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Some TVs have their own streaming apps or TV tuners. So far, so good.īut not every source of video you might want to watch comes from an external device. If you own an A/V receiver, and you plug in your Blu-ray players, game consoles, or streaming device into it, the receiver will play the audio portion through your home theater speakers and send the video portion along to your TV. ARC: Audio return channelĪs the name suggests, Audio Return Channel - which gives us the “ARC” in HDMI ARC/eARC - adds the ability for a TV to send audio backward along an HDMI cable to its source device. It wasn’t until a later revision of the HDMI standard (HDMI 1.4) that this began to change. The only exception to this is HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) - a very low-bandwidth set of commands that could be sent in both directions along an HDMI cable, so that a TV’s remote could control an A/V receiver’s volume, or the power button on an A/V receiver’s remote could turn off a TV. Audio and video traveled from a source device to a TV (or projector) and never the other way around. When it was introduced, that digital superhighway was limited to a single direction of flow. Everything you need to know about HDMI 2.1īefore we get into HDMI ARC/eARC, let’s quickly recap what an HDMI connection does: It can send digital video and audio from one device to another using a single cable.And since the technology is incredibly useful and has the potential to significantly simplify your entertainment system in a myriad of ways, we’re going to explain it all, including its most recent evolution, known as “eARC”: Enhanced audio return channel.
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Fitbit Versa 3īut despite its nearly universal implementation, not everyone knows what ARC is or what it does.
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