Plasma TV keeps ruining Dolby 5.1 setup.

[GoingUp]

I just setup a Panasonic 50PX60U with a Denon receiver and HD cable.

I have the HD cable running to the back of my TV. I go into the cable box menu and tell it to output Dolby Digital when available. I save my settings.

Everything works. I can watch HD channels and they come in in Dolby 5.1 when available.

Then I turn the TV off. And I turn it back on. The cable box reverts itself back to outputting audio through HDMI. I've tested every combo I can think of. I've tried it directly from the back of the cable box to the receiver with both an optical audio and digital coax cable and every time that I turn the TV off and back on, it ruins the Dolby Digital and will only play in Prologic 2. I've made sure to leave the receiver on while powering the TV off and then back on and the problem occurs.

I can power the receiver off and on without a problem until I turn the TV off. I've even tried using the optical out on the back of the TV and it doesn't work and play stuff in Dolby.

I'm totally stumped. Now the one thing I haven't done yet is call my cable company. It's Time Warner, although I had this exact same setup with Comcast several months ago and never had a problem.

I've went through all of the menus and all of my manuals and no idea what the problem could be.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Cliffs

HD cable routed to TV via HDMI, optical or digital coax directly to receiver. Watch channel and Dolby 5.1 works. Turn TV off, then back on, watch exact same channel and I only get Dolby Prologic.

Edit: I just confirmed that I can turn the TV on or off with Dolby Digital playing on my DVD player connected via HDMI to my TV and Coax to the TV without any problems. It appears to be a problem with my cable box, but I find it really bizarre. The only other thing that I can think of to try is to hook both my cable box and DVD player up to my receiver via digital COAX as that is how they were hooked up previous when I had Comcast and everything worked.

 

[dclive]

Call the cable company.

I'm assuming the Denon box has no HDMI?

 

[GoingUp]

No HDMI on the Denon box. Cable company is coming out tonight with a different cable box. Here is a link I found. The problem is quite common with Time Warner from what I've found.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1155946

Here is a post from there that describes exactly what is happening to me.

1. Time Warner got cute with their firmware that they use on the 8300HDC, and have completely removed the ability to revert to the "AutoDiscover" HDMI program that is mentioned in the SciAtl book on page 2.
2. In another stroke of genius, they removed any menu option that can be used to set the output format of HDMI audio if the previous process didn't work, or you want to override it.
3. If you really want 5.1, like I do, you can send the video via HDMI, and then use Digital Coax to send the audio. (I figured this out on my own, so TWC has still added nothing for me to this point.) Here's the fun part, though. In order to make this work, you need to manually change the setting from HDMI to Dolby Digital. The even more fun part is that the box reverts back to HDMI automatically every time you turn it off. What I DID learn from TWC yesterday, "oh yeah, that's what the boxes do. We've told IT that we need a fix for that." Great, I'll hold my breath.
4. Trying to switch to an 8300HD will be a complete waste of time as they are "rolling out the upgraded software" over the next few months. Maybe I need to re-read the dictionary, but upgrades don't normally remove features in my understanding.
5. If this is even a flicker of hope, the manager that I got on the phone did acknowlege that they had been getting a lot of phone calls from pissed off people who were in a similar spot to me. He was in agreement that they either need to get the multichannel HDMI audio working properly (ideally) or at least leave the "Digital Out" option in place when the box is switched on and off, so the workaround will work without manual input every time I turn on the TV.

 

[newnameman]

Wait, is it switching back to HDMI audio when you turn the TV off, or when you turn the cable box off?

 

[GoingUp]

New cable box, Scientific American 8300HDC was just installed, and it has the same @#$()@#&$)#$& problem.

As soon as I turn the TV off, then back on, the cable box reverts the audio back to HDMI instead of Dolby Digital like I manually set.

 

[postmortemIA]

my cable box has setting for HDMI out pass-through or PCM. Pass-through does what you want - optical out of the TV to receiver yields 5.1 sound.

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
my cable box has setting for HDMI out pass-through or PCM. Pass-through does what you want - optical out of the TV to receiver yields 5.1 sound.

I tried that as well with no luck.