Connecting TV and Blu-ray to Receiver

[Jim D]

I currently have an HDMI cable from my cable box to a Panasonic TV, but my Sony receiver doesn't have HDMI, so for sound I have RCA cables from TV to receiver, and I get acceptable (stereo) sound from two Sony speakers connected to the receiver. I would like to add a Panasonic Blu-ray player for internet access to the mix. If I just connect the Blu-ray to the TV's second HDMI connector, is there any reason that the Blu-ray's sound won't get to the speakers via the same RCA cables, just as it does now from the TV? I ask because I think I saw on this forum a post that said it would be necessary to connect the Blu-ray via HDMI directly to the receiver. Thanks for any help.

 

[boju]

The reason why it is suggested Bluray players connect directly to an modern AVR is because it will have the necessary equipment to deal with uncompressed surround sound, while a TV will only output 2 channels despite the input connection as you've noticed. Some TV's do compress and output an 5.1 sound track via S/PDIF but are rare the cheaper the TV is and usually only output 2 channels.

So yes it should work like your cable box does.

 

[Jim D]

Many thanks for the quick and helpful reply.