Soundbar Newbie

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Discussion

RosscoPCole

Original Poster:

3,300 posts

173 months

Monday 21st June 2021
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We are getting an extension built and are having the TV wall mounted for the first time. I fancy getting a soundbar. I want to spend less than £100 on it. We have a JVC Fire TV. A few questions. When it says Bluetooth, does that mean I can link it to the TV wirelessly? Can I link the soundbar to my Sky remote like I do with the TV?
Sorry for appearing stupid, but want to be sure that everything integrates together.

clockworks

5,294 posts

144 months

Monday 21st June 2021
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RosscoPCole said:
We are getting an extension built and are having the TV wall mounted for the first time. I fancy getting a soundbar. I want to spend less than £100 on it. We have a JVC Fire TV. A few questions. When it says Bluetooth, does that mean I can link it to the TV wirelessly? Can I link the soundbar to my Sky remote like I do with the TV?
Sorry for appearing stupid, but want to be sure that everything integrates together.
Went through a similar thing getting a soundbar for mum. I've got a proper AV setup, so had no idea about soundbars.

I posted in the "computers and gadgets" sub-forum here a few weeks ago, and got some help.

If your TV has ARC, plug the soundbar into the ARC-enabled HDMI port, and delve into the TV's menus to set the sound output to external/HDMI or whatever JVC call it. Connect the Sky box to the soundbar's other HDMI port.
This way, the soundbar will turn on with the TV, and the Sky remote will control the volume

Lucid_AV

408 posts

35 months

Monday 21st June 2021
quotequote all
We are getting an extension built and are having the TV wall mounted for the first time. I fancy getting a soundbar. I want to spend less than £100 on it. We have a JVC Fire TV. A few questions. When it says Bluetooth, does that mean I can link it to the TV wirelessly? Can I link the soundbar to my Sky remote like I do with the TV?
Sorry for appearing stupid, but want to be sure that everything integrates together.

Bluetooth refers to a device such as a smartphone or tablet connecting to the soundbar so that music files can be played. At this price level you'd be expecting far too.much if you were trying to link the SB to the TV without wires.

Linking to your Sky remote: That all depends on which Sky remote and whether it has an audio punch-through facility and whether the remote has the IR codes to control the JVC sound bar.

The system before Sky Q had pretty good support for third party audio devices. It was possible to program the remote to work either the TV audio or an amplifier/AV receiver.

The main Sky Q remote works via Bluetooth. The Q box controls a connected TV via HDMI CEC. It can also control an audio device by HDMI CEC too if the TV and sound bar both have HDMI ARC (and are connected via a HDMI lead) or the soundbar has a HDMI input and an output socket.

With a more basic sound bar you might only have an optical audio input. Whether you can have the TV alter its Optical signal level out depends on the setting being PCM rather than Dolby Digital and the TV's capabilities. It could also depend on the signal source; you get variable level when the TV is transcoding AAC from broadcast or streaming via the TV's own tuner or apps, but not when it's passing PCM from an external source.

wax lyrical

881 posts

240 months

Friday 25th June 2021
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You're not going to get anything jaw-dropping for £100, but maybe go for this (JBL Bar 2.0 Compact sound bar):

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertai...

I have one in my kitchen/diner with a Samsung 50" TV and it's not bad at all. HDMI connected.

7n8n

833 posts

189 months

Monday 5th July 2021
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I was recently in this market but there isn't !uch decent around this price bracket. In the end I upped the budget and got a damaged box Samsung T550 Soundbar for £125 from the Currys eBay clearance store.