home theater setup

[gottagooday]

I wanna share with you that I recently completed my 5.1 home theater setup and I am losing interest to go to movies now. :)

Yamaha RX-V6A AV Receiver
with:
Monitor Audio Bronze C150 Centre Speaker Black
SVS PB-2000 Ported Box Home Subwoofer
Monitor Audio Bronze 50 Bookshelf Speakers Black (Surround)
Monitor Audio Bronze FX 6G Surround Speakers (Alternate choice surround)

A new thing that I learned is a feature called EARC. It's really helpful for me as I use not only players like blu-ray but also streaming applications embedded in the TV. I get this EARC extender (https://www.avaccess.com/products/4kex70-earc/) and have my TV sound sent back to the AVR in my media room, and run it out via the 5.1 system.

One thing I am curious about. Are you guys using TVs, projectors, or LEDs with a media stick in your home theater? How does your eARC work? My friend told me that could be unstable and I think it works nicely till now.

[Cyknight]

Good media player will beat native apps any day, and if you're doing a theatre setups, that TV should just be a monitor. Leave eArc by the wayside. After spending money on it to the dgeree you would have, is a Roku going to make a real difference on the bill, or even a Shield? Both will end up giving you a better experience, and will likely last longer than the built-in apps (stay up to date).

eArc depends on CEC - and CEC is not exactly the most 'stable'. Too many versions, too many brand specific tweaks, can create a lot of possible implementations, which in turn means it may work flawlessly...or create all sorts of oddities. And no often it's not about the right setup/settings.

In and of itself eArc isn't a bad thing, it's just a way of sending encoded audio to a receiver, it's it's dependant on CEC where things can go wrong - but it's only real 'use' is to send the most current formats of Atmos etc from a TV to a receiver. Nothing more than that.

 

On top of all that, in your setup, where you are running a standard 5.1 setup (I assume, unless your 'alternate choice' surrounds are actually atmos? I'm also confused what you're left/right speakers are) on pretty standard equipment - eArc is not really going to give you anything more than using the optical out would.