Home theatre wiring question

Factual Questions
1

Just bought a new A/V receiver…

It seems that I can wire the system in two different ways:

  1. All video components connect to the TV. The TV’s audio out goes to the receiver.

  2. All video components connect to the Receiver. The HDMI out sends the video signal to the TV.

For #2, the manual has some discussion of the sound:
“If the TV does not support the HDMI Audio Return Channel function, optical digital cable connection is required to listen to the TV sound over the receiver.
If the TV supports the HDMI Audio Return Channel function, the sound of the TV is input to the receiver via the HDMI terminal, so there is no need to connect an optical digital cable…”

I’m not sure if my TV supports the “HDMI Audio Return Channel function”. It was an inexpensive 42" LCD bought about 6 years ago.

It seems #1 is simpler, and I have Logitech Harmony One remote, so the complexities of using the remotes to switch don’t concern me.

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

2

HDMI ARC is only necessary if your TV is going to be an audio source, e.g. if it’s a smart TV that you’re using to stream Netflix. If that’s not the case, then don’t worry about it. But most TV’s from six years ago should support ARC, I think. Google your TV’s model number and you can find a PDF of the manual.

Personally, I find it simpler to route everything through the receiver and that’s what I did for my system.

3

Which are you more likely to replace first?

I’m old and would wire everything through the receiver, 'cause that’s how I learned to set up a new-fangled component Hi-Fi* all those years ago.

    • Short for “High Fidelity” - the reason you bought all those pieces instead of a straight-forward record player.
4

It all depends on what equipment you own, because the question is whether you want the receiver or the TV to be the hub of your home theater. My TV has four HDMI inputs with passthrough audio optical out whereas my receiver is ancient and has no HDMI capability at all. So I use the TV as the switching unit for a variety of HDMI inputs with a common audio out that carries Dolby Digital 5.1 or whatever to the receiver over optical TOSLINK from any input including digital TV broadcasts. The only device that has its own input to the receiver independent of the TV is the DVD/CD player. Fortunately the receiver has multiple S/PDIF inputs.

There’s no “best” way to configure a home theater hub – it depends on what equipment you have and what its capabilities are.

5

I took a quick look out of curiosity to see if my TV (Sony Bravia) supports HDMI ARC, and I don’t think it does, but I did learn something.

I found a Sony website that says you turn on ARC by going to the “Bravia Sync” section of the menu and setting “HDMI Control” to “ON”. This may be true but it’s deceptive because Bravia Sync has nothing to do with ARC. It’s just Sony’s brand name for an industry standard called HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Council) which for some nefarious reason many manufacturers assign their own name to and try to imply that it only works with their own equipment, but it’s an industry-wide interoperable standard that provides command and control functions between CEC-compatible equipment over HDMI connections. For instance, with a compatible TV and receiver, when HDMI control is enabled the TV can turn the receiver on and off when the TV itself is turned on or off, and the TV’s volume control and mute will operate the receiver. All of those sorts of things can be programmed with the better remotes, but HDMI control is more integrated and elegant.

HDMI CEC has existed since early HDMI implementations, whereas ARC was only specified with HDMI 1.4, and CEC seems a lot more useful. ARC just eliminates the need for an optical cable. CEC provides a myriad of useful interoperability functions.