Thinking of adding a small tv to my humble man cave.
Plan to connect it to the AVR and wondering what technical features are important and which ones are not.

I live in expensive but older technology Argentina where not all wishes are granted.

While arc/earc seems basic, might not be available.
Toslink appears to be on the endangered features list, hoping i can use the digital imput of the AVR but otherwise the HDMI will have to do the trick.

What can you tell me? None of my TVs are smart, they’re quite old, in their mid-teens


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It all depends on how you want to use stuff and what sources. If you're connecting via a separate streaming device or cable box, neither is really needed and then you'd want eARC to sync power on/off. All sources go to an AVR and then HDMI or component out to the TV (if older)

ARC is nice if you want to use TV audio and leave the AVR off for some reason (e.g. late night watching where quiet is ok)

ARC and EARC or way overhyped. You just want HDMI for video and audio connections.

Sources are likely to be movies through NAS or PC, DVD player, music, Roku, Wiim Pro, TV box and xbox.

Got all of these but no display/tv ATM. Assembled the lot with what i had at home. Short of one TV to take advantage. Room is very small, seat for just one, but has 7.2 speakers. Yes, absolute overkill

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Depending on your available connections you could HDMI from your source boxes into the AVR and hdmi out of your AVR to the display.

ARC/EARC essentially just lets you send sound back from your TV to your receiver. Essentially if you have a smart TV that has, say, youtube or netflix and you want to get the sound from it to come through your receiver.

^^^^^ This!

My main concern is that media FROM tv sources get max audio output options. The rest will be hooked directly to the AVR.

TV specs usually say Stereo but nobody can tell if that applies exclusively to built in speakers or not. That’s one reason why i was looking for Toslink output.

Local available specs are not detailed.

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ARC does not support higher level sound protocols such as Dolby TrueHD, DTS-X, Dolby Atmos, etc. eARC does.

I believe ARC only does Pro-logic or maybe basic 5.1 Dolby Digital.

I honestly don't use my smart TVs as smart TVs, I just get a cheap Chromecast and I plug that into my receiver and it works great.

Both my chromecasts went belly up with the recent update. Suddenly i’m a big fan of Roku. LOL.

If you have an non working Chromecast, DO NOT RESET IT. The current fix works if you don’t.

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Today, HDMI is the best to connect a TV to a receiver.

It gives the most bandwidth compared to other methods.

It really depends on what is on both ends of the signal and the distance.

The latest HDMI version will support 8K.

There is little being supplied in 8K, so this is overkill for most media.