4K Arcana 18GBPS

I bought a Sonos Arc 2 for my 5+ year old Samsung TV (UN49M5300AF) and a Amazon Fire TV Cube (3rd Gen) to improve the sound for my TV setup. The TV only has an ARC port (no eARC) and only supports Dolby Digital Plus, so in principle I should have been able to get Dolby Atmos (compressed), which I would have been happy with. However, it turns out that Amazon Prime and Netflix only deliver Dolby Atmos sound to 4k TVs (WTF Amazon and Netflix?!), so I was never getting Dobly Atmos sound because the TV is only 1080p. I had no interest in buying a new TV because getting rid of the current TV seemed like a waste of a perfectly serviceable TV.The Arcana solves this problem beautifully. The Arcana allows me to tell the Fire TV Cube that the Cube is talking to a 4k TV. This unlocks Dolby Atmos sound from Amazon and Netflix. The Arcana also downscales the 4k picture stream for the 1080p TV.In addition, the Arcana solves lip syncing issues. Before adding the Arcana, I could never get perfect lip sync. I tried all adjustments possible (the Fire TV Cube, TV, Sonos), but I had to adjust for shows/movies that had different audio standards (PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus). The only somewhat reliable way to solve the lip sync issue was to match the TV sound standard to the source standard (where possible). Doing this for every show was obviously a pain, and meant that I wasn't able to get the full performance of the Sonos Arc 2 sound system. With the Arcana, I have none of these problems. I get the highest quality sound with no lip sync issues.I did have to change some of the default settings on the Arcana to get the setup to work. From memory, I changed the following settings from the default values:* Audio: eARC only* Scaler: 4K30 422 12b SDR* HDR: Force 1000 nitsThe firmware version on the Arcana is 0.87. Many older reviews (and a friend of mine) say they have problems with the Arcana and connected devices having to be turned on in a particular order. I have not had this problem with my setup. I suspect that HDFury has solved many of these problems in later firmware versions.The manual for the Arcana is very technical and one can tell it is written by somebody whose native language is not English. You should read the manual (which is available online) very carefully to make sure that the Arcana is a device that will support your use case. This device is not what I'd call a plug and play device like most consumer devices. In my opinion, you need to be willing to read the manual, maybe look up some technical terms and acronyms, and play around with the settings. In short, this is a technical box that requires a user that is interested in going beyond just plugging it in and hoping it will work.I'm super happy with this little box and can highly recommend it for a setup like this (if you're willing to put the time in to configure it for your set up).

Item did not work as advertised at all. Video constantly cut out or went completely pink when gaming or watching TV. There are no helpful instructions on how to set it up. What’s worse is I returned mine as it clearly didn’t work - and It was barely even used. I Packaged it in its original box with all cords, manuals, and USB plug. They charged be a $60 “damage fee” with no explanation, no proof, nothing. Just stole $60 from me…. Nothing was damaged - they just didn’t want to pay for shipping their junk back.I bought a competitors cheap version for about $50 that’s had zero issues since day 1. Save your money, you don’t need this product, even if you have a Sonos product for audio.

Right out of the box, the default settings on the device allowed me to send uncompressed Dolby Atmos from my 4K blu-ray player to the Sonos arc and 4K video to my 2017 oled 4K Lg TV. Using a 4K switcher, I was also able to send Dolby Atmos from the 4K Amazon Firestick to the Sonos arc. So it performed as I was hoping it would. I was pleased with the tech support I received too. Before testing it, I made the mistake of changing some of the settings to what I thought it should be, but it instead limited the quality of audio the Sonos arc received. I emailed the arcana tech support and they would respond the same day or within 24 hours as they asked for more detail of my setup and to attach some photos of the arcana’s screen. They knew exactly what I was doing wrong and had me reset to factory default settings. They also recognized that I was not using the Sonos arc cable but an 8K hdmi cable and that caused problems until I reconnected the apparently proprietary Sonos hdmi cable. Their tech support would email me back promptly, zeroed in on the problem(s) immediately, and they were definitely familiar with nearly all the common scenarios their customers would encounter.But there was one unexpected feature I was pleasantly surprised about. I had a wireless Sennheiser headphone whose transmitter is connected to the TV optical digital output. I had assumed that it would no longer function in this setup because the audio from the Blu-ray player and the 4K Firestick was bypassing the tv. But the sweet thing about the arcana is that there is a setting where it can send an audio signal to the tv along with the video, thereby enabling my headphones to work. Now it does everything I wanted, and I am very pleased.