Yup like magic that sorted it. Just painted the side plastics, they are outside drying. Will do the top tomorrow. The white connector wasn't me. It was part of the horrible bodge. Decided to reuse it though, as that part itself is perfectly safe.
Well I found out why it had fallen to bits. All of the plastic clips on one side were snapped off. So I literally glued it in with thick super glue, then hit it with activator spray. Ain't going nowhere now. Gosh, sooo much better. I know I did not take photos, but it was like a metallic satin gun metal with lots of gouges down to the black plastic underneath. Don't really *want* to paint the top, but it too is the wrong colour now and besides it has a lot of damage right on the front on the right side. Hard to see in the pic, but yeah looks tatty. Quick sand and blow over with satin black, sorted. Still in a mental debate about peeing around with the knobs and painting those also.....
Apparently the only thing that upscales SD content is a Nvidia Shield? or whatever they are called. And that won't upscale live TV. I kinda knew this when I spent £270 on a Freeview recorder tbh. The good thing is I have found my Humax non HD freesat box. It isn't a recorder, but you can put a HD on it and record that way. Only single LNB but there are only like, five more channels on it I watch in HD (Quest is one, couple of others too). So I will set that up also.
The only stuff the TV will be used for will be via a PC (for either watching or gaming) and then now via a switch, which I guess is lower res than the panel so maybe some upscaling would happen if the TV has it.
Can someone explain to me what the point of ARC is when used with a 2.1 soundbar? As far as I can tell from a minimal amount of rabbit-hole-avoidance-reading and this info from here: ...you lose an HDMI socket on your TV when you could just use the optical cable instead, seeing as the bar is 2.1 anyway (or for any bar/receiver up to 5.1). Not exactly "messy" and certainly no more so than using a different single cable. If it was connecting to a 7.1 or better receiver that had all the devices plugged into it, or if you had an HDMI switch/enough TV ports, then perhaps. But according to the article linked, that's also assuming that a decent codec is being sent to the receiver - rather than just two-channel stereo as some TVs are designed to do. So what am I missing? Why would you bother in the situation above?
ARC generally let's you control the soundbar volume with the TV remote, so long as everything supports HDMI CEC.
That's a good use case for CEC - one device chain. On the other hand, expecting it to be of any use whatsoever where you have a few sources, in my experience its utter garbage - switching sources when you don't want it to, turning on devices when you don't want it to. Even in simple setups it can be a pain though, my dad has one device (cable box) which should be relatively reliable, but ended up switching disabling CEC because he would always keep walking into the room to find the cable box menu static on his new 77" OLED.
I mean… it’s available to use and you can choose not to. It works for some, not for others. I’m not a fan in general but still use it on two TVs because it works sometimes. As it goes: Better to have and not need than need and not have.
Make that one TV - just ordered a 50" LG UR78 for the bedroom which has dropped a little bit further in the sales, which supports IP control.
It's just another option. With the use case you've described you'll see little difference between audio over optical or ARC. Both should pass through 2.1 without issue. It starts to make a big difference with more audio channels. Some older TVs are limited in what else they will pass through, some will do 5.1 only over optical, some only over ARC, some are fine over both. Mine does neither, max pass through is 2.1 over both. (So I'm considering a HDFury Arcana to make better use of a Sonos Beam for 5.1 from the Xbox, whilst keeping the ARC connection for TV audio output. Different use case though, where ARC does make a difference. Optical I either stick with 2.1, or run the optical from the Xbox and lose TV audio from the sound bar) I like the convenience of CEC, but as others have said, it can be finnicky. I can power on an Xbox controller and CEC then powers up my TV and soundbar, then switches the TV to the correct input, all from the controllers single power button press. If I get the Arcana that's another component that needs to be turned on or off, that CEC can deal with instead of me. ARC and CEC just fit what I need better than optical. Conversely my desktop pc is connected to it's amp through optical, because I can't spare the hdmi port and I'm quite happy using the additional remote there.
From memory, the Xbox has fairly granular CEC controls. You turn CEC on initially, but then have to also set what each signal does. Eg, for power on you have to additionally set switch on tv and change input. It did take me a while to get it set up in a useful manner.
Aha! Righto - cheers bud . It's connected to the spare TV at the moment so when I relocate it back to the lounge I'll try again with the settings. After this recent conversation, I'm now wondering whether I had it connected to the ARC in/output or just thought I did. I'll start with that and check the menus.
