Pioneer plasma and AV receiver

[admin_exported]

Hi AV Gurus!

I'm new to this forum so please be gentle

Just pondering how a as-yet-not-bought setup of Pioneer plasma and Pionner AV amp will work regarding switching of AV sources.

When I'm at a friend's house (without an AV amp), his gear plugs straight into his Kuro screen. Because of this, his TV easily knows that a source is different since he selects different inputs on the tv to get them. So for his PS3, his TV knows to use the GAME mode etc.

When you introduce an AV Amp and have all AV going through it with just a single HDMI and optical cable to the TV for all output, does the screen know a source has changed when you move the amp from, say, Blu Ray to a PS3?

Does this even matter? Just curious about how this will work as I'm worried that the amp will effectively negate any clever processing/detection the screen does for different sources.

All inputs to the amp will be through HDMI (some with optical audio too) if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.

Andy

 

[nads]

i have to ask why HDMI and optical? HDMI or optical yes. but as HDMI carries the HD sound tracks while the optical can not the optical is redundant if you have an HDMI connection. re the TV sencing what the input is I have not been bothered. but i am not playing games.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, the optical is redundant since HDMI 1.3a carries HD audio too, but, when asking a Pioneer rep about whether splitting HD audio off from HDMI would break the HDCP chain and lead to a cut in quality, he went off to his engineers to check and said that it wouldn't lead to HDCP reducing any quality, and in fact, it's recommended to use the two cables since their engineers have found the audio is improved over carrying everything over just the HDMI. So that's why I'm planning on using two - Pioneer told me to

Wish I'd asked about the screen sensing source changes now : Anyone else on here knows the answer?

 

[Andrew Everard]

There's a degree of talking through hats going on on all sides here, since the optical socket on the Pioneer TVs is an output, and plays no part in sending signal from the receiver to the TV.

What it can do, when connected to an input on the receiver, is feed the sound from the TV's built-in tuner to the receiver for amplification and playback through your speaker system when watching broadcast TV.

Similarly audio doesn't come back down the HDMI from the TV, as that cable is connected to an output on the receiver, not an input.

Assuming your future AV receiver purchase can accept audio over HDMI, then you don't also need an optical connection from sources such as DVD/Blu-ray players or the PS3 when they are connected to the receiver via HDMI.

The exception to this is devices such as the Sky+/Sky+HD and Virgin+ boxes, which only send stereo audio over HDMI, and need an additional optical connection to deliver 5.1-channel surround (from those programmes carrying it) to the receiver.

If all your sources are connected via the receiver, and then on to the TV via HDMI, the TV doesn't need to sense or change which input it uses when you change sources - from Sky to PS3, for example. The TV does all the switching, and the TV 'sees' just one HDMI input.