Please help me understand a few things about ARC (Audio Return Channel).

[Seth=L]

Now that I have a relatively up to date AVR helming my simple 2.1 setup I have a couple questions about ARC.

The Components -

• Marantz NR1504
• Samsung UN46**8500 (can't remember the letters there, sorry)
• XBOX ONE
• PS3

1. What audio codecs will return to the receiver from the television? Is this dependent on the source, the television, or limitations of ARC?

2. Assuming my configuration is as such - PS3 connect to HDMI input on NR1504 then NR1504 HDMI Out to HDMI 1 (ARC) on Samsung television and XBOX ONE connect to HDMI 2 on television, should I be able to get Audio from the XBOX ONE to the NR1504 without changing the input on the AVR?

The reason I prefer it this is way is that the television has video settings that are specific to each input. I would like to avoid making this setup more complicated. If all I can get out of ARC is 2 channel PCM and Dolby it's no big deal because I'm not overly concerned about losing much from a game only system.

Thanks in advance.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I aint no expert, but I don't think it's going to work this way.
ARC was meant to send audio from OTA tuner back to reciever and as for codec - Not sure, but If you could get 5.1 Dolby Digital - consider yourself lucky.

 

[j_garcia]

The TV may re-encode to DD or DTS (or stereo) and send only that regardless of what the input side was, OR it may pass through the signal as is from the player. That I believe entirely depends on the TV, and every TV I've setup has been different unfortunately.

 

[Seth=L]

Sounds like I'll have to do some tinkering. I'll report my findings.

 

[PENG]

If all I can get out of ARC is 2 channel PCM and Dolby it's no big deal because I'm not overly concerned about losing much from a game only system.

Thanks in advance.

That's good because I am pretty sure you are right about 2 channel Dolby/DTS are all you will get because not too long ago when I looked into this I failed to find one TV that could return multichannel lossless codecs. I hope it won't be long before Samsung, Panasonic etc., will offer full blown HDMI ARC, not for your sake as such, but for people who somehow insist on have 4K yet they bought their AVR a few months too early and missed HDCP2.2.