n00b needs help! Old Panny TV, what HDMI switch do I need for the best audio from Apple TV to Beam?

owen-b

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Hi all, just got my first Sonos (a One SL) and love it! Now I'm considering a Beam for our smallish front room and old 42" Panasonic with Apple TV and a couple of game consoles. I think an Arc is probably overkill for us but still researching...

Our sources are:
  • Apple TV 4th Gen (not 4K)
  • PS4 (not Pro)
  • Nintendo Switch
  • mayyyybe one day an XBox or some other HDMI device, but for now it's just the three above
We just use the TV speakers currently. TV has two HDMIs, so right now we have the ATV and PS4 plugged into those, and I swap out the PS4 when I want to play the Nintendo Switch docked.

What I want is the best possible audio from our sources - 5.1 I guess, as I heard there's not much out there that presents in Atmos, but I'm a total newbie when it comes to audio formats so please do educate me! If I get the basic soundbar working I can expand to add a sub and two satellites later.

Problem is, although one of the HDMIs on the Panny is ARC, and it also has an optical digital audio out, I gather from research that Panny's only send stereo through these no matter what it's fed from a source. Plus, to send from the ARC I'd be down to one HDMI in, and we already have three sources.

So I'm guessing I need a decent HDMI switch that can extract audio and send it separately?

That way I can connect all the devices into the switch, send the audio to the Beam and pictures to the TV. Is that right? It seems there's a whole world of HDMI switches with different capabilities and I don't even fully understand how the routing would work.

I've seen an Octava mentioned here a few times but wowsers it's pricey! Is there an affordable HDMI switch that can do this, that's as future-proof as possible* and ideally can do the magic required to work out what device is on and switch over to that without needing yet another remote?

(* although I guess if we upgraded the TV one day, we'd get one that can handle all this stuff natively without an HDMI switch?)
 
Anyone able to recommend an audio extractor HDMI switch with ideally 3+ HDMI inputs?
 
I would also be interested if anyone has any recommendations as I'm guessing i'll need one with the PS5 coming out and to avoid Lip Sync issues via ARC.
 
Hi all, just got my first Sonos (a One SL) and love it! Now I'm considering a Beam for our smallish front room and old 42" Panasonic with Apple TV and a couple of game consoles. I think an Arc is probably overkill for us but still researching...

Our sources are:
  • Apple TV 4th Gen (not 4K)
  • PS4 (not Pro)
  • Nintendo Switch
  • mayyyybe one day an XBox or some other HDMI device, but for now it's just the three above
We just use the TV speakers currently. TV has two HDMIs, so right now we have the ATV and PS4 plugged into those, and I swap out the PS4 when I want to play the Nintendo Switch docked.

What I want is the best possible audio from our sources - 5.1 I guess, as I heard there's not much out there that presents in Atmos, but I'm a total newbie when it comes to audio formats so please do educate me! If I get the basic soundbar working I can expand to add a sub and two satellites later.

Problem is, although one of the HDMIs on the Panny is ARC, and it also has an optical digital audio out, I gather from research that Panny's only send stereo through these no matter what it's fed from a source. Plus, to send from the ARC I'd be down to one HDMI in, and we already have three sources.

So I'm guessing I need a decent HDMI switch that can extract audio and send it separately?

That way I can connect all the devices into the switch, send the audio to the Beam and pictures to the TV. Is that right? It seems there's a whole world of HDMI switches with different capabilities and I don't even fully understand how the routing would work.

I've seen an Octava mentioned here a few times but wowsers it's pricey! Is there an affordable HDMI switch that can do this, that's as future-proof as possible* and ideally can do the magic required to work out what device is on and switch over to that without needing yet another remote?

(* although I guess if we upgraded the TV one day, we'd get one that can handle all this stuff natively without an HDMI switch?)
have a look on Amz there are dozens, for a bout 30 quid for s decent unit , read some of the reviews from purchasers first to get a feel for the quality then select, if unhappy you can always return it.
 

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