Advice on sound formats and connections

[Coup27]

Hi,

I don't know a lot about A/V so I am looking for some help on the best way to setup my Mum's TV and sound. She has the following equipment:

Sony KD-43X8305C TV
Virgin Media V6 TiVo box (UK cable TV service)
Panasonic SC-HTE80 soundbase

I have connected the single HDMI port on the cable box into HDMI1 on the TV and connected HDMI4 (ARC) on the TV to TV (ARC) AV/OUT on the soundbase.

This works fine. The soundbase goes on/off when the TV is turned on/off and volume works from the TV remote or cable box remote which I've programmed the TV code into.

My question is, is this the "best way?" Inside the settings on the cable box there are two settings for audio output. Dolby digital or Dolby digital to PCM. Whichever I choose, sound comes out the soundbase and the soundbase reports the audio format as PCM.

I read somewhere it is better to connect the cable box into the BD/DVD AV IN port on the soundbase and then connect the ARC port on the soundbase to the ARC port on the TV as this results in better quality audio? On my Mum's setup this probably isn't possible as the soundbase does not support 4k pass-through but if it did what are the options?

Thanks.

 

[mdram]

does she get any 4k programming?
you could try optical from the tv to the base, but that wont turn the base on and off
i would just run through the base and not worry about 4k
until i could upgrade to something that was 4k compliant

 

[Kartajan]

.. Mum's TV and sound...
This works fine.
...is this the "best way?" ....

Yes. Simple operation is best. The TV is outputting the audio to the soundbar, thus the soundbar is detecting PCM (The audio is decoded by the TV from the Tivo box). If you had a full AV Receiver with advanced audio processing and the speakers to do that justice (Atmos, etc..) it would be a different story (since a good AVR has much better audio decoding abilities), but for a soundbar setup you are golden..

**sidenote: Dolby Digital = lossy compression, Dolby TrueHD/ DTS HD Master audio = lossless compression, PCM= uncompressed audio.

 

[Coup27]

Thanks. I am trying to learn a bit about this as much as getting the setup correct. So currently the TiVo box is outputting Dolby digital to the TV which is converting that to PCM and sending it to the soundbase? If PCM is uncompressed why is it being converted from a lossy compressed format to an uncompressed format? Be like converting an MP3 to a WAV wouldn't it? What's the point?

Also one of the options on the TiVo box is "Dolby digital to PCM". So I presume this option means the TiVo box would convert to PCM and send it to the TV which would then just pass it on without modification to the soundbase?

 

[Kartajan]

DD has to be decoded somewhere to get used. The Tivo can do that, the TV, or the soundbar. if you were dealing with an AVR, it would be better to let that be the device to decode, as they tend to have the better guts (both hardware and software) to convert the audio to usable form (especially for the higher end audio formats).

Anything after the decoding has taken place will use the decoded signal (PCM) to play back your audio content.

 

[Coup27]

Thanks. With your posts and some Googling I've started to understand this a bit now. It's a bit of a minefield to be honest. Regarding my Mum's equipment the TV only supports DD/DD+/DD pulse. The TiVo only DD and the soundbase DD and DTS. Basically meaning DD is the only route to go to watch TV via TiVo or anything played on the TV like a film on a USB stick in the TV.

I looked at the most expensive Panasonic TV and even that didn't support the lossless codecs or Atmos.

Just for my own curiosity if I was to have a blu-ray title and the second soundtrack was in a lossless format how would I be able to watch it? Would it be a case of finding a TV and soundbar which support those formats and using ARC between them? I read somewhere that ARC can't send HD audio?

 

[Kartajan]

BluRay has multiple audio tracks, one of which will be DD.
Usually if lossless audio is a priority, the BD player would be connected directly to a AVR that can do the lossless audio, and send the video out to the TV.

ARC is not intended for high end audio, but is fine for DD and stereo audio to be fed back to a more powerful set of audio equipment.

 

[Coup27]

Got you. Looking at the connections on a high end BD player, "audio out" is a HDMI connection and Video out (video/audio out) is a HDMI connection. So to get the lossless audio into the AVR a HDMI cable is used?

And I am presuming the Video out (video/audio out) HDMI connection is so it can be used to send picture and audio to a TV and then use ARC to go to a soundbar and this arrangement would use DD?

 

[Kartajan]

Your presumption(s) are correct, although if you use ARC for audio you are limited to (lossy) DD 5.1 at best, sometimes stereo depending on the TV.
The vast majority of soundbars do not do advanced audio, they are usually just for getting better/louder sound than a TV is typically able to produce.
(There are exceptions to this, but the prices on those tend to reflect appropriately...)

Normal: BD Player--HDMI-->AVR (sends everything to AVR)
TV<--HDMI-->AVR (sends video from AVR to TV; if ARC is used, the TV can send audio back to AVR when using the TV as a source)
a split output like in the picture is really intended for alternative/ special use cases.

 

[Coup27]

OK I get it all now. Thanks for your help.