Hi there,
I figured out my issue thanks to users on avsforum.com:
They linked to a support article around Bravia Sync and HDMI-CEC, I have extracted the relevant bits below, with the issue I hit in bold:
- BRAVIA Sync (HDMI-CEC) overview and troubleshooting information
- The HDMI-CEC standard supports:
- 1 - TV
- 1 - Audio system (A/V Receiver or Soundbar)
- Up to 3 - Playback devices
- Up to 3 - Recording devices
- Up to 4 - Tuner devices
- Which is then followed by this note:
- If you connect more devices than supported in a device category, errors in operation will occur.
- Some devices connected to the TV may show as more that one device (Soundbar with Smart functions) and may appear as an audio system and a playback device.
So my issue was that I had a HT-A7000, SkyQ box, PS5 and PS4 plugged into my 4 HDMI ports. I added the PS4 into the mix a few months back and things worked well enough, with the occasional input switching to the wrong device. Then the reboot due to the 1.779 update occurred which caused functionality to degrade even further where communication between TV and soundbar totally broke down.
I plugged out my PS4 and TV<->Soundbar communication immediately worked as expected. So I suspect it's not the 1.779 soundbar update itself but the associated reboot.
As a software engineer myself, I think the TV software has to do better here. At minimum it should flash up an error message once it detects that you have too many devices connected. And ideally the limits in the link above would be increased in the flagship television like the A90J.
Can you raise my issue to the technical team to see if they can at least show the user an error message when a user connects too many devices for Bravia Sync and HDMI-CEC?