Sky+ HD & Sound

[J45SON]

Guy's, hopefully you can help me with this one. My brother-in-law has asked me to install his new Samsung 40" LCD TV, in his new house, which will include moving his Sky+ HD box. Now as the TV will be wall mounted, with the box connected, will he need 5.1 speakers to hear HD on his new TV?

I'm with cable, so not too sure on his Sky set up. He doesn't have surround sound just now. With mine, the pre-installed speakers in my Samsung play ordinary sound on all the channels except the HD ones. When we watch an HD channel we need to have the surround switched on. Is it the same for Sky?

cheers
j

 

[-Ju-]

No you'll still get sound through the hdmi on ALL channels, but if you want proper surround sound you'll need to take a feed out of the rear of the Sky+HD box, either optical or coaxial, to a seperate surround system

 

[Wozski]

I have optical from the sky to my surround sound. Works well

 

[aragorn]

The sky box has an option to downmix the output to stereo, so if you just wanting normal sound on the TV then as long as "digital audio output" is set to stereo you'll be fine, and all the sound will come from the TV.

If your feeding it to a Dolby Digital Reciever (or some all in one surround box) then you will need to leave it set to "dolby digital", and either use the surround system all the time, or switch it on when your watching something in 5.1

Tv Speakers are generally pretty crap, so i have my TV volume permenantly off, and solely use the 5.1 amp for all my audio. The amp just clicks in and out of surround mode by itself depending on the signal.


PS: When fitting the TV, it should be fitted at eye level from the seating position, rather than half way up the wall.

 

[J45SON]

cheers for the advice. i agree on the height up the wall, mine is just a nice height but i miss aheart beat when the kids are running around the living room. i'll find out what they want to do about the sound.

j

 

[Good 2 B A Gooner]

As others said mate - use an optical into a 5.1 system - no point in having HD and sh*t sound!

Not a fan of HDMI doing picture and sound - a bit like having a washer-dryer; they never work as well as separate units. IMO it's better to push pictures through a dedicated HDMI and sound through a dedicated optical.

 

[beanoir]

As others said mate - use an optical into a 5.1 system - no point in having HD and sh*t sound!

Not a fan of HDMI doing picture and sound - a bit like having a washer-dryer; they never work as well as separate units. IMO it's better to push pictures through a dedicated HDMI and sound through a dedicated optical.

Thats not quite true, sorry to have to say... But HD Audio such as Dolby True HD requires a much higher bit rate than what an optical cable can transfer, whereas HDMI even carrying sound and picture will transfer far higher bit rate and more complex decoding.

Perhaps not relevant if the OP is only using his TV speakers, if you're listening to a soundtrack that has been downmixed from HD audio (Dolby True HD ect) into 2 channel stereo, then it really makes no odds anyway, as it won't be HD audio that comes out of the TV, but it would still be a better option to use the HDMI rather than HDMI & Optica if only to use one less cable in his setup whilst not losing any quality.

HDMI is the way forward and far superior in all respects, if you have the option to use it over scart/optical/etc then you should.

 

[J45SON]

thanks for the help, however all cables are connected correctly and it works amazing when watching a dvd, but when the sky is on, the sound out of the speakers is almost non existant. the sub doesn't come on at all and the sound is almost at max.

i've taken out the cables and re-connected them. the settings on the sky box are alrady set to dolby etc as prev mentioned.

it's doing my head in - so pullleeeese help.

tara for the noo

j

 

[NHN]

whats the connections from sky to tv etc?

 

[J45SON]

tv - sky = hdmi
tv - dvd = hdmi
tv - dvd = optical

i called samsung yesterday and they advised me to change the settings on the tv, so that the speakers are set to external all the time. i'll do this when i next go over and give you an update. cheers for all the help.

j

 

[NHN]

Samsung call centers are useless, external would be if you're using a receiver to route audio through to external speakers as I do with my samsung led to my soundbar, so you would end up with no sound on the tv at all.

The hdmi on skyhd box didnt support 5.1, so you had to stick an optical cable aswell to the tv to get this, 1st try changing the Dolby to Stereo & see if sound improves, although this loses 5.1 or stick an optical on & set the skyhd to optical in settings.

 

[J45SON]

tried changing the settings from stereo to dolby but no difference. my brother in law has now managed to loose the damn manual. the only other thought was a ***** optical cable.

i'll try again at the weekend. thanks for all your help.

j

 

[NHN]

Make sure the tos cable has actually got the red light coming out of the end to go to the tv before connecting it mate, if not then the sky box isnt sending it & thus sod all sound, but it could also be the cable is ********, poor seating of the connector, assuming you are pushing it home fully as they sometimes can feel pushed in but not complete & thus sound sucks.

 

[J45SON]

the red light is on and i've changed the cable for another. the sound stll sucks and i tried double checking thats it's pushed in. cheers for your help

 

[beanoir]

Jason,

When you say the sound still sucks, what do you mean?

Remember not all sky or indeed even HD channels broadcast in 5.1 so it will also depend on the program you're watching.

Are you getting decent surround sound from your DVD?

 

[J45SON]

sound sucks - low volume when turned right up.
will try other channels.
sound when watching dvd is ok, but not as good as my own set up, which is almost the same, except i have V+

thanks for the help.
j

 

[graemep]

The cabling you have suggests to me you arent getting 5.1 sound.

tv - sky = hdmi
tv - dvd = hdmi
tv - dvd = optical

Is the DVD one an all-in one system?

A Sky HD box will not output 5.1 sound over HDMI.

The other point is the TV will not passthrough any 5.1 signals, and will downmix to stereo audio -if the volume is low you might be missing the centre channel

 

[Beardo]

Just a thought, do you have to change settings on sky box to tell it you are outputting audio via optical?

I know you probably thought of it but as i said, just a thought.
I'm using optical with sky but i'm not on HD yet so using scart for the video and Optical into my 5.1 amp