I'm need a little advice please. I just purchased this Panasonic SC-HTB885EBK soundbar system from Amazon and I will get it on Wednesday. I've downloaded the manual and I'm wondering what the best way to connect it will work for me.

I have the new Panasonic 65" TV TX-65DX902B. It has 4 HDMI ports. Currenty I have a Virgin Tivio box in HDMI 1 and a Panasonic Blu-Ray recorder in HDMI 2 (this is the ARC port)

Am I right in thinking that if I move my Blu-Ray player to a spare HDMI port and connect the sound bar to HDMI 2 (the one with ARC ) then all will be good and my TV will act as the HUN for my other devices.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Also how does it work when I don't want to use my soundbar and just watch say the news using normal TV sound

Thanks in advance

Provided you remember to plug the TV ARC HDMI port into the soundbar HDMI OUT port then it should be good to go.

if you don't want to use the soundbar then simply turn it off. Though you may have a problem with the HDMI control (Viera Link as Panasonic call it) being too clever for it's own good and waking up the soundbar all the time. So it might take a lot of fiddling about in the menus to persuade the telly to use just it's own speakers then switch back to the soundbar later.

To be honest I wouldn't bother, just use the soundbar all the time. Much less hassle. And don't think you'll be saving on your electricity bill by not using the soundbar instead of the TV speakers. Maybe a couple of pence a year

Thanks for that I'll post later and let you how I get on

Got the Soundbar up and running, only took 5 minutes with it sitting on the unit below the TV. Didn't have to set anything up as soon as I switched it on the Viera link handled it all. Surprisingly after the system auto powered off, once I turned the TV back on, I was left with plain TV sound till I repowered up the soundbar. However, as you say, I will just use the Soundbar all the time and I quickly turned it back on.
Very impressed with the sound, considering it's such a unobtrusive system. I was happy with the standard sound, changed to cinema mode to watch a film - awesome just like being in the movies
I may try experimenting plugging my BD and Virgin box into the soundbar see if it makes any difference. Not sure if the BD passes through the 5.1 cinema sounds to the TV and it ends up as plain Stereo or not. Actually it would have to sound a lot better to beat what I have just now

In theory (and I stress the word theory!) the TV should be able to pass whatever surround format is coming from the source device onto the ARC channel and hence onto the soundbar or AV system it's plugged into.

But some TVs insist that only stereo is fed to them. Part of the HDMI connection spec is a "handshake" that takes place as devices are powered up. The Blu-Ray or whatever will ask the TV what audio and video formats it can handle and then set itself up accordingly (again in theory - sometimes doesn't work that well). So the TV may tell the player it can only handle stereo thinking the audio will be played from it's internal speakers, ignoring the soundbar/AV system hanging off the ARC channel.

Basically it is a case of suck it and see.