I think it shows I’m not keeping up with technology.
Our 5-6 year old Samsung TV has an external box for I/O connections which hooks to the panel via a ‘flying lead’, possibly some kind of DVI connection with audio passed too.
Anyhow the box has 4 HDMI sockets, first 3 are general inputs, the 4th labelled HDMI ARC which I had no interest in at the time.
Fiddling to see if I can get AppleTV 4k Music audio in lossless/Atmos to my Nova via its HDMI ARC connection I’m absolutely stumped.
Does TV HDMI socket connect to the HDMI ARC on Nova?
I’m assuming audio from other TV HDMI inputs will get re-routed out via HDMI ARC - maybe this is tosh, it doesn’t work anyway.
Also tried AppleTV > Oppo UD 203 input with Oppo’s HDMI audio out to Nova and main HDMI out to the Samsung (tried ARC and non-ARC HDMI inputs). I can select Atmos on/off and ‘hi quality’ (lossy 256 kbps AAC) or lossless audio under Apps>Music on AppleTV.
Even tried connecting AppleTV directly to Nova but then that hits the stumbling block of not being able to control the bloody thing.
As usual Apple make you jump through hoops for things which should be simple (optical deprecated).
I don’t have a Samsung, note not all TV makes are good with HDMI, but an LG, HDMI out of LG to HDMI on my Nova, works great, just make sure your sound settings are correct on your TV.
Alternatively if Samsung is problematic with HDMI just use optical cable between TV and Nova, works fine.
Yes in theory but I believe some TV makes can be a bit challenging, .make sure your TV speaker setting is on ‘sound out’. Good luck.
I think a number of comments/issues logged on the forum with HDMI connection between Nova/Atom HDMI and Samsung, worth popping this into forum search
Generally the guidance is HDMI is ok up to 20 feet in length, I run a longish run from the LG TV to the Nova the cheap one I had didn’t really work better with a decent quality 1.4 or preferably 2.0. Not really that expensive and widely available.
You’re right with the theory, sound should get routed from other inputs back out down the ARC channel to the Atom/Nova/Receiver. As others have said Samsung have been problematic in this area but most issues got sorted with firmware fixes a while ago.
You should not need a new HDMI cable but one with Ethernet will definitely support ARC and eARC.
You may need to enable Anynet+CEC on your TV for ARC to work as this is used to detect a connected device. Once you get sound the most likely ongoing issues are around power control of the Atom from the TV, bad lip sync or loss of volume control requiring an Atom reboot, all of which can come and go with no sense or reason. Most of the time ARC works well, then at times it pi55es you off!
I gave up and now use an optical cable. The main loss for me was I now need 2 remotes as you lose the TV managed volume control.
It’s probably more like a 7m cable, which I probably got in 2013/2014 along with a new projector - it has some USB powered booster ‘bullet’ and provided ethernet too which I didn’t need at the time so suspect HDMI spec is ok unless cable broken.
The cable worked fine without that USB power in the past. I’ve tried it with and without connecting to USB on Samsung I/O box and Nova assuming if needed USB would give power but maybe not - need to revisit with a separate USB PSU.
Hopefully if I can drum up some enthusiasm tomorrow I’ll shift the Nova closer to the TV simply to see if a different HDMI cable establishes a connection which currently the Nova interface says ‘no connection’ or similar.
Lots of tech combinations seem temperamental when it comes to HDMI, much older AppleTVs always threw issues with older Samsung TVs, but not exclusively.
I have a few excellent Samsung computer monitors but their 4k TV purchased in 2016 is a big regret, partially as it’s curved and at the edges the panel is separating from the backlight it seems with bright vertical bands I’d never seen until earlier this year.
LG next almost certainly. (Though admittedly my first flatscreen was LG and it was pure crap, subsequent Panasonic plasmas were great, shame they stopped making them, but technology marches on…).
Thanks, the cable apparently provides ethernet too, and you are correct about that Anynet+ nonsense, never really understood that presumably proprietary connection supporting a standard, but have enabled it. Unfortunately when I check for devices the Nova is not detected, no idea if it should be though.
I was only really dabbling to see if I could get hi-res Apple Music playing from AppleTV 4k via TV HDMI ARC to the Nova - so far no luck. It would be helpful for other things as Airplay introduces tangible lip sync issues when using the projector with Airplay audio to the Nova.
Maybe we just need to have hi-res sources and move back to analogue connections!
I’m going off most of these consumer brands to be honest.
Few things are built as they used to be.
Expensive 4k Samusng TV just over 5 years ago - it’s the most frustrating TV I’ve ever owned.
Samsung washing machine purchased 2 years ago is extremely noisy and seems flimsy. Emergency purchase to replace a high-end 1600 rpm direct drive Miele that suddenly went bang with lots of smoke, literally days after the 10 year warranty expired.
Apple kit in general is reliable, the ecosystem can be great but it can also make you want to throttle the people who come up with certain restrictions and requirements to carry on doing what you could with a machine/iDevice that still works perfectly fine until the software updates can no longer be applied and cause issues.
As said above ARC simply means audio return channel, and was introduced a back in 2009 with HDMI 1.4 so is quite an old standard now.
In short it simply allows the monitored audio digitised signal to pass back along an HDMI lead (connected to the ARC HDMI port)… thereby avoiding the need of a separate SPDIF or Toslink lead
The HDMI protocol negotiates the ARC between the two devices… which can cause interoperability issues between some devices (TV and Audio) seemingly. Seemingly if you have a troublesome integration, it may help to switch on your TV first, then your audio system to help the devices to negotiate ARC correctly.
