Project HTPC: HDMI to Toslink via the TV
I have two devices connected to the TV using HDMI, one xbox 360 and the HTPC. This is great as long as the sound plays on the TV itself (since HDMI carries video and sound). The thing is that I want to use my surround speakers as the sound output when playing games on the xbox or watch movies on the HTPC.
The surround system accepts an optical Toslink cable and has a decoder for DTS and Dolby Digital, and it just so happens that my Samsung TV has an optical Toslink output! Great … or is it?
While the TV does output 5.1 sound to the optical cable when watching TV, it does not when the sound source comes from HDMI. The TV recodes the audio to standard 2.0 sound and forwards it. I haven’t been able to find a way to disable this “feature” as of yet.
This leaves me with three options.
– Live with it. Accept the fact that I only get 2.0 sound from the xbox and HTPC. As you might have guessed, this is totally unacceptable!
– Get a new TV. Getting a TV which supports forwarding 5.1 sound from HDMI to Toslink, if one exists. While this is an option, there is a cheaper option I will need to try first.
– A switch for multiple Toslink sources. A cheap switch which switches between different sources can be bought for a reasonable amount of money (plus two extra Toslink cables).
I found the following switch which seems to do what I want.
Toslink Switch
The main disadvantage with this solution is the manual switch which has to be turned when changing sound source. It is not that bad I guess, if it works as advertised. I will pick one up as soon as possible and try it out.
Partner link: A good place for Toslink Cable & Switch and other home theater supplies.
Hi,
Do you have updates to your trials?
I have been struggling with this same problem for a while now. I connect my Vaio laptop to Sony LCD 46w4500 via HDMI, and Sony LCD to receiver via toslink. I only get stereo. I thought the problem is the Vaio, as I can only configure its HDMI sound output as stereo (when connected to TV). However, today I found out that actually the TV accepts only 2 linear PCM channels. So the limitation is at least the TV, perhaps also the laptop? I was wondering if there is a switch with one hdmi input, one hdmi output and one toslink output. Then I could connect the toslink directly to tv and hopefully get surround (assuming the laptop would output 5.1 in this configuration).
Thanks,
Val
@Val It seems that you have the same problem as me. I haven’t seen a HDMI to HDMI and toslink switch though I’m afraid. It’s very strange that the TV manufacturers only have 2 channel sound in their optical output.
The laptop should be fine however. You just need to configure Windows to tell it that there are 5.1 channels instead of the default 2.0. You should be able to test this by connecting your laptop directly to your receiver using toslink and playing a movie with surround sound, or just do the Windows built-in speaker test.
I forgot to mention that the toslink switch I bought works great! The only downside is that I have to get up from the couch to change the input, but I can live with that for now. I’ll probably get a HDMI receiver in the future.
The laptop does not have toslink (optical) so unfortunately I can’t test if it would output 5.1 . I should test with a HDMI receiver … but I don’t have one. I could then see if the laptop’s HDMI output can be configured as 5.1 in that case (only 2.0 option when I connect to TV). While it seems clear that the TV cannot pass 5.1, it is not clear yet that the laptop itself can output 5.1 on HDMI…
When searching on the internet I found out that this is a problem for lots of people. If the main limitation is the TV, this means that I have to buy a new receiver, which is not very nice … my Yamaha is only a few years old, and yet obsolete…