ever wonder why there's a special HMI port on the back of your TV that says
Arc next to it even though it looks exactly the same as the other HDMI ports
Arc stands for audio return Channel and it's sneakily one of the HDMI's best
features with a few caveats to put it simply Arc sends an audio signal back
down the HDMI cable to an AV receiver or a set of speakers such as a sound bar
you just need to make sure both devices support Arc it's relevant when you're
using external speakers instead of the ones built into your TV and there are
lots of folks with this kind of setup who aren't necessarily home theater or
Tech enthusiasts built-in TV speakers are often lacking in sound quality
partially because they have to be made rather small that fit inside the thin
thin TVs we're used to today and partly because manufacturers are typically much
more concerned with picture quality than they are with sound quality meaning external speakers are extremely popular
without HDMI ARC you'd have to use at least one additional cable to send sound
from your TV to your external speakers whenever the content you're watching
originates from the TV itself so we're talking about situations where you're
watching over-the-air Channels with an antenna or using built-in Smart TV apps
for streaming content of course if you've connected any external sources
like streaming devices cable boxes Blu-ray players or game consoles
directly to the TV and you're just using a sound bar instead of a full-fledged
home theater system with a receiver you'd need some kind of cable to connect
your TV to the sound bar regardless whether it's an HDMI cable or a toslink
cable or just some old-school red and white RCA cables but HDMI ARC is still
useful if you're going the sound bar route as the newest version called e-arc
can carry 32 channels of uncompressed
audio meaning it'll work with fancy object-based round sound schemes like
Dolby Atmos and dtsx Technology switch toslink and RCA don't support and of
course if you've got one of those sound bars that can pass through HDMI video
signals from multiple external devices you can just connect everything to the
sound bar have a single HDMI cable running from the sound bar to your TV
and take advantage of HD my arc just as you would if you have used a traditional
AP receiver but despite the obvious benefits of HDMI ARC and e-arc there are
some situations where you might actually not want to use it and we'll tell you
what those are right after we thank Best Buy get ready to save on your next tech
upgrade with Best Buy's back to school sale maybe it's time to replace that old
laptop you've been carrying around or get a second monitor to increase your
productivity your Excel spreadsheets will thank you check out Best Buy's back
to school sale and grab some new gear at the link below probably the biggest
issue with Arc is that it's usually coupled with a feature called consumer
electronics control or CEC in theory CEC
is a good idea it's the feature that allows you to control the volume on your
receiver or Soundbar with one remote causes the audio system to switch off
whenever you turn off the TV and switches the input automatically when
you fire up an attached device like a game console I personally hate having
multiple remotes and I love these quality of life improvements but the
problem is that all these different Gadget manufacturers can undo Implement
CEC in different ways meaning that devices don't necessarily talk to each
other properly resulting in weird behaviors
the power switching off when you don't want it to and even audio coming out of
the wrong speakers although CEC and HDMI ARC are technically separate features
many TV manufacturers design their software to where you cannot turn off
one feature without also turning off the other leading to CEC glitches becoming a
common gripe for folks who use HDMI ARC in their setups this can be especially
infuriating if you have a receiver connected to a cable box as cable boxes
tend to be cheaply designed and ripe for CEC hiccups but there are a couple of
ways to avoid these glitches if you have a simple setup that only handles stereo
sound or conventional 5.1 Channel surround you might consider using
additional cables like toslink or RCA instead of using Arc at all and if you
really want to be a hacker you can keep Arc and disable CEC by covering up pin
13 on the HDMI cable but please don't
sue us if something goes awry thanks for watching guys if you like this video hit
like hit subscribe and hit us up in the comment section with your ideas for
topics that we should cover in the future