I took a spare HDMI cable and killed pin 13 then plugged that end into my Vero 4K+ and everything works as expected now, but obviously no CEC from the Vero.
All the other devices work as expected with CEC and inputs don’t switch on their own.
If I put the HDMI cable with pin 13 still intact back into the Vero, it’s starts hogging the HDMI again.
Tried shutting everything down, unplug the power strip from the wall, and cold boot everything back up… Vero still hogs HDMI.
I tried booting the TV first, then a different device next like a game system, and the Vero same results with HDMI hogging.
Tried booting Vero before other devices and I get the same result.
So it doesn’t appear to matter which devices engage CEC first, second, or last.
Once Vero boots up it hogs HDMI.
If I switch to another input, the Vero makes my TV or my receiver switch back to it.
So only way to use other inputs on my receiver or my TV or the built in TV apps is to unplug the Vero or use the HDMI cable with pin 13 removed.
So I’m just going to stick with my modded HDMI cable for now.
I was just going to disable CEC on every device but it needs to be on in order to use ARC from the TV.
Even when I disabled the CEC on the Vero, it still hogged the HDMI so I think the solution for most will be to mod an HDMI cable or get a CEC-less HDMI adaptor.