Hisense HDMI-ARC Sound Configuration

Quotidian

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I have a Hisense 43" TV and am generally very happy with it. But I've bought the Hisense HS215 Soundbar, and am having few issues with configuration.

My setup is simple - TV, AppleTV 4 and Soundbar. The Apple TV is connected to the 4K HDMI port, and the Soundbar to HDMI1. (They do all work off the TV remote, although the AppleTV will sometimes not show any screen image unless you also give it a poke with its own remote.)

I have set the HDMI-CEC config panel for the HS215 to 'Auto-start', and when I power the TV up, the Soundbar powers up.

HOWEVER, the sound control panel on the TV doesn't always connect to the ARC output on start up.

What happens is, the TV starts OK but the volume controls don't work, although the sound appears to be coming from the Soundbar at a constant volume.

So you then have to go to Settings>Sound>Speakers and toggle between TV Speaker and SPDIF. When SPDIF is selected, there's no sound, of course, but when you toggle back to TV Speaker, the sound will start coming from the TV Speaker, and only then will the volume controls will work.

But if you want to connect the Soundbar, you then have to go to Settings>System>HDMI-CEC, scroll down to HS215 and click on it.

This all vastly annoys my wife, who says, 'why doesn't it all just work?' Which is fair question!
 
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OK so I went to a dealer today and told him about the problems I described above. I thought, surely this must be something about Hisense's software, so I thought I might as well replace the TV He recommended a Samsung, same size, very similar feature set, so I brought it home and went through the setup.

To my annoyance, it wouldn't recognise the Hisense soundbar as an ARC speaker. There's a function in the Samsung software where you get it to recognise home theater components, but Hisense wasn't listed and couldn't be found using Search. The Samsung registered that there was something plugged into the ARC HDMI port, but couldn't recognise what it was. Had to return it to the dealer and re-set-up the Hisense.

All this stuff seems a lot harder than it ought to be. :thumbsdow
 
I've worked out the problem, for anyone interested. On page 18 of the Hisense TV manual, it says 'Depending on the connected HDMI device, the HDMI-CEC Control feature may not work.' SO it turns out, the Apple TV is interfering with the HDMI-ARC set up such that it won't activate automatically when I turn the TV on. I think it's just a limitation of HDMI-ARC-CEC.
 
I couldn't get the arc up and running. It helped me to reset the tv to factory settings

I just don't know in the arc settings. Dat dolby digital plus or pass through?
 

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