Tidied the thread of childish bickering. Please play nicely, 'cos I had to un-ignore a bunch of posts to do that and that's not good for anyone. Next personal attack post gets a free week's holiday to Not Here.
Hi guys, I'm looking for a new amp to drive the PSB Imagine Mini speakers I got from Mister_Tad a little while ago. I have been running them from my Creative X7 and they sound great but something is up with the Creative I think as my useable volume range in Windows is 1-4, anything above this just gets far too loud for some reason so i'm looking to demote the X7 back down to DAC and use something else as an amp. Budget is about £100-£150 or thereabouts. I don't need headphone output or a remote and only need either RCA or optical inputs and as small of a footprint as I can get. The PSBs are rated for 10-80 watts at 8 ohm. Happy to look at used options as well as new. I almost bought a Fosi Audio V3 which seems to tick all the boxes and is reviewed well but wanted to ask the forum in case there was some hidden gem I was missing. Ta much
If I may be a bad influence… this is out of the budget you stated, but it’s a proper high end amp (and maybe worth trying to low-ball)… hypex ncore modules are used in the crème de la crème of power amps. https://www.avforums.com/threads/2-channel-ncore-125w-xlr-amp-audiophics.2478890/
Turns out I might have had my head in the clouds....on Mars...when I was thinking you could pick up a "standard" screen that hit the checkpoints of the Series X within a lower-tier budget, maybe without some additional frivolity attached. A bit along the lines of the 120Hz, 4K etc. stuff, but maybe lacking fancy processing enjuns, too many inputs, Dr Who's time and space dot layer on the screen, all of which would then be present on the higher-end models. But alas, it seems manufacturers just add the "X-ssentials" as you go up the stack, so to get the box showing off its full capacity, you have to be getting the additional tech you might not feel the urge to pay for. But will nonetheless be paying for. Which as far as I could narrow it down, brings the list of candidates to (noting size not decided or a factor, just included in the model number in the reviews I found): LG C3 (or G3 if you want slightly brighter/better/more-er, including £ but strangely, no stand??) - these seem incredibly fully-featured, image retention apparently not so much of a concern these days, although I have been "burnt" inexplicably by the C6 in the lounge so am wary Sony A95L if you're bored having money hanging about (or I think the A95K is last year's model at slightly less, but is also not as good as the LG G3) Sony X93L if you want to avoid OLED (or X95L if you feel like an alternative to a G3) - seem almost as full-featured as the LGs and bright, but Dolby Vision at 60Hz only (don't know how much of a crutch this is) Sony X85K or X90K for last year's mini-LED models Note: I'm not touching anything that has an anagram of Smugans on it, nor anything by Hisense (U7K, U8K) as these have already shown me their colours. Equally, the TCLs I looked at (QM8/850, Q6/650) got some pretty dire reviews, which is a shame as I thought they might be the surprise contenders. I did look at slightly older versions as well, like the Sony A80L, A80K, A90K but these all seemed to have shortfalls in brightness, refresh rate, inputs compared to this year's models making it worth getting the more recent ones in most cases. It also seems my earlier assumption about HDMI ARC was pretty close as I found these comments: ...so either HDMI 2.1 and ARC require similar amounts of bandwidth and you have to makes yer choice, or somebody hasn't really been thinking ahead. Based on no research whatsoever, I can't see it being the former since ARC apparently predates 2.1 so THAT means either ARC channels weren't previously getting the full codec passed through due to bandwidth limitations, or it's lazy design/cost saving now that full bandwidth is available. I know Gunny's got his G3 on the way but unless I can find a stand, that may not be an option as wall-mounting here will be awks. So that one aside, does anyone have any input on the above? Or alternatives? EDIT: Seems the reason for the eARC/2.1 thing might be: so it is either laziness/cost-saving/contractual tie-in, given the LGs obviously use different chips. Oh - and I found a stand for the G3. At an additional £200. On top of the expensive TV.
room emptied, flooring, skirting gone, coving gone, **** cleaned out, all goes well i'll be able to hang it come end of Jan. LETS ****IN GO!
Windus nuked the audio on yet another of my rigs. I now have ten various copies of the hdmi drivers to my monitor... that doesn't have speakers. Why the hell do I plug them into the internet?
