Alternatives to Receivers for switching

[Paul Siu]

In a traditional Home Theater, the hub is the AV Receiver. My wife however do not want a hulking receiver and she find them difficult to setup and use. Because the TV has multiple HDMI, we have forgo the receiver and hook everything to the TV.

 

This worked until we decided to get a soundbar. My wife is happy with the audio output on the soundbar and I was able to setup a surround in 10 minutes. However, it turns out there are a lot of HDMI ARC related issues. I am getting stuttering on some of the devices. The CEC doesn't work properly all of the time. Now I am thinking of adding some sort of hub to the soundbar to bypass this issue.  What are my alternatives here? I was thinking of some sort of HDMI switcher controllable through IR. Even better would be some sort of auto-switching.

 

Paul

 

[sphbecker]

I can't say I have used it, but this seems to be what you are looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/Fosmon-HD8061-Automatic-Switching-Switcher/dp/B01D3JE0MS/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=hdmi+auto+switch&qid=1574880800&sr=8-3

 

The only downside I see with an auto switch is that some devices like steaming TV device, don't have an easy way to turn them off, so you might be stuck manually switching or having to wait until it goes into low-power mode. You might be able to get around that issue by plugging such devices into whatever port has the lowest priority.

 

Another thing you might consider if HDMI ARC isn't working, is to run an optical cable from the TV back to the soundbar. That has been the approach for over 10 years and should work very well. Just make sure both devices support it (starting to become less common).