Originally Posted by Anthony-Howard
I suspect that the inability of the G65 to accept 8 channel was more of a marketing decision than an architectural one
I suspect the G65 is basically a heavily upgraded G68 and still maintains the same basic architecture, but that's just my guess/cynicism.

Originally Posted by Anthony-Howard
As an aside I may be wrong about eARC but aside from the other gubbins it is my understanding that it is the 37Mbps bandwidth of eARC that facilitates the ability to send the up to 32 channels of uncompressed LPCM data and you can't just send it down HDMI 2.0. The ability to return these channels over a single cable opens up the possibility of decoding in a location other than the source and would preclude the need for a physical loop topolog
*sigh* it can be a real challenge for the layman to work out quite what the specifications of these different standards are.

I *think* that HDMI2.0 supports up to 32 channels of LPCM at various bitrates. However, that's not the same as saying eARC supports that. after all, HDMI 1.4 supports 8 channels of LPCM but only 2 channels (or a DD/DTS stream) via ARC. I had thought that eARC supported on the return channel what HDMI 1.4 supports now, i.e. 8 channels of LPCM, truehd, DTS-MA and atmos etc, but that's only a semi-educated guess...

I think the real advantage of ARC and eARC is that it allows an amp/receiver to be an audio only device. no need to handle video at all. That's the approach Naim is taking with their new Uniti amps. a single HDMI ARC port so you can connect it to a TV and CEC support so it can be remotely controlled. I'm hoping to have one by tomorrow night...

Lounge: LG 55B6v, Some Denon receiver, Anthony Gallo Reference AV mains, Totem Dreamcatcher centre, SVS PC-4000, AppleTV4K
Office: Audioquest Dragonfly, Cyrus 6DAC, Monitor Audio CPW Gold
Headphones: NuForce HDP, Audeze LCD-2, Sennheiser HD6XX, B&O H6mk2