Solved! Cable Box/TV/Soundbar

[mmarino51589]

Hi everyone,

This may seem silly to some of you experts but here's my situation as well as the issues I'm having:

1 Vizio Soundbar (SB3651-E6 with HDMI in, HDMI out-ARC, digital coax as well as optical)

1 Spectrum Cable Box

1 Sony XBR65 series TV (2 years old, very well-enabled in terms of features and tech).

I have it setup fairly simply: HDMI out from Cable box into TV, HDMI-ARC out from TV into Soundbar.

The issue I have is that after some commercials play on the cable box, audio gets converted down (depending on the commercial) from 5.1 to 2.1, thereby generating a delay in which the audio lags behind the video from the cable box. Channel up and channel down fixes it, but only until the next commercial (this happens every time there is an audio format change on commercial - super frustrating, as you could imagine).

To remedy this, I've ran an optical cable from the Cable Box to the Soundbar to circumvent the dual audio/video delivery from the HDMI. For the most part, this has resolved the issue. I've also disconnected the HDMI from the TV to the soundbar, thereby disabling the seamless power-on feature of ARC, as well as making it a hassle when wanting to use streaming app's direct from the TV (since the HDMI was unplugged). This has led to an endless disaster of having to use several remotes, manually plug in an HDMI cable for on-television streaming apps, etc...

My question is - am I missing a very obviously simple solution here? There's an "HDMI in" slot on the soundbar, but not sure what that'd be used for and whether or not I should use that for my cable box (as opposed to plugging the cable box into the TV).

Thank you!

 

[americanaudiophile]

That soundbar has two surround sound modes (direct & movie). Did you try both.
You could try connecting the cable box to the HDMI input of the soundbar. That might eliminate the delay issue.