CEC - Anyone (for Denon AVR 1909)

[jamo]

Hi all...

Been looking out for a bargain AV receiver for a while and there's a pretty good deal on a Denon AVR 1909. I know it's not the newest model out there and doesn't sadly, have IP or RS232 control, but I think in all other areas it will do the job I require -

• upscale from analog video - for my old cable box input
• 3 hdmi inputs should be plenty

My only concern is on the control side. I see it is supposed to work with CEC so I was thinking of getting one of those pulse-eight injectors to turn it on and off, switch inputs and change volume.

Has anyone had any luck with those?

I really want all my hardware to be controllable via my orbiters/remotes. TV just needs to go on and off which I can do with IR blasting. But volume and input switching needs to happen on the amp so I need those functions...

thoughts, advice, criticism?

[tschak909]

I seriously would recommend getting an older model Denon 23xx, e.g. a 2308, 2309, 2310, 2311... as these can be had for excellent prices.

I haven't used HDMI-CEC in any context within LinuxMCE, and can't even begin to tell you how to set it up. Hari wrote the Kwikwai driver, so he'd be able to tell you...but...

-Thom

[jamo]

I seriously would recommend getting an older model Denon 23xx, e.g. a 2308, 2309, 2310, 2311... as these can be had for excellent prices.

I haven't used HDMI-CEC in any context within LinuxMCE, and can't even begin to tell you how to set it up. Hari wrote the Kwikwai driver, so he'd be able to tell you...but...

-Thom

Thanks for the thoughts Thom.... Can't find anything available locally. Sadly, it's very difficult to buy off e-bay in South Africa for some reason (most of the sellers have "may not ship to South Africa") so we're not exactly spoilt for choice. I really don't intend to get unsupported hardware... I don't want to fight the things but it comes down to availability so often.

I'll keep looking...

[jamo]

I've found an Onkyo TX-NR509. It seems all the NR series have ethernet and I have to presume that where there are Android and iOS control apps there must be a protcol to control via ethernet. Pricey (because it's new) but nothing wrong with Onkyo....

[Techstyle]

I love my Onkyo.  It did have me scratching my head a while though trying to get zone 2 working, I then read that zone 2 must have an analogue input, even if zone 1 and zone 2 are on the same input.  this is another battle - linuxmce outputing analogue and digital audio.

[WhateverFits]

My Onkyo is great too except that it occasionally disconnects the network and I don't know why. I have to hard power cycle it to get the connection back.

[totallymaxed]

Hi all...

Been looking out for a bargain AV receiver for a while and there's a pretty good deal on a Denon AVR 1909. I know it's not the newest model out there and doesn't sadly, have IP or RS232 control, but I think in all other areas it will do the job I require -

• upscale from analog video - for my old cable box input
• 3 hdmi inputs should be plenty

My only concern is on the control side. I see it is supposed to work with CEC so I was thinking of getting one of those pulse-eight injectors to turn it on and off, switch inputs and change volume.

Has anyone had any luck with those?

I really want all my hardware to be controllable via my orbiters/remotes. TV just needs to go on and off which I can do with IR blasting. But volume and input switching needs to happen on the amp so I need those functions...

thoughts, advice, criticism?

Re CEC Control;

We use CEC in most installs now as pretty much all AV Amplifiers, Blu-Ray players & TV's are CEC enabled. Typically in a 'traditional' CEC installation you will have a chain of devices connected together via HDMI 1.3/1.4. The TV will be the master device at one end of the HDMI chain. All devices in the chain can be controlled from lib-CEC or from the master devices remote. So for example if you hook up a Rpi running Raspbmc to your TV and enable the CEC setting in your TV to 'On' then you can use the TV's remote control to control the XBMC UI running on the Rpi (it feels like magic the first time you see this working!).

All the best

Andy

[jamo]

Thanks Andrew, that's good news and interesting info. Are you using the pulse 8 CEC injector to CEC-enable your Rpi's and other devices?

Re CEC Control;

We use CEC in most installs now as pretty much all AV Amplifiers, Blu-Ray players & TV's are CEC enabled. Typically in a 'traditional' CEC installation you will have a chain of devices connected together via HDMI 1.3/1.4. The TV will be the master device at one end of the HDMI chain. All devices in the chain can be controlled from lib-CEC or from the master devices remote. So for example if you hook up a Rpi running Raspbmc to your TV and enable the CEC setting in your TV to 'On' then you can use the TV's remote control to control the XBMC UI running on the Rpi (it feels like magic the first time you see this working!).

All the best

Andy

[totallymaxed]

Thanks Andrew, that's good news and interesting info. Are you using the pulse 8 CEC injector to CEC-enable your Rpi's and other devices?

We used to use Pulse-8's but now we just use Rpi's as they have a CEC enabled GPU. So if we just need CEC control we use a Rpi to do power ON from stand-by on say a SmartTV or on older TV's with no UPnP we use a Rpi with to also provide UPnP capability as well. We have an in-house developed customised Raspbmc image that we use for both these situations.

All the best

Andrew

[jamo]

Awesome. "CEC-enabled GPU" how sweet those words are to my ears.

We used to use Pulse-8's but now we just use Rpi's as they have a CEC enabled GPU. So if we just need CEC control we use a Rpi to do power ON from stand-by on say a SmartTV or on older TV's with no UPnP we use a Rpi with to also provide UPnP capability as well. We have an in-house developed customised Raspbmc image that we use for both these situations.

All the best

Andrew