I can't believe with all the high-quality legacy receivers out there that nobody makes a device that can "extract" audio from an ARC port on a TV and pass the audio on to the receiver. I've been searching but HDMI audio extractors all want to convert to some other medium: optical, analog, etc. I don't need to pass remote control signals for volume/power/input between the sources and receiver, and I suspect the need to support those capabilities is why nobody makes such a device for ARC based audio hand-off, since that's half the reason ARC exists.
My use case is this:
The reason I want to use ARC is that I have sources that are PCM uncompressed 5.1 surround sound (a PC, Nintendo Switch) that run to my 4K HDR TV. All my sources all go to one input on the TV (through a single HDMI 2.0b video switch), and I used to just have an optical cable passing audio to the receiver which supports HDMI but not ARC. This works fine for Dolby Digital, DTS or 2.1 PCM, but to get the bandwidth for uncompressed PCM you need to use HDMI or convert to analog and things get messy when converting. The receiver won't just pass 4K HDR video through the HDMI output, so I can't run things through it first.
The most elegant and simple solution I've found is to use an HDMI 2.0b splitter between the HDMI switch and TV to split the video from the audio. I connected the TV HDMI 2.0b input to output 1 of the video splitter, and output 2 goes to the HDMI receiver. This way when I want to hear all channels of a PCM surround signal, I switch the receiver to "listen" to the 4K video switch's output 2. Otherwise, my receiver is connected to my TV's optical output so I can still get audio from the TV's built-in apps, which we do use often enough to justify this setup for now (I know I should ditch the idea of the TV's built-in casting, but it's just too convenient, and I want to reduce the need for an external device to cast youtube, etc). While this setup works, it shouldn't have to be this way. Why isn't there a solution to attach an ARC HDMI output to an old HDMI capable receiver?
I found this device which might get me what I'm looking for, but I can't tell for sure: (Google VHD-UHAE2 in case the link doesn't show). But I'm not convinced that the ARC port on it isn't just like the ARC port on my TV, getting me no closer to a solution.
For anyone who is curious here's the relevant components I'm using:
TV: Sony XBR-65X900E
Receiver: Pioneer VSX-1020k
5-port HDMI 2.0b switch: Awakelion "4K@60Hz HDMI Switch"
HDMI 2.0b splitter: EZCOO "4K HDMI 2.0 Splitter 1x2"
Source 1: Xbox Series X
Source 2: PS4 Pro
Source 3: Nintendo Switch
Source 4: Various retro gaming consoles connected through other switching and conversion equipment.
Source 5: PC used for gaming and video content
If anyone has any ideas that I might have missed, or knows any product managers at any equipment vendors looking for a new product idea, let me know.
My use case is this:
The reason I want to use ARC is that I have sources that are PCM uncompressed 5.1 surround sound (a PC, Nintendo Switch) that run to my 4K HDR TV. All my sources all go to one input on the TV (through a single HDMI 2.0b video switch), and I used to just have an optical cable passing audio to the receiver which supports HDMI but not ARC. This works fine for Dolby Digital, DTS or 2.1 PCM, but to get the bandwidth for uncompressed PCM you need to use HDMI or convert to analog and things get messy when converting. The receiver won't just pass 4K HDR video through the HDMI output, so I can't run things through it first.
The most elegant and simple solution I've found is to use an HDMI 2.0b splitter between the HDMI switch and TV to split the video from the audio. I connected the TV HDMI 2.0b input to output 1 of the video splitter, and output 2 goes to the HDMI receiver. This way when I want to hear all channels of a PCM surround signal, I switch the receiver to "listen" to the 4K video switch's output 2. Otherwise, my receiver is connected to my TV's optical output so I can still get audio from the TV's built-in apps, which we do use often enough to justify this setup for now (I know I should ditch the idea of the TV's built-in casting, but it's just too convenient, and I want to reduce the need for an external device to cast youtube, etc). While this setup works, it shouldn't have to be this way. Why isn't there a solution to attach an ARC HDMI output to an old HDMI capable receiver?
I found this device which might get me what I'm looking for, but I can't tell for sure: (Google VHD-UHAE2 in case the link doesn't show). But I'm not convinced that the ARC port on it isn't just like the ARC port on my TV, getting me no closer to a solution.
For anyone who is curious here's the relevant components I'm using:
TV: Sony XBR-65X900E
Receiver: Pioneer VSX-1020k
5-port HDMI 2.0b switch: Awakelion "4K@60Hz HDMI Switch"
HDMI 2.0b splitter: EZCOO "4K HDMI 2.0 Splitter 1x2"
Source 1: Xbox Series X
Source 2: PS4 Pro
Source 3: Nintendo Switch
Source 4: Various retro gaming consoles connected through other switching and conversion equipment.
Source 5: PC used for gaming and video content
If anyone has any ideas that I might have missed, or knows any product managers at any equipment vendors looking for a new product idea, let me know.