Having upgraded my AV setup, I’ve been researching the ARC audio situation to make sure I’m doing things as well as they can be and it seems this, from the article Ephraim linked, is true.
This seems really weird, though. There’s literally no way to send PCM from a TV to an amp, even though almost every other modern source device can? It’s not really an issue right now, as my TV is from early enough in the “smart” era that I never use its apps, and hardly any OTA TV shows have 5.1 signals. But I understand the current LG OS and apps are pretty good, and it would be great to get rid of a set-top box (or avoid the need to by a new, 4K UHD capable one). It seems nuts that there’s no way to get uncompressed audio out of even a £2k TV. I understand that’s going to change with eARC under HDMI 2.1, but why wouldn’t you be able to do it with a dedicated audio out option?
The simplest solution, if it works for your setup, is to route everything into the receiver and then just send the picture to the TV. If you need arc because you use the TV smart apps then consider instead to buy a cheap Roku or Android TV box.
I already do/have that. Like I say, I was hoping to be able to ditch the Roku when I upgrade my TV, and the model I have can’t do 4K anyway. I guess I could just use the Xbox One X apps (another expense!), but I really, really hate the interface and they’re missing some of the services on Roku.
It’s not the world’s biggest problem, and there are workarounds. It just seems nuts that TV makers are doing all this software work to replace set-top boxes but have no way of outputting decent quality audio.
I think you can return 5.1 over ARC HDMI these days if both the TV and receiver support it. I have a 2015 4K Vizio TV that can do it, it does not work over the optical cable though.
