I need help getting the digital audio on my tv to work

[Takeabackroad]

I have a very expensive hitachi home theater, it has a built in surround that sounds amazing but I wanted to hook up one of my surrounds ,I originally tried connecting a Sony surround directly into the tvs digital audio port, but I wasn't getting sound, then I read in an online manual that my tv needs to be set to "tv as center" in order to enable the digital audio port. I set my tv as center but still got nothing out of any of the surrounds I connected, I also bought new optical audio cables just to be sure my cable wasn't bad, still got no sound, I already know that I can hook everything up through hdmi and it would work but that means every time I want to use my tv I would have to turn on the surround and then select the hdmi port, I want to just be able to use the surround when I want and not all the time

 

[Rocky Bennett]

What is the model of your TV and can you post a link to the online manual?

 

[jsmithepa]

Many TVs will output surround ONLY if it's available through TV broadcast. If you are watching through a cable box, a DVD player, an x-box etc, you *may* have to make direct connections from the cable box, dvd player, x-box to your audio system directly.

Now your "surround" which you gave no specification, model# whatever (thanks!) should, in many cases have multiple digital inputs for the said source devices, and THIS is where you control whether surround is desired or not. If your surround is a full-featured AV receiver we are in a good place. If your surround is one of those all-in-1, or a sound bar, take it back to the store and ask then, "this is what I have and want to do, what do I need?"

 

[Takeabackroad]

What is the model of your TV and can you post a link to the online manual?

Hey rockey, the model number is hitachi 70vs810 I don't have a link, I just Google for the manual, for right now I have my surround sound connected through the monitor out and it does exactly what I want but I still would like to use the digital audio, however I'm kind of beginning to believe that the port on my tv is broken. I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to electronics so I know I'm connecting everything up the right way, by product of elimination the last thing would be a faulty optical port

 

[Takeabackroad]

I have my surround sound connected through the monitor out and it does exactly what I want but I still would like to use the digital audio, however I'm kind of beginning to believe that the port on my tv is broken. I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to electronics so I know I'm connecting everything up the right way, by product of elimination the last thing would be a faulty optical port, it's a $3200 tv, I own very expensive audio equipment, I don't buy little sound bars or crap from Walmart ,the sony one I paired with this tv was $1300, I know it works because I took it off of my 110 inch which it worked flawlessly on, Im thinking about buying the same exact tv just to find out if my port is faulty, another option would be to buy a whole replacement board or just a new optical jack and solder the new one in replace of the old one