HDMI ARC connected needed for sound system to TV (1 Viewer)

[LarsVenice]

December 23, our Blu-ray player died, and so we rushed out Dec 24 to get a new HD player (Samsung), and we decided to replace our old TV (about 8-9 years old) at the same time and got a Samsung KS8000. This new TV requires that everything go into the One-Connect, but when we do this, we lose surround sound. We used to connect everything to the sound system (a Sony system older than the old TV), and then connect the sound system to the TV, but the new TV requires an HDMI ARC cable to go from the sound system, and our old sound system only has regular old HDMI ports (plus an optic audio port), and so we had to connect the HD player and cable box to the One-Connect from the TV.

We have therefore decided to upgrade our sound system to one that will have an HDMI ARC port, but I can find no information about this, and I do not want to buy another sound system that will not be compatible.

What should we buy as a surround sound system (we prefer 5.1, hard wired, not wireless, as we already have the wires in place in the walls) that will have the kind of port we need? The TV manual said that wireless speakers can interfere with the WiFi connection of the TV, and so we prefer not to have wireless speakers, especially since our living room already has the wires in place where we want them. I do not see a need to go to 7.1 surround, since we do not have the wires in place for that. but we did have a problem with a Blu-ray disc that only had 7.1 surround sound, and when we played it on our old Blu-ray player, the sound came out in stereo instead of 5.1. We have other discs that support both 7.1 and 5.1, and those played perfectly.

What is the best sound system to get?

 

[Jerome Grate]

First, welcome to The Forum, and I am surprised that there are no responses yet. You need a receiver that does ARC to connect to the ARC (Audio Return Content) HDMI on the t.v. and it should work fine. I do not know what your budget is but the Yamaha RX-V377 is a 5.1 receiver that has an ARC compliant HDMI connection, with other multiple HDMI connections for 229.00 at Amazon.com.

 

[LarsVenice]

Thanks for your reply. We ended up going back to Best Buy and talked to the manager of the audio/video department, as other employees could not answer our questions. I never know whether to trust sales staff, but we decided to go with his recommendations and got a Pioneer Elite system (VSX-LS101) and bought the speakers separately (Pioneer Pro Cinema 600-6). The previous system we had came with speakers, but the sales guy told us which speakers to buy, and he gave us good discounts, which other sales staff could not have done. The amplifier has ARC for the TV, and so it connects fine, and it also supports 7.1, so that our 7.1 BluRay discs will give us surround sound, even though we connected it as 5.1, since that is how our wiring is already set up. We do have extra speakers from our original system that we could connect for 7.1, but that would require running new wires, and I do not think it is worth the effort, especially since we only have a couple of 7.1 discs. I was not content with 2.1 stereo, but I am content with 5.1 surround. I am not sure whether we really got discounts, as the discount he said he gave us may have been their standard reduced price. My brother bought it, and so I don't know exactly what he paid, but with speakers and accessories, I think it was close to $1,000.00, more or less.

It looks like we could have saved $300 by getting the Yamaha instead - it has barely enough HDMI ports, as we are using four at the moment, and the Pioneer has six. In addition to cable, we have an HD player, a DVD/VCR recorder (that allows me to record on DVD), and a region-free BluRay player, for discs that I have gotten from Europe. I do not think we will be adding anything else.