Several years ago, I purchased a Vizio 5.1 soundbar system. At the time, the way to get the best audio from it was to use the optical input. This worked fine, but required me to use 3 remotes for watching TV; 1 for the TV, 1 for the soundbar, and 1 more for the Roku I had at the time. When the Apple TV 4 came out, I learned about HDMI CEC which is basically a protocol that lets devices talk to each other and have some control. The Apple TV remote then let me turn on the TV and put it in standby without touching the TV remote. That brought me down to 2 remotes. The Apple TV remote could also control the soundbar using IR which brought me down to 1 remote.
This setup worked fine for years, but had a few slight problems. The first is that when I powered on the Apple TV and TV using the remote, I’d have to hit the volume up button a few times to wake up the soundbar and then would have to lower the volume. Second is that putting the Apple TV and TV in standby did nothing for the soundbar; it went into low power mode after awhile, however. The last complaint, albeit minor is that I couldn’t use my iPhone or iPad to control the volume.
I’d read about HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC) where instead of using optical audio out, an HDMI cable could be used which would give better audio. My soundbar didn’t have this option (the TV which was older than the soundbar did have it) so I was stuck with the optical audio. In addition, if the devices supported HDMI CEC, the volume could be controlled using another device’s remote.
A few weeks ago, I finally decided to upgrade my soundbar to one that supports Dolby Atmos and purchased the Vizio SB36512-F6 which was on sale at Costco. While I have no idea if I’ll be able to hear the Dolby Atmos (I need content to support it), I’m pretty pleased with the purchase. This soundbar is connected via HDMI and allows me to use the Apple TV remote (and my iPhone/iPad) to completely control my entertainment devices. In addition, the sound on the bar seems crisper and can now hear the rear speakers much better. It may be that HDMI ARC works better than optical or maybe makes it easier to configure. I am excited to be able to try out Atmos and see if that lives up to the hype in the room I watch TV (it may not as the ceiling isn’t that high and due to the layout, it is just part of a larger room).
I love when devices work together and with this new soundbar, I may have found the perfect combination for my viewing experience.
One last thing, the iPhone app for the soundbar is a piece of garbage. I used it to upgrade the firmware on the soundbar and promptly deleted it. Why is is so hard to make a basic app for controlling the settings of a device?