Ray - HDMi Arc to Optical

Huh. Never seen anything like this, but assuming you’re connecting it to eARC, rather than just ARC (and honestly, I’m not familiar with why they’re different), I’d think it would work.

But I like your second choice better, a Beam, IMHO, is a better, albeit more expensive, speaker. 

Ah. Further reading of the link (and thank you for that!) suggests it works on both ARC and eARC, which makes more sense to the uneducated like myself. 

However, if you feel the Ray is a better choice, I’d go with the more ‘standard’ solution covered in these forums, and pull the audio from the stream into the TV, using a ‘standard’ HDMI switch with an audio out, rather than pulling it from the TV via the ARC signal. Change of perspective, but cheaper, I suspect (UK Amazon won’t show me prices for the US). 

Edit: Roofull has been mentioned semi-frequently, I’ve never used one, though. 

eARC has a higher bitrate to support uncompressed Atmos. That really only applies to BlueRay sources as most others use compressed/lossy Atmos.

Also improved handshaking for the CEC link and Lip Sync Correction is available.

Note that if audio is captured ahead of the TV, audio from TV Apps will not be available to the sounbar.

Thanks all. I read some of the reviews and this looks positive. Fingers crossed this is the solution. 

Keep us posted, please, I, at least, have some sort of morbid curiosity ;)