With any new piece of tech, it’s wise to take a few minutes to learn more about it and configure it the way you like. For a separate home theater example, consider a smart soundbar. It can potentially sound excellent out of the box, but I like to turn on any vocal clarity features, and doublcheck the EQ if I feel like bass is missing some oomph. I’m not expecting the rumbling of a dedicated subwoofer, but any decent soundbar should bring me a step closer to a movie theater.
Likewise, there are a number of important settings to tweak on a new TV for the best experience. You’re probably most interested in picture quality and smart home integration — but there’s one feature you should familiarize yourself with that has nothing to do with those topics. I’m talking about CEC, something that should greatly aid you when it’s present, although it can cause havoc when it misbehaves.
What is CEC, and what’s the big deal?
Solving a headache of the digital age
I’m just old enough to remember when firing up a home theater system could be a hassle. You’d have to turn your speakers and/or receiver on separately from your TV, then manually switch video input over to your playback device (a VCR, DVD player, etc.). If you wanted to control audio or playback without getting up off the couch, you almost certainly needed multiple remote controls. It was never a big deal, ultimately, but it was a deterrent to casual viewing.
CEC — short for Consumer Electronics Control — was created to get around this. The feature is intrinsically linked to the HDMI standard, and in fact has been around since HDMI 1.0 went live in 2003. Minor updates to it have accompanied later HDMI spec bumps. Notably, CEC is frequently rebranded by hardware makers for reasons I can’t fathom. Some offenders include Samsung’s Anynet+, Sony’s Bravia Sync, LG’s Simplink, and Roku’s 1-Touch Play. An alternate generic term is HDMI-CEC.
Effectively, CEC-enabled devices are chained together, able to “talk” to each other through your TV. Most commonly, this is used to turn on speakers at the same time as your TV, and adjust their volume using your main remote, no extra configuration required. It’s one reason I sometimes wish I’d bought a Sonos Beam instead of my Ray — while the Ray still sounds amazing, it uses optical audio instead of HDMI, so you have to “train” it on IR blasts from one remote or another.
Effectively, CEC-enabled devices are chained together, able to “talk” to each other through your TV.
Another function is automatic input detection. When I turn on my Apple TV 4K or Steam Deck controller, the HDMI connections for those devices send a signal to my TV, flipping inputs without my intervention. You’ll experience the same convenience with Blu-ray players, cable boxes, and other peripherals.
Things start to become a little more category-specific from here. While CEC allows commands from your main TV remote to control other devices, whether they’ll be acknowledged or not is dependent on the device in question. You might be able to control a soundbar or Blu-ray player, for example, but don’t expect to play Helldivers II on your PS5.
Similarly, though turning off your TV will often put connected devices on standby, that’s not always true. A connected PC will probably stay on, for instance, in which case you may need to pick your own sleep settings in Windows, Linux, or macOS.
Two more obscure CEC features include preset transfers — the ability to forward your channel setup to another TV — and timer programming. You may be able to use the electronic program guide (EPG) built into your TV to trigger recording on a DVR, saving the need to switch inputs or load an app on your smartphone.
How do I enable CEC on my TV?
Good news and bad news
Chances are, CEC is already enabled on your TV. It’s so essential to a modern home theater setup that without it, using a TV can feel cumbersome, my Sonos Ray experience being a prime example.
If you do need to toggle CEC, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Different TV platforms have different menu systems, and as I mentioned, companies are fond of rebranding what’s otherwise a universal technology. As a rule, the option should be under a System or Display menu in your TV’s Settings app. With Roku OS products, you’ll want to navigate to Settings -> System -> Control other devices (CEC). Sets equipped with Google TV keep the option under Settings -> Display & Sound or Channels & Inputs.
Under rarer circumstances, peripherals may need a software update to gain full CEC functionality.
Keep in mind that peripheral compatibility is equally important here. Only devices connected through HDMI can take advantage of CEC, and audio hardware must specifically be plugged into a port labeled for ARC or eARC. Additionally, with some gear, you may need to check that it has its own CEC and wake-up settings in order. If you have a PlayStation 5, you can use your TV remote to control the homescreen, and/or power the console on and off simultaneously — but you’ll want to make sure those options are active under Settings -> System -> HDMI.
Under rarer circumstances, peripherals may need a software update to gain full CEC functionality. With my Steam Deck, I needed to wait for an update to both the handheld and its dock before I could power everything on by hitting a button on one of my 8BitDo wireless controllers.
Are there any downsides to using CEC?
Oh, the pain of it all
Yes, actually. In some scenarios, devices can “hijack” each other when you don’t want them to. If you’ve got a game console, for instance, you may want it to keep running when you turn off your TV, since you might just want to save energy while you have a game paused or a large install underway. Cutting power suddenly could cause you to lose hours of progress — or worse. It’s better to let a console put itself to sleep.
A more benign form of this problem is sudden input switching. If an HDMI device wakes up unexpectedly, it may forcibly switch video inputs, no matter what you were doing at the time. You might also run into remote/controller conflicts. These issues seem to be relatively uncommon, but I’ve experienced the video one first-hand.
If an HDMI device wakes up unexpectedly, it may forcibly switch video inputs, no matter what you were doing at the time.
You’ve got a few options if CEC gives you grief. The first is to disable it entirely using your TV’s Settings app, following steps suggested in the last section. In some cases, you may be able to disable CEC on a per-input or per-device basis — explore a peripheral’s own settings if it has a visual interface.
The most extreme approach to resolving CEC conflicts involves buying a blocking adapter. Given that there’s usually a software solution, you’ll probably be wasting money, and some adapters can limit device features if there’s a mismatch in HDMI versions. You most definitely shouldn’t use a CEC blocker with an ARC- or eARC-equipped speaker.
