When setting up HDMi1 it is asking to use HDMI 3

[dublinrover]

I have a Sony XR50X90JU. In order to add a Sonos Beam 2Gen I moved my old Panasonic Theatre System SC-BTT 770 (it has a Blue Ray Player) from HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC) to HDMI 1 (ARC).

When I try to configure HDMI 1 the Wizard is asking me to move it back to HDMI 3 (see Pictures)

If I do not configure HDMI 1 with the wizard Sony puts the sound on AUDIO SYSTEM anyway.

What am I doing wrong here?

My aim is that the Panasonic Sound is going through to the SONOS Beam 2Gen.

[LightFoot]

Hi @dublinrover 

My advice is to ignore the device setup wizard, and simply up them up manually as you want them. This is a help wizard too far in my opinion trying to help people that don't have a clue. 

[royabrown2]

@dublinrover 

HDMI 1 isn’t ARC. Only HDMI 3 is ARC, but it is indeed eARC.

A lot of people misunderstand ARC and eARC. What it is for is to pass Audio from the TV, or any other device plugged into the TV, down a Return Channel (Audio only, hence ARC) to a sound enhancing device, via what is nominally an HDMI In. eARC is the same in principle as ARC, but uses an extra strand of the HDMI cable to support enhanced ARC, which enables higher quality audio signals like Dolby Digital Plus, Atmos, and DTS-X to be sent over, which plain ARC can’t handle.

(The extra strand is the one intended for Power Over Ethernet, which is why you need an ‘HDMI with Ethernet’ cable for eARC. Which most of them are these days, but check any old cable from your bits box that you might be thinking of using).

Both your Panny and the SONOS are capable of being on the receiving end of ARC, but you now want the SONOS to be the chosen device. So, moving the Panny to HDMI 1, the audio from your Blurays will go the the TV, and then out over the eARC for the SONOS to reproduce. As will the audio from anything else plugged into the Panny.

But the Panny will no longer be able to play any audio coming from the TV; and you will probably have to find a way to prevent the Panny trying to reproduce the audio from your Blurays when playing them, and let the SONOS do that. It might be as simple as muting the Panny, or turning the volume down to zero - as long as that doesn’t affect the audio going via the TV, which it might.

I agree with @LightFoot that you need to ignore the wizard; maybe it detects that the Panny can handle ARC, and tries to give it that job, or maybe it is just hankering to have things how they were before 😛