They won't be changing that ever, many people have multiple Roku tv's next to one another the only way to control them separately is to pair wifi remote to each one. But if it continued to send IR at the same time as Wifi you can never control Roku tv's separately.
But how many have multiple Roku Tvs each with an Optical output? That is NOT the norm. They need to leave IR on if Optical is selected OR fix the earc issue!
Tv's with optical are being phased out, arc/earc is taking there place.
What is wrong with your earc? I have arc/earc on my Amazon Omni Five tv connected to my Roku Streambar Pro with no trouble at all.
Well, for one not EVERYONE has a Roku streambar. I have a Vizio 5.1 soundbar that worked with the 55" roku tv just fine until the original roku tv died. I then replace the dead roku tv with the QLED version and it has NEVER worked on this (you can see a thread going back over 14 months on this issue). The same soundbar works on a Visio TV (note difference Visio vs Vizio) and a Samsung TV with NO ISSUE through their eARC interface. Now the soundbar is ARC (not eARC) but according to Roku that should not be an issue. The problem is the Roku TV's implementation of eARC, not the soundbar. Also your response covered a non-Roku TV and I have Roku Ultra's on my Visio TV with no issue hooking up via eARC.
