CEC "just works" for me and has for as long as I've owned a flat panel TV (maybe 12 years or so?). Back in the day (before I had an HDMI receiver), I could use the TV remote to control the bluray player. These days I have a receiver, and the volume control on pretty much any device will control the audio on the receiver.

ARC was a bit more spotty, but I moved somewhere with no live TV reception, so my only use-case for it went away (everything else routes audio through the receiver).