I can confirm! I have an eARC setup with an AppleTV, 2 big homepods, a gaming PC and a projector.

I had to buy a special HDMI switch because my projector is eARC-naive, but my understanding is that a lot of modern TVs are eARC-aware and a special switch is not required. The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right?

Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.

Yup, using eARC with ATV and HomePods, and it just works. Just switch input on tv to my PS5 and audio comes right through the HomePods

No issue whatsoever, latency is fine, but a little too high for shooters and the like—but I use headphones then anyway.

Good to know, thank you.

How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.

It’s ok. Their app isn’t great, but the underlying technology is. Spotify can directly play to one of their speakers. Their local protocol is also well understood and you can do most things with it, so you can vibe code your own replacement app pretty easily. The problem is once you hit their cloud APIs the latency is way too high for something like a speaker.

Yeah, the hardware is great. I honestly couldn't tell you much about the app because I exclusively use the speaker via HDMI-ARC and AirPlay, both of which work really well.

I have full size HomePods beside the living room TV, and the one in my studio, and I've never been able to get this feature to work.

works for me on quite a few different TVs and setups. but my current TV requires using HDMI port 3. maybe an Ai can help you troubleshoot it!

Thanks, I'll try again!

Good luck! lmk how it goes

Dumb q but did you ever have apple tv -> tv -> sonos soundbar set up in a way where you were able to control the sonos soundbar audio from the iphone remote app?

Yes, LC OLED to Sonos Arc. Works a treat. At one point the remote started malfunctioning and I had to cover the IR transmitter with tape, but otherwise extremely reliable. Remote on iPhone works fine to control volume. The only thing is that if you add other Sonos speakers (say, in the kitchen as well as TV room) the mute only mutes the TV.

I have a samsung home theatre audio system and all the basic functions such as volume control, mute, and power control is possible from an actual apple remote or the same apple remote app on an iphone.