Getting Dolby Digital on Sky HD box.

[admin_exported]

Hi

Noobie here so please be gentle. I bought all my HD equipment last year and followed most of the recommendations for an ideal set-up after reading What HiFi.

I thought I was getting quite good at understanding the jargon but then came across several posts that seem to suggest that if I connect my Sky HD via HDMI to my Onkyo 606 that it still isn't getting DD.

It seems from what I have read that even if I connect an optical lead and assign the input from the Sky box it will still force the audio through the HDMI. Have I misunderstood this?

The sound I get from the amp seems quite good but would it be better if the amp was processing DD?

Thanks and regards

anc's

 

[Messiah]

anchorman_02:
It seems from what I have read that even if I connect an optical lead and assign the input from the Sky box it will still force the audio through the HDMI. Have I misunderstood this?

Once you connect the Optical cable from the Sky HD box to the Amp you will need to adjust the Sky HD box to override the HDMI outputting the sound.

Cannot be more specific to menu options as I have Virgin.

But rest assured that you can get DD out of the box via Optical.

 

[Andrew Everard]

More to the point, you will have to set the Onkyo to take audio from optical when you select the input - CBL/SAT? - to which the Sky is sending video via HDMI. It's all done in the input assign menu, and if it wasn't 8.20pm on a Sunday night and I'd been in here all day as well as doing a Meals on Wheels round, the laundry and cooking a steak and kid pie from scratch I'd tell you what page of the manual told you how to do it!

 

[Anonymous]

No that is OK Andrew - since last July I have nearly read the ink off the page of that manual and I know how to do it!!! The biggest job is hauling it all back from the wall to get at the interconnects. I was just about to sell my QED optical lead on ebay having replaced several leads with one Monster 1000 lead when I got the HD box.

I thought I read in another post that it wasn't possible to leave the picture via the HDMI and then use an optical output for the sound.

I know a lot more about vehicles than I do about Home Cinema but it seems a wasted opportunity when the main benefit of HDMI is that there is one cable for both. Is it something Sky will address via firmware or is it a hardware issue?

Thank you very much for your replies.

 

[Clare Newsome]

It's been perfectly possible since day 1 of Sky HD to leave the picture via HDMI and sound via optical - it's just the way Sky (and Virgin) handle it; no news of any change in that system.