When the HDMI chain misbehaves

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Almost every HDMI complaint is really a question about which link in the chain is the weak one. Source, cable, HDfury Arcana, display, audio system — five links, and the symptom rarely points at the culprit. These pages work through them in order.

No Dolby Atmos on a Sonos Arc or Beam Gen 2

The soundbar reports stereo or Dolby Digital where you expect Atmos. Usually the TV, not the soundbar, is the one throwing the format away.

eARC not working or falling back to ARC

No sound at all, or the connection quietly drops to ARC and takes the lossless formats with it.

Audio runs ahead of the picture

Lips move after the sound. This is the normal side effect of taking audio out of the chain early, and the HDfury Arcana has a control for exactly this.

Black screen at 4K120 or with VRR

The image drops out, flickers, or the source refuses to offer 120 Hz at all. Nearly always bandwidth or a port setting.

No sound after a firmware update

The update finished and the audio did not come back. A firmware update resets the Audio sub-menu, the eARC delay and the scaler mode to their factory values.

DTS or DTS:X not reaching your sound system

The disc has DTS-HD Master Audio but the receiver reports something else. Most televisions do not carry DTS over ARC or eARC at all.

HDCP error, flashing image or black screen

Copy protection fails quietly: a message on one device, a picture that flashes every few seconds, or nothing. Usually one device in the chain speaks an older HDCP version.

CEC volume control not working

Sound and picture are fine but the volume buttons do nothing. CEC is the least reliable part of HDMI and every manufacturer named it differently.

Dolby Atmos with a projector and a soundbar

Projectors have no audio return path, so the usual eARC advice does not apply. The audio has to be taken before the projector instead.

Which HDMI cable do you need?

Cables cause more support cases than any setting. HDfury's own guidance is a window, not a maximum: at least 2 metres of copper and at most 4.

The OLED shows no signal, or the unit seems dead

Nothing arrives at all. Power, the documented wait after a firmware update, handshake order, and the file to send support.

EDID: what it does and when to touch it

Every stubborn problem ends up here. What AutoMix builds, which modes can be forced, and why there is no EDID entry in the OLED menu.

Dolby Vision or LLDV not working, or the colours look wrong

Oversaturated SDR is almost always one setting: HDR on LLDV Sync where it should be on Auto.

Only stereo or PCM instead of surround

The soundbar shows PCM 2.0 where you expect Atmos. Usually the source is set to PCM and the format was lost before it left it.

Switching between TV apps and the HDMI input

Sound disappears when you switch between the TV's own apps and the HDfury Arcana. You have to use the TV remote, and there is an OLED test that shows whether it works.

The TV remote does not control the Sonos Arc volume

Only the Sonos Arc can put a television into system audio mode. Until it does, the TV remote will not control anything external.

Audio echo, or an unsupported format banner

Two complaints with one cause: audio reaching the television when it should not. The soundbar sits below the screen, so the echo is easy to miss.

No sound when the TV wakes from standby

The most reported complaint of all. Four ways to re-trigger the handshake, starting with one that takes under a minute and touches no cables.

Brief audio dropouts every few minutes

About a second of silence, every three to ten minutes, almost always on Atmos or TrueHD. Reported on chains with and without an HDfury Arcana.

Sync lost when the frame rate changes

The picture drops between 24 and 60 Hz, or the chain wakes up reporting 1080p SDR instead of 4K. Two settings, and leave the rest alone.

Before you change anything

1. Write down the chain. Source model, cable length and rating, HDfury Arcana or Arcana 2, firmware version from the OLED display, display model and HDMI port, audio system and whether it is on ARC or eARC. Half of all problems become obvious once this is written out.
2. Change one thing at a time. HDMI failures cascade: a wrong EDID setting produces symptoms that look like a cable fault. Changing three settings at once tells you nothing.
3. Check the firmware first. Several known issues are already fixed. The downloads page has every version.
4. Power-cycle properly. HDMI negotiates once, at handshake. After a settings change, fully power off the source, the Arcana and the display, then bring them up display first, Arcana second, source last.

Every page tells you what to do on each model

The HDfury Arcana and the HDfury Arcana 2 are not interchangeable when it comes to fixing something. Sometimes the answer is identical on both; sometimes it is the whole answer, as with 4K120 and VRR, which the original model cannot carry at all. Every page below therefore has a Which model do you have? section that spells out what to do on the HDfury Arcana (18Gbps) and what to do on the HDfury Arcana 2 VRR (40Gbps), including the cases where only one of them can solve it.

Which model do you have?

It matters more than people expect. The original HDfury Arcana is HDMI 2.0b at 18 Gbps: excellent up to 4K60, and it will not carry a 4K120 FRL signal no matter how the rest of the chain is set. The Arcana 2 is HDMI 2.1 FRL5 at 40 Gbps and handles 4K120, VRR and 8K. If your problem is a missing high-bandwidth video mode, the comparison page settles it in one table.