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Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

johnlian.net

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Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#41

Post by justinsaccount »

recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

> It seems like AV stuff used to be so simple.

> without a bulky expensive receiver box

A "receiver" has been one of the standard options for making bookshelf speakers work for more than 50 years. A receiver is also not expensive. You can get a basic used one for under $100. I paid $30 for a perfectly working 5.1 Denon receiver with HDMI.

Your problem is that you aren't even using "Modern" AV stuff. If you were, your speakers and TV would both have HDMI Arc ports. Arc has been a thing since 2009.

> That's harder than it sounds though because you have to navigate the menu blind using short and long button presses with the one button.

Or you could unplug it and plug it back in.

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#42

Post by mschuster91 »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #39
recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

Another infuriating issue is TVs with so few HDMI inputs. I have tried many different HDMI switchers and none of them work reliably, so it kind of puts me off of buying a receiver which would also have that function.

Personally, I run a Yinker 4x4 matrix (in: nintendo switch 1, chromecast, mac pro 4.1 I use as a gaming rig, raspberry pi 5, out: projector, TV, pi 5) and am quite happy with it - no outages so far in half a year of uptime.

I desperately need to work with CEC though lol, never had the time to actually test that.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Yinker-hintergrundbeleuchteter-Unterst...

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#43

Post by ghm2199 »

An analogous audio binding issue used to happen with my Jabra Bt headphones. It was generally connected to my phone and my computer. After finishing a phone call — if previously the computer was playing some music — the music would turn back on but it would be a very poor quality, I suspect the audio "mode" was stuck at "transmitting" phone call audio quality even though the BT software on the headset detected devices being switched from phone -> computer. Toggling the BT sound output on the mac to and fro between Computer and Headphones, fixed it.

I suspect it was probably a vendor — jabra — software issue when sending a signal to apple's BT stack when switching between types of devices? But probably not worth fixing on my own.

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#45

Post by ewoodrich »

amluto wrote: post #28
recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

> How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? You can get a small ARC/eARC audio extractor with RCA or S/PDIF output and use your favorite amplifier or DAC with it.

Yep, I have a bunch of those audio extractors, they're awesome. In my home office setup I even have an HDMI output that's mirrored to several screens and extract audio at various points along the same path (two using the dedicated mini extractor boxes, one just using the headphone out on a monitor).

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#46

Post by jonhohle »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #39
recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

Another infuriating issue is TVs with so few HDMI inputs. I have tried many different HDMI switchers and none of them work reliably, so it kind of puts me off of buying a receiver which would also have that function.

I’ve mostly had no issues with HDMI through Yamaha receivers and that includes weird things like an OSSC and Framemeister.

On the other hand, HDMI switchers haven’t fared as well. I built a mini console rack with a switch and it doesn’t recognize several devices, even when manually selected.

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#47

Post by [deleted] »

recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

[deleted]

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#48

Post by ryandrake »

jimmaswell wrote: post #25
recursive wrote: post #17

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it. Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendou…

That little headphone jack is seriously driving bookshelf speakers to a reasonable volume? If it works it works but that doesn't sound right, unless these are actually self-powered speakers with their own amplifiers inside. I'd really like to know the details because this sounds crazy. Also, I collect a lot of old receivers and speakers. It's really not that complicated and the basics have been the same since the 70s…

I was kind of in OP's shoes a few months ago. My 2000-2010 era stereo receiver crapped out and I was looking to see if I could simplify my system a bit. Unlike OP, I didn't need anything that could extract audio from the TV. My requirements were:

1. A decoder with at least 5.1 output since that's how many speakers I have

2. At least 3 HDMI inputs + 1 HDMI output to my TV

3. An amplifier with a volume control

That's it! I don't need an FM tuner. I don't need multiple zones. I don't need wild listening modes and DSP effects. I don't need an on-TV setup display. I don't need fiber optic digital audio inputs. I don't need fucking rows and rows of 20 RCA jack inputs, composite video, component video, S-Video. You'd think I could find a small cheap box the size of an AppleTV that I could just hide somewhere that could do this, but I couldn't find anything sufficient. So I got another $20 gigantic, ugly, old 18-inch receiver again from Craigslist and just leave all those features and inputs unused.

Re: Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

#49

Post by spacecrafter3d »

zimpenfish wrote: post #31
codepoet80 wrote: post #4

Yup, my AppleTV is the only device that gets CEC right. Even my LG TV and LG soundbar get confused. And don’t get me started on the PS4 Pro’s garbage implementation. I’m sad that Logitech killed Harmony because CEC was supposed to make universal remotes obsolete — they’re still the only way my full home theater can function without juggling a dozen remotes.

Amusingly, my AppleTV is currently the one thing that doesn't even though it used to - for some reason, with no changes, it just stopped turning on the TV. Switch 2 can happily turn on the TV though. Most peculiar. (I've tried updating the AppleTV, replugging the HDMI cable, unplugging the HDMI cable for , etc. Nothing has worked. TV does not have any network which means it can't have had any nefarious updates.)

This has happened to me several times. I believe what fixes it is power cycling my AV receiver, in case it helps you.
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