From what I can tell, most of the modern AVRs or the BlueSound Node products are using the
Lattice Sil9347 to processing incoming eARC from HDMI. The chip spits out a 24/192 signal on I2S which is all one needs. Functionally, I think this best option available on the market for processing HDMI audio. Of course, you can feed the I2S into any high-end DAC or DAC module even. I'm amazed these desktop products don't offer HDMI as a standard feature. At my desk, I have a computer and an xbox so eARC support is a perfect use case.
For my situation, the BlueSound PowerNode is nearly perfect but it has so many features I'd never use. In a perfect world, we'd have a box that took HDMI and outputted to speakers. It doesn't need volume or anything because the TV controls the signal. Streaming, optical inputs, analog inputs, etc.. are all extras. I'd love a product that had the Lattice SiI9437 as the input with a ESS9038 DAC and a TI 3255 or Hypex amp in it. Throw in a sub out and I'd spend $600 on that all day long.