Using HomePods with a projector and blu-ray player

Hi all - I excitedly received my Epson 5050ub projector today but realized it doesn’t support ARC technology and that this could make it difficult or impossible to use my HomePod (classic) stereo pair as the projector’s speaker system, which I’d intended.

Have I hit a limitation of HomePods not having audio-in ports …. or is it possible to connect an ARC-capable blu-ray player & an Apple TV 4k (1st or 2nd gen) to the projector and to pass the blu-ray audio (and video if necessary0 through the Apple TV and then on to the HomePods?

I know I can connect a PC blu-ray drive to a Mac and connect the Mac to the projector via HDMI, controlling video playback using the Mac, Air Playing to the HomePods.

But I don’t currently have a working Mac (just an iPad Pro), and, frankly, I hoped to avoid the hassle of blu-ray playback using a Mac. I’d like to simply turn the projector on, set it to play input from either the Apple TV or the Panasonic blu-ray player, and to use the Panasonic or Apple TV remote to control playback.

Any ideas if this is possible? Any ideas? I called Apple support but they said said they weren’t trained to deal with issues as complex as this one.

Thanks much!!