answered!

No, telling Alexa to switch back to TV is the same thing as using the app. Just going a more circuitous route, but exactly the same.

To my knowledge, these days, no TVs actually "turn off" so that the HDMI (and CEC and HDMI-ARC) signals can be reset. It's one of the reasons I keep the whole "unplug the TV from the wall" comment in my back pocket....it's the only way to really reset many of the handshakes involved in those particular APIs and connections.

So, yes, I'd check to be sure that your TV has the latest firmware update from the manufacturer. I'd also make sure you have the latest firmware from Sonos (although I'm willing to bet that you do).

But the simple act of switching the input in the Sonos controller app should indeed switch it from Music to TV. If it's not, it's entirely possible that there's some other issue going on. Might be in the TV, or might be in the Beam, it's really hard to tell. I'd recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of replicating this issue, and either post the number here, or contact Sonos to discuss it. There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.
Bruce
M
I'm honestly not sure if unmarking it as answered can be done, even by the moderators. But most of the folks who read these forums tend to ignore it.....in my opinion. And here I am, posting, even though it was marked as answered!

No, telling Alexa to switch back to TV is the same thing as using the app. Just going a more circuitous route, but exactly the same.

To my knowledge, these days, no TVs actually "turn off" so that the HDMI (and CEC and HDMI-ARC) signals can be reset. It's one of the reasons I keep the whole "unplug the TV from the wall" comment in my back pocket....it's the only way to really reset many of the handshakes involved in those particular APIs and connections.

So, yes, I'd check to be sure that your TV has the latest firmware update from the manufacturer. I'd also make sure you have the latest firmware from Sonos (although I'm willing to bet that you do).

But the simple act of switching the input in the Sonos controller app should indeed switch it from Music to TV. If it's not, it's entirely possible that there's some other issue going on. Might be in the TV, or might be in the Beam, it's really hard to tell. I'd recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of replicating this issue, and either post the number here, or contact Sonos to discuss it. There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

Thanks Bruce, appreciate the reply. The issue is definitely the signal not being reset after I have finished listening to music. It’s very disappointing the Beam can’t be turned off either, maybe then it would be easier. My TV is one of those Android Sony TVs so takes a good minute to turn off and on completely.

I will submit a report to Sonos but I cannot really see a fix to this issue. I thought Sonos would of thought about this when developing the Beam. Do you know if Optical would have the same issue? I suspect it would.

I hope they can release some king of update to resolve the issue. I have gone through all the settings on both devices, tested lots of scenarios and I still can’t find the fix. As I said, very disappointing for a pricey bit of kit.
Airgetlam
Use of the optical port would still require you going in to the Sonos controller and selecting which "stream" you wanted to play. The difficulty in this whole thing (at least in my non-programmer mind) is that it's hard to know what to "return" to, as it's possible that the stream that was being played previously may not exist, or the speakers may have been included in a different grouping in the meantime, so do you return just one speaker, or all of them, or some subset? It would likely be an unsatisfying piece of code, and one that wouldn't impact a lot of users, which would be why I assume that they haven't implemented it yet (and may not, ever).

But it's a valid request, to be sure.
Bruce
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