AV system redux

Hardware
1

So,

Let me preface this by saying this is probably not the best place to post this.

Anyway, some time back I put together an Audio/Visual system for my new house.

I’ve got the following:

  1. Sony KD-65X85K TV
  2. Yamaha TSR-700 AVR
  3. 6 Polk Audio ceiling speakers
  4. 1 Polk Audio center channel speaker
  5. Cerwin Vega floor mounted sub woofer.

The Yamaha is located in a closet off the garage about 30 feet (as the crow flies) from the remainder of the gear.

I had the builder install a plethora of wiring in the house, so I have a number of twisted pair and cat-6 lines available behind the TV. The A/V company refused to run an HDMI line and I now know why. He did provide a conduit in case additional lines were necessary.

I bought one of these (only 75’ long)

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And ran it through the conduit and into the closet with the Yamaha. Interestingly enough iBirdie is no longer selling 75’ versions of this cord, which tells me something.

The cable “backfeeds” audio to the Yamaha via eArc.

Anyway. After about a year of usage a number of issues have emerged:

  1. The audio will get whiggy and drop out for a 1/2 second or so at irregular intervals. It will get really bad at which point I have to turn everything off and disconnect all the cables and the problem will go away for a while. I contacted the vendor about a warranty replacement and of course they didn’t respond. I did order a cable from another seller, but it didn’t work with my equipment and I returned it.
  2. My wife likes to listen to YouTube on the TV, which plays through the Yamaha. She will go out of the room and YT will do the “Are you there” stupidity and if she doesn’t respond, the TV will switch to “screen saver”. When it does this, it switches the audio from the Yamaha to the internal speakers. This completely flummoxes my wife and a majority of the time, I’ll come into the living room and she will ask why the sound is so bad… You have to manually switch the audio back to the sound system. And no, this behavoir cannot be switch off, as best as I can tell.

So, in order to slay all these demons, I’ve decided to go back to basics with this.

I’ve got a Toslink optical cable coming and will run that between the TV and the AVR.

What this means is I need to have a means of controlling the volume via control of the AVR.

I’ve got Home Assistant set up, with a have an Android TV Remote control gizmo built that works well, but my wife has indicated that she wants a “traditional” remote. Saying that ideally I would like a remote that HA could “interact” with.

So, I’m looking for some thoughts about physical remotes.

I’ve seen the Sofabaton remotes and they might be viable. Unfortunately Sofabaton doesn’t seem to be compatible with HA. I did a little looking around, and there seem to be a number of “back-door” approaches to conntectivity. I’m guessing Sofabaton has not opened their API.

If I used a Sofabaton (or something similar) am I going to need to do a IR repeater to get the signal from the TV to the closet with the AVRs to control the volume? It would be da’ bomb if I was able to provide this capability via a HA automation. The AVR’s have HA integrations. I can control the volume now via HA.

Anyway, would appreciate hearing your ideas about how to get all this buttoned together.

If this isn’t the right place to put this, please let me know.

cheers,

chris

2

I ftaced a bit similar problem with my setup, where distance between AVR (Denon AVR750h) and TV (Sony Bravia A9F) is ~15 m/45’. In my case i was geting some white dots noise at the edge of the screen when dispolaying videos in 4k. It was mainly visible just after start of the system, but wa dissapeaqring after some 30 mins warmup. In some cases it was so extreme, that whole bottom half of the screen could go fully white. Playing with connector of the AVR side (moving/refitting) sometimes was helping to solve the problem. So I think it was sort of loose contact issue. I could not switch to other output due to lack of eARC. I solved this by fitting between cable and AVR 8k HDMI adapter: Amazon.pl After adding it seems connection is gone and only very, very rarely I see some light noise, but connection is never disrupted. HDMi cable I use is active optical with ethernet, some chinese brand.

3

Ok, then you have all you need already.

Forgetting HA for a moment, if you have cat6 running from your AVR to your TV, then a decent HDMI over ethernet extender will do the job, including IR passthrough on most models.

