Help needed with Sony RHT 5500 and SKY +HD surround sound

[admin_exported]

Hi - Can someone help me with my sound setup. I have recent gone all out and bought a bravia kdl40w5500, PS3 slim, Sky+HD and slowly tearing my hair out!

The Sony stand is only 3.1 and seems to be fine with the PS3 but I dont think its working correctly with the SKY+ HD - basically the Sony stand only reports 2.0 through the stand - How do I get proper surround sound with SKY+ HD and the Sony Stand. Everything is connected via HDMI which goes into the Stand with one optical and hdmi coming out into the TV. Do I need to put the optical from sky into the stand and the hdmi from sky into the TV - I am so confused by all this!

And any help on synching this stuff up with 4 separate remote controls and not having to press the AV button to change over would be also be great!

Thanks!

 

[Andrew Everard]

The optical connection from the TV carries sound from the TV's onboard tuner to the Sony; the HDMI carries video from the Sony to the TV.

To get surround from Sky+HD you need an optical connection from the Sky box to the Sony, and to assign a the digital optical input to whichever input you have the Sky+HD HDMI connected to. That's because Sky+HD boxes only output stereo via HDMI: to get surround where the programme has it, you need to connect an optical digital feed, and select DD on the optical out menu.

All well and good, but if memory serves some of these Sony 'home cinema in a rack' systems default to HDMI sound, even when an optical digital input is connected; the solution is to connect an HDMI from the Sky+HD box straight to the TV, and run the optical audio to the rack.

 

[Anonymous]

thanks Andrew - I seem to be getting 5.1 on sky+hd now although it sounds quite echoey? the hdmi control option was set to "on" for the stand which meant i couldnt get a picture though! The stand doesnt seem to like having the optical and HDMI in it so the Sky HD so have reverted to having the sky hdmi in the TV and optical to the stand.

still alll very confusing! - thanks for your hep