I’m hoping for some help with a potentially related, but distinct, issue I’m having with CEC under CE 9.2.2.
Issue Description
Since upgrading to CE 9.2.2, the audio return channel from my LG C9 to my receiver (used for playing out audio from the built in youtube/netflix apps) intermittently stops working. The issue is only present after starting the system up, and cannot be resolved without a full power cycle.
At first this was happening very consistently. Configuring the TV to fully power off and not go into standby mode when off seemed to resolve the issue for about a week, then it recurred this morning without warning or apparent cause.
Setup:
LG C9, with Simplilink (HDMI CEC) enabled, configured to fully power off and not go into standby mode when off.
Denon AVR-X3300W, with HDMI CEC enabled, connected to LG C9 via the HDMI ARC port.
Odroid N2, with BT module, connected to the AVR via HDMI.
Harmony Hub for automating power on/power off signals to each device individually.
Harmony Hub controls Odroid N2 via bluetooth dongle, setup in Harmony as a Microsoft/Kodi home entertainment device. Works great but can’t send wake commands via bluetooth, hence desire to suspend/wake via HDMI CEC.
All HDMI CEC options in the CoreElec menu are enabled.
CEC in System-Input-Peripherals is set to on, and the setting for when TV is off = suspend. All other settings are disabled.
I feel your pain, as I experienced quite similar issues with my setup.
I own a LG C9, a Pioneer SC-LX502 and an Odroid N2.
All sorts of issues and shortcomings regarding CEC and (e)ARC.
I could only solve it by connecting the Odroid N2 directly to the LG C9 via HDMI-1 and the Pioneer AVR to HDMI-2 for eARC.
CEC works reliably this way for me, as does eARC.
TV wakes up AVR and Odroid N2 when powered on via MagicRemote. Odroid N2 stays off when directly starting Netflix on the TV and is powered on when switching the input manually.
The eARC LPCM bug of the LG is not an issue for me.
Can CEC be disabled? Any thoughts as to why the menu settings don’t stick? Since I’m not using CEC to control the N2 and it’s breaking ARC for other devices I’d prefer to just disable it.
You can disable CEC from the Input menu under System settings.
@Pelican sometimes a bad HDMI cable prevent CEC from working.
Also make sure you don’t have 2 CoreELEC devices connected at the same time, I recently found out that it completely breaks CEC.
This has been happening intermittently to me since 9.2.1. In the beginning, 9.2.2 seemed to have solved this, but recently it actually became worse.
I don’t really know if the problem lies with CE though, since around that upgrade to 9.2.1, both my AVR (Pioneer VSX 1131), and my TV (Vizio 2016 P series), got firmware updates.
I am also having weird CEC behavior. My setup is like this:
ODROID-N2 - Marantz SR5010 - Samsung
When i turn my tv off. The tv and receiver is shutdown but the tv is turned on again over CEC by CE 9.2.2 ng. Also when I turn off CEC function in the CoreELEC menu and leave the menu and go back it’s turned on again.
I’ve seen similar issues with an N2 -> Denon X3600H -> Sony KD55AG8. I have disabled the CEC functions on the N2 as I was finding that when the systems were powered off by the TV AND the active source was NOT the N2 everything would power back on after a few seconds. If the N2 was the selected output on the AVR when turning off this did not happen.
Earlier this week I noticed that I could no longer change volume via the TV and that ARC was not working. Using apps on the TV - youtube, iPlayer, Netflix etc, did not send any sound to the AVR. The CEC/HMDI diagnostics on the TV reported no attached devices where it had previously seen the AVR, N2, Bluray and cable TV box (UK Virgin Media/TiVo). Having ruled out automatic firmware upgrades and cable problems it finally occurred to me to power off the N2 (it is left on). As soon as I did this the TV displayed an “Audio System activated” message and ARC functionality started working as before.
That’s exactly what I’m seeing, and it also started this week, despite the fact that I upgraded to 9.2.2 a few weeks ago (and as mentioned, in the beginning it was actually performing better than 9.2.1)
I think I got the HDMI CEC suspend/ARC issues sorted out and wanted to share my solution here, both to confirm that it’s a good solve and to make it available for others.
Part 1. Disable HDMI CEC on CoreELEC.
Disabled HDMI CEC completed in System-Input-Peripherals-CEC Adapater
Disabled all CEC settings in Corelec-Hardware-CEC. All remain disabled after backing out of the menu except for “CEC Wake-up” which reverts to odd. Not sure what that’s about.
Using the method provided here for editing the config.ini file, I removed the comment for HDMI CEC and set it to “0”
Now the various HDMI/ARC issues went away ARC is reliably available and HDMI routing issues are gone.
Part 2: Use Harmony Hub to make the Odroid suspend when not in use.
I added the Odroid N2 as a device in my Harmony Hub setup.
I added the Odroid N2 to the Harmony remote activity for CoreELEC.
I configured the Harmony remote activity to send the Odroid N2 an on/off signal during activity start/stop.
Back in the CE menus, I configred System-Power Saving I changed “shutdown function” to “suspend.” Now IR power toggle puts the Odroid N2 into suspend instead of off - much faster
I also configured a button on my Harmony remote to fire the IR power toggle command, just in case I need to manually power it on.
Thoughts on this fix? Have I done anything that would contradict best practice? Is using the IR power toggle this way harmful to the device? I vaguely remember reading that the IR power toggle in CE doesn’t always trigger an orderly shutdown or suspend.
@grizzledoldman can you write what exactly you do in step 3. I opened boot.ini but I don’t know what to do next. show how you boot.ini looks afer editing.
Short update - I’ve disabled CEC via the config.ini as above but have still seen the CEC blocking issue described in my earlier post which seems to prevent ARC from working until the N2 is restarted.
I think the reason I’ve started seeing that is that I initially disabled CEC only via Kodi to prevent with powering back on problem unless the N2 was the active input on my AVR. This meant the N2 was on all the time and that appears to trigger the other issue.
I’m going to try and create a cron job to reboot the N2 in the early hours each day to see if that helps.
This is once again happening frequently, and I’m seeing something new - when this happens, I used to restart to fix. Now when I restart I get a black screen.
And since 20200706 it’s possible to choose libCEC version for testing.
Default is libCEC 4.0.4.
By touch /storage/.config/libcec-4.0.5.conf after a reboot libCEC 4.0.5 will be used.
When removing the touched file again 4.0.4 will be used.
EDIT: since 20200715 there will be libCEC 4.0.7 available to by touch /storage/.config/libcec-4.0.7.conf
ARC is reliably available and HDMI routing issues are gone.