Qinux BitBip 89 with a soundbar?

Two HDMI ports is tight, so I get the concern. A friend of mine had the same setup with a retro stick and a soundbar, and what tripped him up was where the sound actually comes from. If the stick is plugged straight into the TV, the TV handles the handoff to the soundbar, and in his case it worked right away. What he did have to check was the TV’s audio output setting, because it defaulted to the internal speakers and he thought the soundbar was broken for a day or two. Once he set it to the soundbar output, it stayed put. The other thing worth knowing is that these little retro sticks usually don’t send audio through anything except the HDMI cable, so as long as your soundbar is connected to the TV and the TV is set to pass audio along, you’re fine. No cable swapping. I’d just poke around the TV’s sound menu before you assume it’s not working, since that was his whole issue. What soundbar model do you have?

Since the soundbar is already working off that other port, the stick shouldn’t change anything on its end. The TV just keeps sending audio out the way it does now, the stick is only feeding video and sound into the TV. The one thing I’d do before ordering is plug something into that free port and see if the TV still plays through the soundbar. If it does now, the BitBip won’t behave any differently.

Our setup ended up doing the opposite of what a lot of people here are describing. We had the soundbar on one port and added a little game stick to the second one, and the audio kept coming from the TV speakers instead. Nothing was broken, the picture was fine, it just would not send the sound out to the bar while the stick was the active input. My husband fiddled with the TV menu for a bit and got it working through the soundbar settings, but it was not automatic like I expected. So I would say check your TV’s audio output menu before you order, because ours did not just pass it along on its own. Once it was set, it stayed put and the kids have been using it fine for a couple of months. For what it’s worth the stick itself has been simple enough, plug it in and the controllers paired right away. I was the one expecting a headache and it was mostly the TV that caused it, not the console.

I plugged a similar little HDMI stick into my bedroom TV a few months back and had the same two port panic. What I noticed is that the stick doesn’t really care what the TV does with audio, it just sends the picture and sound to the TV like any other device. The TV then decides where that audio goes, and since your soundbar is already set up on the other port, it should keep doing its thing. Mine just worked without me touching any settings, which was a relief because I’m not big on menus. The one thing I did have to do was make sure the stick was actually selected as the input, otherwise the soundbar was happily playing silence from the TV channel. That part took me a minute to figure out, which is a bit embarrassing. So short version, you shouldn’t need to swap cables around every time. Just pick the right input and let the TV handle the rest.

My living room TV is a bit older and only has two HDMI ports too, and I ran into something similar when I hooked up a little streaming stick alongside my soundbar. In my case the TV didn’t automatically pass the audio over, I had to go into the TV’s audio settings and pick the soundbar as the output instead of the stick. Once I did that it stayed put and I didn’t have to mess with cables again. So it can work without switching back and forth, but it might depend on whether your TV lets you choose the audio source separately from the video source. Worth a quick look in your TV’s sound menu before you order, just to see what options are listed there.

My preference is just to keep the soundbar on its own port and not mess with swapping anything. On my setup the TV remembers the audio route per input, so the console ends up on the other port with sound going to the bar anyway. Took me one evening of menu digging to get it set that way, mostly because the labels are vague, but since then I haven’t touched a cable. The catch is it only held after I set the audio output once per input, and I had to redo it after a firmware update. So it works, just not as set-and-forget as the box makes it sound.

Mine is plugged into the second port on a fairly basic LG and the soundbar still handles audio fine, so I don’t think you’ll be swapping cables. It picked up the stick straight away and the controllers paired without any fuss. Picture was a bit soft on the older games but that’s just how they look. Which soundbar are you running?

Fair enough, an LG isn’t a Samsung so it’s not a straight comparison. Since yours is a 4-series and you’re not ordering yet, check the TV’s sound settings menu for an option to lock audio output to the soundbar, or look up that model’s manual on audio passthrough before you buy. If neither is clear, order from somewhere with easy returns.

The only thing I’d check is whether your TV lets you pick the audio out separately from the input. Mine has a setting buried in the sound menu for that, and once it’s set the stick doesn’t touch the soundbar at all.

Might depend on what your TV does with the second port. On mine the soundbar stayed on its own port and the stick went in the other one and audio still went through the bar, no swapping. Worth checking the audio output setting once before you assume it won’t work.