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Which would make the best home theatre hub?

DaveN

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Hi all, due to purchasing at different times I’ve ended up with my LG CX TV as the hub of my home theatre system supplying the sound feed via eArc to my newly acquired Anthem MRX 1140. Plugged in to my TV are an Xbox Series X and an Oppo Blue Ray player. Anyone have an opinion on whether the Anthem would be better as the hub please? My system seems fine (to me anyway) re audio and visual and I wanted to avoid mucking about unless there is a known advantage to changing the hub over. The one disadvantage I can see re the Xbox Series X is the TV has HDMI 2.1 and the Anthem (I believe) has HDMI 2.0
 

Beershaun

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The main advantage with the Anthem is you can create and assign different ARC profiles and speaker configurations for your inputs. So for example you can plug in your Oppo blue ray player to the Anthem and create an input for movies using all speakers and a ARC profile for family movie watching. Then create a second virtual input for music listening using the same Oppo device and physical input but configuring it for 2 stereo speakers and a personal listening ARC profile.

So I think the Anthem is definitely more flexible as your HT hub. You could certainly keep the Xbox plugged into the TV and use eARC for that and the. Use the Anthem for the Oppo. Maybe try that out and see if you like it better or not.
 
OP
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DaveN

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The main advantage with the Anthem is you can create and assign different ARC profiles and speaker configurations for your inputs. So for example you can plug in your Oppo blue ray player to the Anthem and create an input for movies using all speakers and a ARC profile for family movie watching. Then create a second virtual input for music listening using the same Oppo device and physical input but configuring it for 2 stereo speakers and a personal listening ARC profile.

So I think the Anthem is definitely more flexible as your HT hub. You could certainly keep the Xbox plugged into the TV and use eARC for that and the. Use the Anthem for the Oppo. Maybe try that out and see if you like it better or not.
Thanks for your reply and what you’re saying makes sense. I’m partly deaf in both ears though and different Arc Profiles don’t really do much for me so one profile does all. I’ve bought really good gear so can appreciate and enjoy the sound my Elac Solano speakers throw out. You have answered my question though so thanks again.
 

Chrispy

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Can't imagine making a tv the hub. Then again my systems are more than just about a tv....
 

TT921

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Thank you for the nice idea as well as setup.... once connected with a computer, you can enjoy endless possibilities.
 

sdkz

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I had a similar question as @DaveN, but I have yet to actually purchase a new AVR, speakers and TV yet. Good to see you can use the TV as the hub but I feel like I've seen plenty of issues with eARC to maybe give me some pause.
 

Vacceo

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Can't imagine making a tv the hub. Then again my systems are more than just about a tv....
Yet, that´s what the industry is slowly going for. With a single eARC connection and whatever HDMI´s your TV (or projector, monitor...) has, if they´re compatible with CEC, you´re good to go.

AVR´s/AVP still have plenty of optical and analog connections to add whatever CD´s, turntables or whatever else you need, to connect. Personally, I hope some PC software of hardware manufacturer creates a sort of streamer symplified method to have all the online sources with easy access. Kodi could be a perfect method to use a PC as streaming center.

Hopefully all that should contribute to increase the practical life of AVR´s.
 

ban25

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Yet, that´s what the industry is slowly going for. With a single eARC connection and whatever HDMI´s your TV (or projector, monitor...) has, if they´re compatible with CEC, you´re good to go.

AVR´s/AVP still have plenty of optical and analog connections to add whatever CD´s, turntables or whatever else you need, to connect. Personally, I hope some PC software of hardware manufacturer creates a sort of streamer symplified method to have all the online sources with easy access. Kodi could be a perfect method to use a PC as streaming center.

Hopefully all that should contribute to increase the practical life of AVR´s.
Are you familiar with Roon (https://roonlabs.com/) or BluOS (https://bluos.net/) ?
 

Chrispy

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Yet, that´s what the industry is slowly going for. With a single eARC connection and whatever HDMI´s your TV (or projector, monitor...) has, if they´re compatible with CEC, you´re good to go.

AVR´s/AVP still have plenty of optical and analog connections to add whatever CD´s, turntables or whatever else you need, to connect. Personally, I hope some PC software of hardware manufacturer creates a sort of streamer symplified method to have all the online sources with easy access. Kodi could be a perfect method to use a PC as streaming center.

Hopefully all that should contribute to increase the practical life of AVR´s.
Seems that's the way many consumers want to go, same for soundbars. Hopefully we'll have avrs/pre-pros for a while yet in any case.
 

Vacceo

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Seems that's the way many consumers want to go, same for soundbars. Hopefully we'll have avrs/pre-pros for a while yet in any case.
If I were a speaker manufacturer, I'd lobby to get them to develop. I mean, selling 11 speakers and a couple subwoofers... :p
 
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