Newbie Question About Soundbar and HDMI Connectivity with TV and Source

[therock003]

Quick question guys, im planning to buy me first soundbar (JBL 1000). Can i use the hdmi in the bar as a switcher, meaning connect my source (media player/PS4 etc) To output to the bar and then have a second hdmi from the bar to the TV, or is it going to be HDMI eARC only? Cause my Sony TV is being weird with non Sony equipment with Hdmi Arc. I tried My Harman Kardon AVR, and it always forgot the connection and i had to go do the Sony Bravia Link almost every time i opened the TV, and many time even that would fail as it would recognise it, it was a mess

[pandy]

Sony usually works well only with other Sony equipment - from user manual https://support.jbl.com/us/en/speakers/speakers-soundbars/BAR-1000-.html it looks like you should be able to use soundbar as HDMI switcher albeit it is not clear to me what kind of audio decoders are supported by JBL product (i.e. if soundbar is autonomous audio decoder and can output decoded audio to TV).

[therock003]

I don't know is swircher is the correct terminology then. Cause what would be the point of transferring audio to the TV?

What I meant was let's say I'm watching a movie, I connect the TV BOX, HDMI to the sound bar so that it plays the sound of course, and then through another HDMI out it gives picture back to the TV

[Cornucopia]

what I have seen is that while Soundbars have switching capability, they do NOT have good round-trip passthrough capability. So, IOW, if you have PLAYER <--HDMI--> Soundbar <--ARC HDMI--> TV, you can switch between Player as input to soundbar, or TV as input to soundbar, but NOT Player as passthrough via Soundbar to TV (to show picture) and back to Soundbar for sound. Theoretically, it should be doable (especially using ARC), but I haven't seen any soundbars do it right yet.
see these graphics: https://thehometheaterdiy.com/hdmi-arc-with-soundbars/#:~:text=To%20summarize%2C%20HDM...%20are%20spec.
but maybe you will get lucky. No matter what, you MUST use the ARC/eARC port for the soundbar to work (but you probably already know that).
You ought to at least test it out, though, and let us know.

Scott