Hi all, I've a Denon AVR 1311 Receiver with 5.1 Speakers setup and a LCD HDTV that has USB input. Now if I connect an external HDD and play a movie (Blu-Ray Ripped) which has Dolby Digital Audio, can the TV play / transfer the Dolby Audio (5.1 Ch) to the Receiver via an Optical Digital Cable?
No, the optical out put will only send stereo to the receiver when the audio source is connected to the TV then out put from the optical to the receiver. The only way to get 5.1 from the optical out is when you use an antenna connection for over the air HD feed to the TV then the Dolby digital flag embedded in the over the air signal will be out put to the TV. Could I be wrong since I don't know the TV model, maybe. You can try it but I think you will only get stereo. You need a digital connection directly to the receiver.
Thanks a lot, Casey. My TV Model is LG 32LK430. I guess you're right. This is perhaps one fact the TV company never mentions in any of their documentation
Hi Mithun, I have a similar set up at my place. I have a Samsung 40" LCD HDTV with USB inputs. It can play various formats including mkv for blu ray. The optical audio out is connected to Denon AVR1311 which is in turn connected to Polk Audio 5.1 surround speaker set. With this set up I am able to get surround (but only Dolby or DTS) but not True DTS/Dolby i.e. lossless audio. The reason is that an Optical cable cannot support lossless audio.. one needs HDMI cable for that. And, usually TVs do not have an HDMI out. You may have to select external speakers in your SPIDF settings. If the source is Dolby Digital, it will be automatically displayed as Dolby Digital in your Denon AVR display panel. So, start with checking with LG's customer care to see if your TV will output 5.1 from its optical audio out port - I believe it will. Then, confirm that the files you are playing through USB are 5.1 (you can download some traliers from http://www.demo-world.eu/trailers/
Thanks a lot, Shail. Your inputs are very valuable. I found something else recently... I usually connected my external HDD (Toshiba 250GB) to the USB of the TV, and could never get the 5.1 audio... Even the Denon only showed Distributed Stereo by default. Moreover, I got some other people telling me that the LG TV's internal decoder only outputs HD audio when it comes from the internal tuner, i.e. HD Cable etc. But when playing from the USB, it doesn't output the HD audio...
However, few days back I incidentally connected my USB pen drive with a HD movie in it, and voila... I got the 5.1 ch Dolby output from the Denon immediately. Ofcourse, you're perhaps right about the lossless audio, but I guess I'm fine with atleast this much for the time being. However, I'm still wondering why is it that I don't get the 5.1 ch output when playing off the HDD, while it's good thru the pen drive!!!
Great! Are you sure that the files on the external drive were 5.1? If you are not sure, I would recommend you this great tool called MediaInfo. Install it and this will tell you the type of source immediately. So that you would be sure of your source whether they are 5.1 (i.e. 6 channels) or stereo (only two channels). I personally use this free tool a lot to verify my sources before doubting anything else in my setup. Here is the link. http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download/Windows
Mithun, I forgot to mention that after installation of MediaInfo, you can right click on the file and select MediaInfo to get detailed information about your sources. You can also change the view how you want to see the report (i.e. sheet, html etc).