Looking for TV and Receivers that power up via ATV4?

[gpspad]

Over the years I have finally gotten my parents the ATV's and HD Home Runs in place to finally cut their cable box rental fees. I even added the ethernet cable so it all works reliably, and they actually use them now

With black Friday and X-max coming the finally step is to get rid of the multiple remotes they hate. I am looking for some 27-32" TV's that will turn on and off via the HDMI signals and I'd really like to find an audio receiver for the TV.

They need a traditional audio receiver with a tuner that would turn on and off in the living room, but for the kitchen and bedrooms, a small receiver to just amplify the TV signal is all they would need. HomePods are great, but the cost for two and the lag, it just doesn't seem there yet.

I doubt someone makes an audio receiver just for TV's via HDMI cables, but it would be perfect for their setup.

 

[techwarrior]

Most TV and Audio gear now supports HDMI-CEC which will turn on\off and volume control via ATV Siri Remote. Many brands use a different label for CEC, see this.

For sound, consider a Soundbar, they are easy to setup and use, provide decent sound, and many come with subwoofer. Vizio has a few decent bars and they are relatively inexpensive. Some have wireless Sub, and some are even 5.1 with satellite speakers connecting to the Sub. look for ones with HDMI ARC support, so the setup would be ATV <hdmi> TV <hdmi> SoundBar.

 

[tridot]

Just be aware HDMI CEC isn’t quite reliable 100% of the time. Most of it but not every time.

 

[gpspad]

Thats what's makes this hard, I need one remote for them. They use the channels app that doesn't work well with traditional channel up and down buttons. Getting a universal remote, just gets in the way of them getting used to how ATV works.

I'd also like to plan for a home pod being able to wake up an apple tv and start playing music. I don't mind if a screen saver is on the TV while its playing.

It seems like one of the best things the HomePod does is turn on and off on demand. It seems like a hard task to duplicate it, even with an apple tv remote and HDMI-CEC.

It would be nice to have a list of what TV's and AVR's are working the right way with it.

 

[priitv8]

I use Sony Bravia TV and Sony STR-DN1080 AVR, using the TV remote to control all the connected HDMI-CEC devices.
Because of CEC peculiarities, it will be easiest, if the TV and AVR/soundbar come from the same manufacturer.
Vendors also try to offer custom CEC enhancements. Sony, for example, has a useful app, that allows you to control sound field and switch AVR inputs directly on TV, via the Bravia Sync menu.

 

[waw74]

i've got the sonos beam sound bar, it sounds very good, especially for it's size
like all sonos stuff, it's a bit pricy at $400.
But does have HDMI in, and supports HDMI CEC

It does require HDMI-ARC (audio return channel) on the TV though.
This supports the "backwards" feed of audio out of an input on the TV
I'm not sure how common this is for smaller TVs, on my big TV, it's on port 2 (or 4 total HDMI inputs)

It also has alexa built in,
and supports airplay 2 (send any audio from your mac or iOS devices to the beam)
and like all sonos is a stand alone player that supports most streaming services
Alexa doesn't support choosing music from apple music, but you can pause, and skip tracks once you've picked what to listen to in the sonos app on the phone / computer
you can ask alexa to choose music if you're using amazon, spotify or pandora, among a few others.

and if you want, you can add 2 of the play:1 for $150/each and have surround sound
--The "One" with alexa built in is unnecessary for surrounds, all of the features you pay extra for (alexa, airplay2) are disabled when used as surrounds. The audio engine is the same. (The Beam includes those extra features anyway)

 

[gpspad]

Just a quick update, my main receiver died and I picked up an Onkyo 2-Channel one with HDMI-CEC support. The setup kind of runs.

The ATV4 can start up the AVR and the TV, it can even shut them down, but its quirky. Specifically I have figured out the Samsung TV send a rouge signal to the AVR that then switches it back on and sets the input to TV. Which wouldn't be a problem if Xfinity's Cable Box supported HDMI so i have to reset the TV input each time.

It seems to be a common PIA with many components, I thought it was an Onkyo and Samsung thing, but searching the A/V forums shows that LG TV's also do it as well as other receivers. The fix by other companies is to block the extra command or add another extra command to contradict it.

The thing about HDMI-CEC and ARC seems to be its all or nothing, all the components need to support it, or your left with little issues that force you to turn it off and buy universal remote.

In any case the search for a clean TV / AVR combo continues, the Sonos Beam may be it for no other reason than its size. I am looking for a small discrete setup.