I know that Arc stands for Audio Return Channel, but I cant find a cliffs notes on what exactly that means.
Does it mean its the best HDMI port to use for music/high quality audio?
In: 41
Seems like people are skating around it so I’m gonna try
Remember in the old days when you would plug your iPod into a car and music from the iPod would come out the speakers of the car.
Well HDMI ARC is similar, but more complicated. Remember the cable you used for the iPod, well it’s still going into a speaker (the TV) but what if your friend also wanted to plug in his iPod, that would be annoying on something like a TV because you would constantly be swapping cables.
This is where HDMI ARC comes in, TV’s typically have 3+ HDMI ports with one saying the word ARC, so going along with the iPod analogy, you plug the speaker into the HDMI labelled ARC, your iPod into HDMI 2 and your buddies into HDMI 3.
NOW HERES THE COMPLICATED PART
So now we got ARC plugged into a speaker along with the 2 iPods, normally tv audio would go to the tv but arc is like a subwoofer or a better speaker that is attached to the tv so all sound is diverted to the better speaker. So in this case if your on your iPod (HDMI 2) and you want to listen to your buddies iPod (HDMI 3) it’s as easy as switching channels.
TL;DR: HDMI ARC is a way to reduce cables and complexity to an external speaker, allowing you to switch tv channels or inputs east without cable swapping or a nest of cables
Btw this is my first attempt at ELI5 so be gentle
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