"airsmoothed" wrote in message
...

On Jan 12, 10:04 am, airsmoothed wrote:
On Jan 11, 11:47 pm, "Chris R" wrote:

I ought to try changing the cable I suppose; I wouldn't know how to
tell if
an HDMI cable was not fully wired, but I'm not aware of cables being
sold
with missing connections. I think the one I'm using came bundled with
the TV
or home theatre, but I'm not sure.

There are 6 different flavours of HDMI v1.4 cable, for example, so
it's not safe to assume any random cable has the extra connections you
need. The ARC function requires at least v1.4 cable of some sort, it
isn't supported in v1.3 cables.

Whoops there's 5 versions of 1.4 spec. cable, not 6:-

http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdm...ght_cable.aspx

Great larrups of dongle! Changing the cable worked. I immediately got both
HDMI-CEC and ARC. Thank you for prompting me to try this basic step.

So much for "all HDMI cables are the same"! The cable was one of a batch I
bought cheaply on Amazon recently.

In theory I don't think this should have worked - according to the site
above ARC works with any HDMI cable, and HDMI-CEC has been around forever;
the only thing you are supposed to need a 1.4 cable for is Ethernet over
HDMI. The cable that does work is labelled as 1.3. It may be that the first
cable is defective - I can't be bothered to test another from the same
batch. But hey, it works! ARC works automatically if I turn the TV source to
TV - the home theatre switches to Digital input and relays the TV's sound. I
have removed the Toslink cable and it still works.

0/10 for Samsung technical support (which probably boosts their average
considerably).

One disappointment with HDMI-CEC is that the home theatre does not turn on
when the TV is turned on; it has to be turned on manually and loses track of
the source it last used, so you have to re-select the Sky box manually. This
will cause problems for the family who cannot understand multiple remotes
and source selection. I was hoping to leave both devices in HDMI-CEC mode
semi-permanently.

I have made a tiny bit of progress on the headphones issue: turning on
"Audio on HDMI" in the home theatre settings allows me to listen to the
Blu-ray player with the speaker sound muted by passing the sound to the TV,
which has a headphones socket. But for some reason switching the source to
HDMI (for the Sky box) turns off "Audio on HDMI" and it has be manually
reset.
--
Chris R

On Jan 12, 11:02*am, "Chris R" wrote:
In theory I don't think this should have worked - according to the site
above ARC works with any HDMI cable, and HDMI-CEC has been around forever;
the only thing you are supposed to need a 1.4 cable for is Ethernet over
HDMI. The cable that does work is labelled as 1.3. It may be that the first
cable is defective - I can't be bothered to test another from the same
batch. But hey, it works! ARC works automatically if I turn the TV source to
TV - the home theatre switches to Digital input and relays the TV's sound.. I
have removed the Toslink cable and it still works.

Chris R

I should've said ARC isn't necessarily supported in a 1.3 cable,
rather than being categoric! Well that's what Wikipedia says
anyway.....

Whilst some cheapo cables will work properly, Toolstation for one flog
certified 1.4 cables for around a fiver so if I ever get as far as
HDMI AV stuff I'll probably go with those.