Solved! Playing HDMI ARC through laptop speakers?

[prdaniels]

Is there a way to get my laptop to receive HDMI ARC audio input from my LG Smart TV? Basically, I'm after a way to capture the purest digital audio stream that I can to be able to convert it to FLAC and play it on my phone when I choose (it's a digital stream of a concert through an Apple 4K TV app).

Hardware:

• Apple TV 4K
• LG Smart TV (with digital optical audio and HDMI ARC outputs)
• Dell XPS 15 9560 laptop
• I also have an HDMI => USB C adaptor, as I think that laptops can't receive HDMI through the HDMI port

Software:

• VLC
• Audacity

Any suggestions which (preferably!) don't involve a whole bunch of cables, converters, splitters, capture cards and cloners? I appreciate there mightn't be a way of avoiding some of this, though.

 

[americanaudiophile]

The simplest (and legal) solution is if that app is available on your phone then use it to listen to the concert whenever you want. The other legal option is to buy the concert and then use you use VLC to create a flac file from it. That would also be covered by the fair use doctrine.
Non legal options
1 - Use an optical to analog converter to bring the TV audio into your laptop. No advantage to using ARC in this case.
2. Get a USB audio interface with digital audio input. I could not find one with an optical input so you may also need an optical to coax digital converter. You can use Audacity to record the audio.
You will have to set the TV to PCM stereo digital audio output.

 

[prdaniels]

Thanks for the reply. I've kind of given up on HDMI ARC as an input into my computer - too fraught with HDCP issues and other stuff. But the digital audio => USB DDC will be an ideal solution. Now to find such a converter!