Audio hookups

RBaker - If using the BR player for 3D movies, or any movies, it sounds like an upgrade to the receiver and speakers may be warranted. 3D video with 2 channel audio is a bit of a mismatch.

If the receiver does not have a coax digital input, then you need some sort of external DAC, as tls49 suggested. Just make sure the BR down mixes any multi-channel signal to 2 channel.

You can just connect the optical or coax digital audio connection on your Blu Ray to the 1400 and leave it at that. There is no reason to connect the audio to the TV. Set the Blu Ray to decode the new lossless codecs to LPCM, since the 1400 does not decode the new codecs.

Your cable box audio should also connect directly the the 1400 with a digital audio connection if you want the TV sound to play through your home theater setup. If you want to also be able to use the TV with its own speakers, e.g. for watching news, you should get that from just the HDMI cable from the cable box to the TV.

Personally, I just use my receiver (also an old 1400) for all the sound.

Tis49 - I have not run into BR that can only do 2 channel digital out. If that is the case for the Sony then he can bit stream the lossy signal. If he bit streams to the TV then he needs a TV that can decode the bit stream and send it to a digital out. Not all HDMI TVs do that. But again, he would have to bit stream a lossy format. I prefer not to send the digital signal to the TV, but I also have a universal remote with macros, so switching inputs is not an issue.

Question - the Sony spec for coax/Toslink is 2 channel for 96/24. Are you sure it does not do multichannel for 48/24, which is what Dolby Digital uses? I will say I do not use this type of very entry level BR.

My mistake, he needs a TV that can ACCEPT the bitstream, not necessarily decode it. I ran into a situation just this week where the TV would not accept a 5.1 signal. Yes, it is an old HDMI TV, but they are out there. Hence the caution. I agree that most new TVs do this.

You are correct that coax does not carry 5.1 PCM. It has been a while since I dealt with this. When needed I just bitstream 5.1 over optical or coax, which is what Pentagle should do.

I would still prefer to go directly to the receiver rather than the TV. However, if the TV is a new "Smart" TV with access to Netflix and the like, then going optical from the TV to the receiver also allows you to use 5.1 from the streaming services. Then I would agree that doing everything on one digital input to the receiver is the way to go.

If you go BR to TV only, do you have to have the TV on to play a CD? Not sure how the pass through of 5.1 works on most TVs these days. Does it need power?

After doing more reading on various Internet forums, it seems that HDMI pass through of 5.1 bitsteam audio to optical (or sometimes coax) output by TVs is a hit or miss proposition - some do it and some do not, even for current models. And those that do it sometimes only do Dolby Digital and not DTS. Those that do pass DTS also sometimes have a very long delay in the audio. In addition, some that do pass through 5.1 only do so if you only do pass through. If your try to have the TV decode the signal and play the sound, some will not also pass through the 5.1 signal. That means you will need to change the TV speaker setting if you want to use the TV speaker for sound. Also, some TVs only allow pass through on one of the HDMI inputs.

I have read that the HDMI HDCP standard does not strictly allow such pass through from HDMI inputs but some manufactures do it anyway. None HDMI signals (Netflix for example) are not restricted, but signals received through HDMI are. Some manufactures seem to simply ignore the EDID settings and pass it through anyway. It some cases people go into the service menus and set an option to allow pass through. I guess that gets the manufacturer from getting in trouble with the HDCP rules. I do not know all the details but I found this discussed several places.

Some of the reported problems with TV not doing 5.1 pass through may be user error. But enough have problems even with new models to make me believe this can be a problem depending on manufacturer and even model.

From what I read, you need to be careful if you want to do 5.1 pass through of an HDMI signal through a TV. It is not uniformed implemented, even on new models. If it works fine, otherwise you can go directly from the source to your receiver with the bitstream.