WiiM Ultra Firmware v5.2.715362 - Apr 29, 2025

[mach]

So selecting TV input make the TV change to ARC but deselecting it doesn't change TV away from ARC. That is not correct.

@hgo58, as someone in your camp wrt TV speakers in standby, this is the behavior that offended users like @Wiimer and @harkpabst the most, once they were forced to turn "the toggle" on to maintain CEC power-on.

Moreover, if you take a close look at @Wiimer 's use case, they actively want the TV audio to stay on WiiM output, despite it being dropped, so that the WiiM can use HDMI auto sense to switch back to HDMI when TV is resumed.

I for one am indifferent to this TV speakers + WiiM streaming scenario, since for me the times when I do want both (cacophony) are rare and I can switch the TV by myself. Like you, I do very much want the standby TV speakers scenario, because I don't want the HiFi power cycled and correcting it by hand is too late.

You are the first case I've heard of wanting the input switching behavior. Would you mind terribly if this was not done at first, because it obviously needs to be optional, and you had to switch the TV by hand? The standby feature can IMHO be done with no new switches.

 

[mach]

I just don't get it, am I just stupid or is there a reason to listen to TV speakers when there is a much better quality alternative available?

I love my amp and it would be hard to replace. I don't want it power cycled many times a day when the family watches TV at low volume. The TV speakers are good enough. I can just tell them to press this other button if they want the HiFi sound. None of us want to always think carefully about how to control volume, so we want ARC and CEC. Just optional ARC while standby. If my Samsung had the "TV speakers at startup" option that I hear Hisense has, I wouldn't be bothering WiiM with this, but most TV manufacturers probably never will.

My previous AVP turned off the HDMI circuit when in standby. I like the Ultra much better in every other way.

 

[harkpabst]

@hgo58, as someone in your camp wrt TV speakers in standby, this is the behavior that offended users like @Wiimer and @harkpabst the most, once they were forced to turn "the toggle" on to maintain CEC power-on.

Just to be perfectly clear:

I don't mind setting the CEC toggle switch to ON, of course, to get my desired behaviour. And I'd be perfectly fine with the CEC toggle set to OFF, @hgo58 would get his desired behaviour.

It's just that with all firmware versions that I had so far (pretty much all public ones and a couple of others), the CEC toggle switch didn't appear to do anything useful. To me it looked like CEC functions were always available, regardless of the position of the switch.

Admittedly, I didn't perform any systematic testing as long as things worked the way I need them to.

 

[mach]

To me it looked like CEC functions were always available, regardless of the position of the switch.

Yes, I know what you mean - CEC volume control worked always, and auto sensing easily substituted for CEC power on. The only observable differences were: 1) whether the Ultra turned on immediately or when the TV put on sound OR when volume control was used, which it's possible some TVs do right at startup. And 2) whether the Ultra turned off with the TV or waited for standby timeout, which should be more observable but I'm no longer 100% sure that it was happening when "the toggle" was on.

 

[harkpabst]

CEC volume control worked always, and auto sensing easily substituted for CEC power on.

Exactly.

 

[hgo58]

What was changed with "Automatic HDMI ARC" mode off is that the TV no longer follows the WiiM input setting. It did before the rollback.

With mode on it shall not follow the input but stay on ARC. That was fixed by the rollback.

Unfortunately this behaviour was also introduced with the mode off. So I don't think it was a real rollback? More like a quick fix for one issue, that introduced another issue.

I really hope that @WiiM Team understand the situation now and do a full test before next release.

 

[mach]

What was changed with "Automatic HDMI ARC" mode off is that the TV no longer follows the WiiM input setting. It did before the rollback.

With mode on it shall not follow the input but stay on ARC. That was fixed by the rollback.

So my theory (at this point, based on memory, it's hard to know for sure) is that the TV speakers on input swirch behavior existed long before the Smart HDMI update *249, when "the toggle" (which was labeled differently) was on. But you could use CEC just fine with "the toggle" off due to autosensing. Then *249 came and forced our always-ARC friends to have the toggle on, or the Ultra wouldn't wake up or switch automatically. But that exposed them to the input switching behavior, which they very much didn't want.

The rollback firmware *362 reverted this, but also left us without our TV speakers on standby option.

Are you saying that this can be done with still the same "always output" toggle, but when it's on having no TV speakers switching? And volume control and autosensing (HDMI/optical toggle as before) working in both as before? Maybe . Maybe this doesn't need another switch unless I'm missing something.