If you’re unboxing a brand new 4K TV, A/V receiver, or soundbar, you’ve likely noticed a little symbol on at least one of the HDMI inputs that says “ARC,” “HDMI ARC,” or “ARC/eARC.” But what do these symbols mean? Hint: It has nothing to do with the reactor that fueled Iron Man’s suits. Rather, ARC stands for “audio return channel,” a protocol that started showing up on HDMI-equipped devices in 2009 and is now a ubiquitous standard.
ARC: Audio return channel As 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. Why would you want to do that? Better sound Optical cables are great for sending Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound from device to device. However, throw a newer surround sound format at it, like Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, and it chokes. HDMI ARC, with its larger data capacity, can transmit these formats too, so if you’re using your TV to stream a Dolby Atmos title from Disney+, you’ll be able to send that signal to your compatible A/V receiver or soundbar.
eARC: Making ARC even better HDMI ARC was a big improvement over optical audio connections, but the technology suffers from one limitation that audio purists have always bemoaned: It has the bandwidth to support Dolby Atmos, but only the lossy version of this format, which uses Dolby Digital Plus. If you’re only streaming Dolby Atmos , this is no big deal because that’s the same kind of Atmos that these services use.
Without an eARC port on your TV, it won’t matter if you have the most expensive Blu-ray player connected to one of its other inputs — you won’t be able to transmit hi-res, lossless audio to your external audio devices. There are also some potential non-audio benefits to eARC. ARC requires HDMI-CEC to be enabled on your gear — the two work in tandem. eARC has its own built-in mechanism for device detection, which doesn’t require CEC. So while it’s still recommended to keep CEC enabled , if it’s causing you headaches, it might be possible to use eARC without CEC.
To make matters even more complicated, it’s possible to enable HDMI eARC using non-HDMI 2.1 chipsets, which means that a TV could offer eARC, yet possess no other HDMI 2.1 features. Wondering if your current gear supports HDMI ARC or eARC? If it does, there should be an “ARC” or “ARC/eARC” label on the HDMI port that supports these features.
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