How to get Dolby Digital to old receiver & HDMI video to new projector

[Chazo]

Probably been asked before, but I can't find in the threads.
Setup: Panasonic BDP-320, Onkyo TX-DS747 w/ Optical Audio Input, Projector supports HDMI. How do I set the Blue Ray disc player to output video to projector via HDMI, and Dolby Digital audio to the older receiver via optical cable? No HDMI switching on older receiver. Boylan's article from 10/21/2009 helps, but I can't get soundtrack to play. Am I forced to use component video out? Thanks!

[MrBoylan]

Probably been asked before, but I can't find in the threads.
Setup: Panasonic BDP-320, Onkyo TX-DS747 w/ Optical Audio Input, Projector supports HDMI. How do I set the Blue Ray disc player to output video to projector via HDMI, and Dolby Digital audio to the older receiver via optical cable? No HDMI switching on older receiver. Boylan's article from 10/21/2009 helps, but I can't get soundtrack to play. Am I forced to use component video out? Thanks!

Set HDMI Audio to OFF in the "TV Device Connection... HDMI" option in the set-up menu. In the Audio set-up menu, under "Digital Audio Output," set Dolby Digital to bitstream but set DTS to "PCM." You can leave BD-Secondary Audio set to ON since you are not going to be getting the lossless audio soundtracks anyway over fiberoptic.

Unfortunately your receiver does not support DTS sound, which is why you need to set DTS to PCM instead. This means that any DTS soundtracks will be converted to 2-channel PCM sound, then matrixed out into pseudo-surround using Dolby ProLogic. Also in the audio menu, be sure to set "Downmix" to "Surround-encoded" to you will get a matrixed Center Channel and rear channel signal in that PCM mix.

Oh wait, you actually have a Pioneer Blu-ray player, not Panasonic, right? BDP-320? You confused me there. Well the audio settings on the Pioneer BDP-320 are a bit more confusing, but the concept is the same. You need to get into the initial set-up menu again ("Setup Navigator"), and instead of selecting HDMI audio or analog audio, select "digital output" as your main sound. If you select "analog audio," then you will get nothing out of the HDMI audio portion and nothing out of the digital output. Then for "Dolby Digital" audio, select "Dolby Digital 1" and for "DTS" select "PCM" - this will force the player into decoding DTS as PCM sound. The same recommendation as above about surround encoding applies here, but the name of the setting is different - set "DTS Downmix" to "Lt/Rt" in order to get encoded surround sound in the PCM mix.

Honestly, although the above settings will work - you will get sound - if you want to get the best sound out of Blu-ray, you should consider upgrading your receiver to one with HDMI audio support. There are new Onkyo receivers (and Denon, and Yamaha, and Pioneer, etc.) with built-in HDMI audio decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio available for well under $400. This way you just need a single HDMI cable from player to receiver, and one more from receiver to projector and it all just works. You get lossless, discrete digital audio (up to 7.1 channels of it), and you get to see those pretty Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio logos light up on your receiver.

Let me know if that helps.

Regards,

-Chris