Surround 5.1 system not working if I pass-through the TV via HDMI.

MZoltanA

Prominent
Mar 20, 2017
2
0
510
Hello,

I just bought a home cinema: Sony BDVE2100 (blu-ray 5.1 surround), have a Sony Bravia TV (40R450C) and a PC with GTX 950 graphics card. Blu-ray player works fine with 5.1 surround and all, but when I try to loop in the PC through the TV it only works on stereo. Now I know that it is because it sends only 2 channel signals from the PC to the TV through HDMI.

Here is the setup:

PC (video card) ----- HDMI -----> TV ----- S/PDIF-----> Blu-ray player

And with this setup the PC sees only 2 channels.

I also took another approach and had a friend borrow me a cheap external audio card (Logilink Sound Box USB 7.1 UA0099) and connected this with S/PDIF to the Blu-Ray player. Same story, only 2 channels shown, despite the fact that this approach works with a Boxe Logitech 5.1 Z506 setup. True that in the latter case it's connected with 3 cables and not with S/PDIF.

Also the PC runs with windows 10 and the blu-ray player doesn't have HDMI in, so it's not an option to have direct link between the PC and receiver via HDMI.

Any help, suggestion or advice is much appreciated.
 
Solution
"Home cinema;s" with a built in bluray and used to be dvd's, are great for getting sound out of the built on device. Anything outside of that is a total crapshot. Always has been for 15 years with these things. The best way to hook up multiple devices for full true surround is to use a receiver, now called AVR's. it has multiple HDMI inputs and a output and processing everything going into it.
"Home cinema;s" with a built in bluray and used to be dvd's, are great for getting sound out of the built on device. Anything outside of that is a total crapshot. Always has been for 15 years with these things. The best way to hook up multiple devices for full true surround is to use a receiver, now called AVR's. it has multiple HDMI inputs and a output and processing everything going into it.
 
Solution

MZoltanA

Prominent
Mar 20, 2017
2
0
510


So you're saying there's no way to get it to work with these components?
 
Well first of all your PC will only output 5 channels if you A) have your audio card and your windows set to 5.1 and B) if you are playing a 5.1 media source.

If you are listening to a youtube video with only stereo sound, you get stereo sound.


This is why the all-in-one surround receivers are a poor choice. They are designed to put the blu-ray disk in surround sound and the company really doesnt care if you get anything else.
 

Jacopo_4

Prominent
Jul 19, 2017
4
0
510
I found out that if you put an HDMI to optical converter between pc and tv, then the tv somehow accepts 5.1 from the pc and sends it via hdmi-arc to the home theater (I have a Sony Bdv-E3100 which is similar to yours)

The strange thing is that you don't even need the optical connection
 


OP does not have HDMI input on his home theater so ARC from TV to Reciever is out of the question.
Plugging the HDMI into TV and outputting audio via optical is the same thing as using the converter, most TVs just have the audio converter built in.