ARC Question. How do you use it?

[Carl08]

I like the Harmony remotes, just push one macro button and it turns on all the right units and sets them to the correct inputs (as opposed to what ARC wanted to do) for whatever activity I want....

I have a harmony elite remote. Are you saying I don't need to concern myself with ARC since the remote sets everything for me?

 

[lovinthehd]

I have a harmony elite remote. Are you saying I don't need to concern myself with ARC since the remote sets everything for me?

I don't see why not. What don't you think the Harmony can do for you that ARC can?

 

[Carl08]

I don't see why not. What don't you think the Harmony can do for you that ARC can?

I believe that it can. I just wanted to ensure I wasn't missing out on anything.

 

[panteragstk]

ARC is useful if you have a smart tv and want to get audio from that app. Netflix and the like.

If you aren't doing that, then there really isn't any need to use it if your sources are plugged into a receiver to decode the audio.

 

[lovinthehd]

ARC is useful if you have a smart tv and want to get audio from that app. Netflix and the like.

If you aren't doing that, then there really isn't any need to use it if your sources are plugged into a receiver to decode the audio.

But you can still get the tv-sourced audio by using an optical back to your avr's "tv" input and use your other sources separately on other inputs on the avr.

 

[panteragstk]

Not if you want DD+ and other HD codecs (DD+ is not HD, but still)

 

[lovinthehd]

Not if you want DD+ and other HD codecs (DD+ is not HD, but still)

I guess I haven't been keeping up, the traditional response was probably more hardware based last time I looked; there does seem to be a slight advantage to HDMI ARC for DD+, if both your tv and avr support it per this thread.

Do you have further on this I could read?

 

[panteragstk]

Not really, just going off my own experience on this one. I've since stopped using it.

This is pretty much a complete picture of ARC. It really is only handy if you are using smart TV features or have a receiver with an HDMI port limit. It relies on CEC which is...unreliable at best.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/hdmi-arc-explained-works-care/

 

[Halon451]

I quickly abandoned the idea of using ARC for many of the reasons stated above. I set it up initially to use it that way, enabling ARC and HDMI-CEC on both tv and AVR but still no sound. So I simply shrugged and plugged in an optical cable between the two and haven't really looked back. I use a harmony remote to control all my stuff and it works great as it is. It did seem much more problematic to enable that feature not knowing what screwy things the so-called "smart control" functions would do.

I can get 5.1 audio over the optical for Netflix and I'm okay with that. Good enough for streaming tv shows. I could just use the Netflix app in my xbox to avoid even having to use the optical cable but the tv app pops up very quickly and I'm up and running on Netflix much faster that way.

ARC does seem like a very poorly thought out feature.

 

[panteragstk]

TBH HDMI was poorly thought out. CEC, ARC, and all the other stuff is just a product of poor implementation.

But that is another discussion.