Home audio & video forum: HDMI audio vs optical audio

No I do have a cable box. The Receiver is an Onkyo 605. I tried running HDMI from the cable box to the receiver and from the receiver to the TV. worked fine for video. couldn't get it to work for audio. worked with ONKYO techs via email and I'm satisfied it wasn't a programming issue in the receiver. ONKYO thought there might be something wrong in my receivers HDMI board. it could also be a cable issue as my HDMI cables are ultra cheap ones I ordered on the web; however, if I run one of these cables direct from the cable box to the TV it does get audio. so I gave up and ran the video straight to the TV via HDMI and ran the audio direct from the cable box to the receiver via a digital line; although I could certainly try again.

my current DVD player is an older ONKYO without HDMI so it runs component video and digital audio. at first I ran the component video through the receiver but I decided there was no reason to do that and now it goes direct to the TV. again audio goes to the receiver with a digital line.

what prompts the question is the notion of upgrading the DVD to Blu-Ray. I'm looking at the new Samsung 3600 and wondering if I will get full surround sound if I don't figure out why my 605 isn't getting HDMI audio from the cable box. Now my 605 does have a full set of 7 RCA jacks that I'm not using at all. will I get all the codecs if I just run a full set of 7 separate wires? HDMI is more elegant but using the RCA jacks could be the simple solution and the cheapest one too if the problem is my el cheapo HDMI cables. you can buy a lot of RCA cables for the price of what they get for a single premium HDMI cable. will I lose any sound if I just forget about being fancy and drop back to a full set of analog connections?

so there is no downside to using the multichannel inputs other than the cable maze? I'd get just as good of audio as making the HDMI work and as good or not better than the digital? it has to be better to run the video directly to the TV instead of through the receiver.

the advantage of using the receiver is that everything goes to the TV through a single input that way but my wife never could figure out how to use the remove that came with the cable box to control the various devices that had to be switched when I had things hooked up that way so I bought a Harmony One remote. now I can program it to make all the adjustments. I figure there has to be some signal loss taking the video through the receiver so I stopped doing it.

the cable-box is a Scientific Atlanta Explorer and I have tried changing its audio settings but never could find the magic combination that would allow my 605 to receive the audio signal over the HDMI cable.

the cable box is a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC. the audio digital output is set to HDMI rather than dolby digital and seems to have no effect as actually the current setup is using a digital cable rather than an HDMI. I've tried both settings with both types of cables.

I have the Scientific Atlanta 8300 cablebox hooked up to my 46 inch samsung 46a540 hdtv thru HDMI and a Samsung 5.1 ch HT-Z422 dvd home theater connected via HDMI to the HDTV. I was only able to get sound from all 6 speakers only when watching DVD's from the HT-Z422's dvd player. I was told that I needed a digital audio connection from my cable box to the HT-Z422 in order to bypass the tv sound to get to the home theater speakers in the HT-Z422 (I used a optical audio cable to handle that). I get sound now thru the HT-Z422's speakers when watching shows on Cable, but only from the front speakers...how can I get sound from all 6 speakers when watching Cable TV?

Onkyos are pretty solid with HDCP, and most audio settings that I can think of. A real value. Now the mass produced boxes for the cable companies are another thing entirely. Either it's the buried audio setting that I've suggested, or a box swap might be in order perhaps. Good call on checking one of the other HDMI ports.

cheers,
Pedro

I have an Onkyo TX-SR501 receiver(circa 2005), that I believe decodes 5.1 and DTS audio. In fact it sounds great with DTS DVD's. Unfortunately it has no HDMI capability. I just purchased a Panasonic BR player (DMP BD60K) and plan to hook it up via HDMI to my Samsung 52LA630 LCD TV. Then run optic cable from the BR player to Onkyo receiver. Am I correct that I cannot access the true HD audio offered through the Panasonic BR player? In following the above connection scenario will I get my optimum audio? Will I have to change settings on BR/receiver? Your feed back and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.

Ouch!!
It took me a while to figure it out as I am not an electronics whiz ... all you have to do is switch the input and re-assign it.
I used input4 -game/tv.

Worked for me, Sid