Docked deck is breaking HDMI ARC

[jasonofabitch]

Docking my deck appears to be causing the deck to effectively hold my HDMI ARC connectivity hostage.

New deck owner here. I’m running the latest stable OS, which is the Dec 29th patch of 3.4 as of the time of this post. I have the deck connected to my TV via the Jsaux dock (model HB0603, which has an HDMI 2.0 port). I also have a sound bar (Sonos Beam) connected to my TV via its sole HDMI ARC port (it is a slightly older display so it’s just ARC and not eARC). When I first turn on the TV and immediately switch to the deck’s input, ARC works as expected. My sound bar is detected and audio is output to it. If I then power down the deck (doesn’t matter if I put it to sleep or do a full shutdown) and also turn off the TV, here’s where the issue is introduced. The next time I power on the TV, ARC will not work for any other input or any installed app (the TV uses Roku OS) until I power up the deck again and switch to its input. Once I’ve done so, my ARC continues to function and my sound bar is detected across all inputs and apps so long as I don’t power cycle the TV. Worth noting is that I have both an Xbox Series X and a Nintendo Switch hooked to the same TV and they do not interfere with ARC functionality.

As you can imagine, this is very annoying. Not to mention, I’d like to avoid power cycling my deck so much when half the time I just want to watch something and I’m not gearing up for a play session.

Any thoughts as to what’s going on here and how to fix it?

[drapergeek]

I don’t have any advice but I have the same dock and ran into the same issue yesterday. I hope there’s a solution. My next move will likely be to try the official dock to see if it performs any differently.

[jasonofabitch]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I found multiple reports of the same behavior over in the SteamDeck subreddit. The thread I’m linking to in particular has the most replies. Several folks within it indicate that they contacted JSAUX for support and basically didn’t get any and were told the issue must be with their HDMI cable or TV. The recommended path forward is to either return the JSAUX in favor of the official dock, or you can try getting a CEC blocker which is an inline adapter that will supposedly prevent the JSAUX from mucking with your ARC in the first place. There are a lot more details in the thread. Best of luck to you!

https://reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w3rjqp/jsaux_dock_breaks_cec_and_arc/

[drapergeek]

Ouch. Thanks for the update!

[squared99]

Not sure if it works for all cases but their latest firmware did correct this issue for me. Yahama Soundbar and LG TV.
https://jsaux.com/blogs/steam-deck/were-upgrading-our-steam-deckss-docking-stations-firmware

[Juoksevatiikeri]

I have the same problem with the official steam deck dock. If i have my sound bar connected to the tv the dock doesn not work. If i unplug the sound bar the dock works. I have tried to email steam support but I still have the proplem.

[prettejohn]

Just bought the Jsaux dock and it's broken my Hdmi Cec sound link to the LG soundbar. It's a pain. Have heard you can block one of the pins to make it stop doing this but would prefer it just to work out of the box. Has anyone found a solution before I send the dock back?

[tri]

I have a related issue with the official Steam Dock; I think this is a Deck issue and buying a different dock will probably not help.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3812911294784473965/