HomePod Thinking about adding a HomePod mini and have questions.

[Kenny99]

My current setup: Vizio M558-M Smart TV, Apple TV 4K, Direct TV, and Vizio Sound Bar.
Direct TV connected to TV with HDMI - TV to Sound Bar HDMI - TV to Apple 4K HDMI.
TV Sound is setup to ARC - Dolby D.
All Firmware is updated to latest versions.
All of my Apple devices are updated to the latest versions (Monterey 12.1 and 15.1)

Due to the rooms configuration I am unable to have rear speakers placed behind seating connected with wires or Bluetooth (No electrical for powering/charging available on the side walls of the room. I do have one electrical outlet in the center of the rear wall that I can power the HomePod from. That is the outlet that I want to power the HomePod.

My question is can I setup the HomePod to receive audio from the TV when connect to the Direct TV(watch local channels) when the Apple TV 4K to turned off. I am running some outlets and the Apple TV 4K with the Home app.

I have read a lot of Posts about this but most of them are from 2019 and 2020. Some say you can with Airdrop (with a sound delay) and others saying No. I think that this setup is only for the Apple TV and I don't get the local channels on it.

Thanks
KenK

 

[Kenny99]

Update: After spending a "FEW" hours on the Net I finely found that my Apple TV 4K is Gen 1. It takes a Gen 2 to make this work. So its $200 for new Apple TV 4K Gen 2 + $100 each for HomePods = $400 to listen to the Local channels on the TV. Think I'll stick with my current setup for a while longer.