Your surround sound setup is broken, but it's not your speakers' fault

HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) was designed to let all home theater devices communicate over a single HDMI chain, enabling universal remote control. In practice, it's plagued by incompatible manufacturer-branded implementations (Sony Bravia Sync, Samsung Anynet+, LG SimpLink, etc.), buggy firmware, and devices that drop the HDMI handshake when sleeping. The result is random TV shutoffs, input switching, and lost surround sound. The only workaround is trial-and-error cable configuration, and a single misbehaving device — like a game console that hijacks the CEC chain — can break everything. CEC-blocking adapters exist as a last resort, but no one seems to be fixing the underlying standard.