OK all you smart people, my mother has a 65" inch Veon TV. The picture quality is actually ok. She uses a 1st gen Mi Box S.

She had a soundbar (I donated to her) which died. Originally I attempted connecting the Mi Box to the sound bar in the hope that it would pass the video through to the TV via HDMI out. While this worked on the sound bar when I owned it using a htpc and a 1080p telly, this 4K Mi Box and 4K telly would have nothing to do with this idea. So then I enabled ARC on the telly and connected it to the sound bar. This worked, except the TV volume and the sound bar volume would both increase and decrease using the TV remote but not at the same scale. So they would drift into wildly different volumes.

She put up with this for a long time. Now it's dead I'm looking for a better solution. Audio output options available on the Mi Box seem to be mini SPDIF/3.5mm audio out (I think the port supports both, I can't find a manual).

Is there a sound bar or speaker system out there that I can plug the Mi Box into via HDMI, and then have the video passed onto the telly from the sound bar, without creating some HDCP nightmare, or having TV speakers working at the same time and fighting?

And what about the remote situation? I'd like the Mi Box remote to control the sound bar volume via CEC, and ideally turn the telly on and off?

Any ideas, or other Veon owners who have already solved this?

Cheers!!!