A:Answer The answer posted saying hdmi 2.1 is required for earc is not true. Hdmi 2.1 is not required for earc, although it is required for vrr&allm pass through. In other words, if it's not hdmi 2.1, you wont be hooking up your next gen console to it. You can use it with earc and hook the console or pc up to the tv/monitor to take advantage of earc, but your tv must support passing through of certain audio formats. 2020 lg and samsung do not pass through dts. If it's hdmi 2.1 and supports the right video formats and pass throughs, you can hook things up directly to the soundbar, as is preferred.
Many TV's have earc and do not support HDMI 2.1. earc is an HDMI 2.1 standard, however it can be implemented on an 18gbps hdmi 2.0b chipset.
Initially this was suppose to be an HDMI 2.1 soundbar. If the answer from Vizio is correct, it's likely that they went back on their word, because vizio hasn't figured out hdmi 2.1 yet. Their TV's don't even implement vrr properly, so I'm not confident a soundbar would. To be fair, I don't know a single manufacturer that doesn't have problems with VRR at the moment. We'll have to see if Sony gets It right in their firmware updates.
I was going to buy this, but if it's hdmi 2.0, it's useless. No 4k-120, vrr, or allm pass-through(if it is really hdmi 2.0). Even if it is hdmi 2.1, wait until the vrr is tested and confirmed working. Like we all should've done before spending thousands on their TV's this year.
If this unit does not have hdmi 2.1, that would be almost as stupid as releasing a p series, pqx and OLed before they are ready for the market.
