TV/soundbar, hdmi cec/arc and Bluetooth

[andypotter]

Hi folks

After little bit of expertise/ experience on connectivity of tv and sound bar.

I have a sound bar that has hdmi cec and Bluetooth, this was connected to my samsung tv (rip) using the optical cable and the hdmi, which was great as I could operate the volume of the sound bar using the tv remote as the tv was also hdmi cec (anynet+), tv didn't have Bluetooth.

Due to the untimely passing of the tv I'm now in the market for a replacement. I've seen tv's that are hdmi cec/arc and not samsung. Will say an LG with cec/arc be able to connect to my sound bar giving me the same functionality as a samsung to samsung? I.e. control volume of the sound bar using the lg tv remote?

What if I get a tv with with Bluetooth, will that be able to perform the above?

Many thanks for reading, look forward to replies

 

[Lucid]

HDMI CEC is pretty widespread now to most TVs except perhaps the budget- smaller-sized sets. LG call it Simplink+, on Samsung TVs it's called Anynet+, Sonys call it BraviaSync, Panasonics it's VieraLink, but it all does broadly similar stuff as the core feature set.

ARC allows the sound from the TV to pass to an audio device without the need for an optical cable. It goes via the HDMI instead. ARC needs to be a feature on both the TV and the soundbar. If a TV has ARC then it definitely has HDMI CEC. However, if your soundbar doesn't have an ARC-enabled HDMI socket you can still connect via Optical and use the telly (via HDMI CEC) to control the soundbar volume.

Bluetooth is nothing to do with any of the above. It's simply a way to connect a phone as an audio player but without using wires.