Audio hookups

Pentangle, let me clear up one last bit of misinformation.

If he bit streams to the TV then he needs a TV that can decode the bit stream and send it to a digital out.

Not exactly true.

Retired now, but worked in the A/V industry for over 20 years, and Sony was a brand I dealt with. The first year or two when HDMI was added to TV's would be a problem, however if your set is less than 8 years old, then the Dolby Digital bitstream signal is just a pass through from the HDMI input to the digital audio output. So again, this is my recommendation,

If he connects the Blu-ray player and cable box to the TV with HDMI, and they are set for bitstream, he will get a bitstream signal from the digital audio output on the TV, and this can be connected to a digital input on the RX-V1400. Also, changing inputs on the TV will change sound from the RX-V1400 at the same time, rather than having to make an additional change on the RX-V1400 to select the appropriate sound for the picture.

My mistake, he needs a TV that can ACCEPT the bitstream, not necessarily decode it. I ran into a situation just this week where the TV would not accept a 5.1 signal. Yes, it is an old HDMI TV, but they are out there. Hence the caution. I agree that most new TVs do this.

You are correct that coax does not carry 5.1 PCM. It has been a while since I dealt with this. When needed I just bitstream 5.1 over optical or coax, which is what Pentagle should do.

I would still prefer to go directly to the receiver rather than the TV. However, if the TV is a new "Smart" TV with access to Netflix and the like, then going optical from the TV to the receiver also allows you to use 5.1 from the streaming services. Then I would agree that doing everything on one digital input to the receiver is the way to go.

If you go BR to TV only, do you have to have the TV on to play a CD? Not sure how the pass through of 5.1 works on most TVs these days. Does it need power?

After doing more reading on various Internet forums, it seems that HDMI pass through of 5.1 bitsteam audio to optical (or sometimes coax) output by TVs is a hit or miss proposition - some do it and some do not, even for current models. And those that do it sometimes only do Dolby Digital and not DTS. Those that do pass DTS also sometimes have a very long delay in the audio. In addition, some that do pass through 5.1 only do so if you only do pass through. If your try to have the TV decode the signal and play the sound, some will not also pass through the 5.1 signal. That means you will need to change the TV speaker setting if you want to use the TV speaker for sound. Also, some TVs only allow pass through on one of the HDMI inputs.

I have read that the HDMI HDCP standard does not strictly allow such pass through from HDMI inputs but some manufactures do it anyway. None HDMI signals (Netflix for example) are not restricted, but signals received through HDMI are. Some manufactures seem to simply ignore the EDID settings and pass it through anyway. It some cases people go into the service menus and set an option to allow pass through. I guess that gets the manufacturer from getting in trouble with the HDCP rules. I do not know all the details but I found this discussed several places.

Some of the reported problems with TV not doing 5.1 pass through may be user error. But enough have problems even with new models to make me believe this can be a problem depending on manufacturer and even model.

From what I read, you need to be careful if you want to do 5.1 pass through of an HDMI signal through a TV. It is not uniformed implemented, even on new models. If it works fine, otherwise you can go directly from the source to your receiver with the bitstream.