HD Base-T would be the top spec to go for, but if you don’t really need 4K 120Hz, then even a cheap(ish) Amazon extender should do the job. EArc might require some extra budget, but you might be able to work without it if the IR signal is solid and your extender supports it.

You might get away with it using a certified HDMI cable, but you need to keep it as short as possible. No use getting a 75’ cable if the distance between your devices is “only” 30’. Last I checked, the HDMI org will only certify cables in the region of 10-15 metres (32-50 feet) maximum. Anything beyond that will need active cables.

Judging by your use of imperial measurements, then I guess you’re located somewhere in the US. I suggest having a look at avsforum for decent suggestions on HDMI extenders. Pretty sure many others have run into your exact issue over there.

4

Keep in mind with HDMI over Ethernet you can’t pass them through any networking equipment so all connections have to be isolated and on their own AV network for the matrix and balun’s, the exception to this is using a network based high refresh rate KVM to allow video and audio pass-through this way.

i.e

5

I’m honestly rusty about all this stuff since I started spending more time on than HA forums than AVforums.
However, I thought the whole point of HDBase-T was that it could pass ethernet too, which is why I recommended going for it if budget permits.

6

It’s variable but the standalone ones don’t pass through over the network when its without a matrix/kvm that supports a web interface for management.

these types can’t be used through switches and need to have any ethernet connections isolated to work.

This is also why for most setups where you intend to have a setup like this you would already have a second, third or fourth dedicated cable ran to the room you want to setup the balun in as that is the part between that also needs to be isolated.

7

Ah, management. Figured a single source-sink device like the OP’s use-case wouldn’t need much “remote” management. Just set it up once with devices connected in the same room, unplug and install at final destination.

Then again, the video you uploaded mentions Telnet and Serial. That opens up a bunch of possibilities for control, including via HA automations

8

Yup, near the end he has it setup via HA to control it and I replied to it to let him know about ESP proxy setup to allow per room detection for automatons with it.

1 Like
9

Wow

Okay. Lots to think about. Let me digest and I’ll get back to you.

Suggestions on HDMI to cat5/6 converters would be appreciated.

The ones that I saw which had the specs for the job were $500.

While I can swing that, I would prefer not to.

Cheers

10

HDMI just like Ethernet has limits based on distance and wire resistance

The baluns mitigate some of that by using twisted pair to reduce noise and maybe a balance signal. I’m talking about the units that use 2 sets of cat? Ethernet cable.

The hdbaset goes one step further but honestly I only used this limited times. It was a cute idea that kinda died in the 2015s or so.

Anyway, by the cheap hdmi over Ethernet baluns and test if that works for you.

As for the unit sleeeping, how is your AV setup?

Can’t you just turn off internal speakers and set it fixed to Reveiver? I feel adding optical will make this worse. I use TVs as monitor only and ROKU for sources. Makes things simple since only one remote TV, receiver, and sources and all rooms are same.

If you have conduit TV >> Reveiver maybe consider moving receiver back with other equipment and extend speaker wires to the new location.

11

Firstly, it wasn’t obvious but the HDMI cable I have is fiber optic. But that is uni-directional from the AVR to the TV. Which I’m not using. I’m only using the copper in the cable back to the AVR via the eARC magic.

The TV is set to play audio via the HDMI eARC magic to the AVR.

When the TV signal goes “dormant”, the TV switches to “screensaver” mode, which in turn switches the audio from the AVR speakers.

I’ve looked throughout the setup and don’t see a way to change this, or turn off the screen saver function.

In an ideal world, I could watch for this in HA, and then turn it back after a short time, but looking through the entities for the TV, there aren’t any entities available at that low a level. It’s basically just on/off/restart/etc.

I’m a bit hesitant to just start buying HDMI - Ethernet converters as there are a plethora of them. The ones that I’ve found which explicitly support eARC are a bit spendy. Mostly in the >$400 range.

And then, I’ve still got the sound issue, so it only solves half my problem.

Appreciate all the feedback. I’m still studying the issue.

The Toslink cable was cheap enough ($30) so I’ll play with that and see what emerges.

LOML has definitely vetoed having the AVR in the living room… :expressionless:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.