Setting up optical out on my Hisense 55U7A

[Whiffle]

Hi there.

Am just rejigging my setup a bit, at the moment.

I have an old amplifier (a Yamaha YHT294), which does not support 4k video, CEC or HDMI passthrough. It only supports Dolby Digital and DTS.

I have an XBOX One S and a Raspberry Pi connected directly to my TV.

The TV is connected to my amplifier by optical out.

My family can now easily switch between Netflix (via the Smart TV) and the Pi and XBOX and have the option of turning on the amplifier whenever needed.

I was just messing with the settings and if I change the TV's speaker setting to SPDIF, I get three options - Raw, Dolby Digital and PCM.

Which one would be the best for me?

 

[lucid]

Raw. This will allow the TV to send either PCM stereo or Dolby Digital up to 5.1 to the amp. Depending on the capabilities of the TV, the amp might even get DTS in stereo or possibly DTS5.1.

The other options involve the TV converting whatever sound it gets in to either PCM stereo (probably with Dolby ProLogic encoding, but no firm guarantee), or Dolby Digital in the number of channels that the TV is receiving the signal. That can sometimes cause a problem with amps. Where the amp gets DD 2.0, it might default to DD processing and play the signal as-is. So you'd get stereo + sub, but no centre or surround sound. If the amp received PCM stereo instead, it could apply Dolby PLII to create some rear surround.

To recap then, choose raw.

 

[Whiffle]

Thanks mate.

Unfortunately, I chose raw and there was no sound at all when using the Netflix smart app on my TV - changed the setting to Dolby Digital and it worked again.

Why do you think that is? I suppose I shall have to keep that setting instead.

 

[lucid]

Netflix is trying to send Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) out via the TV. The TV may block that because it wants to use HDMI ARC for that signal.

Do you have any options to change the Netflix audio out to basic DD? If not, then it looks like you're stuck with the TV converting to DD internally.