Setting up receiver/cable box to play through surround sound

[mmuminov]

Recently I purchased Yamaha Natural Sound AV Receiver RX-V365 HDMCI Dolby Digital 5.1. I have a samsung bluray DVD player, newest Samsung LCD TV and cable box from local cable provider. I hooked everything and only selected channels will play through the speakers. Some channels will play but when commerical comes on, it doesn't or some commericals do and some don't on the same channel. This is how I set it up:

- Bluray DVD player to Yamaha via red, white, yello cables AND DVD to TV via HDMI (only way I could get sound when watching DVDs)
-Cable box to Yamaha via opetical cable
-Yamaha to TV via HDMI cable

I hope someone can help with this mess!

[MrBoylan]

Recently I purchased Yamaha Natural Sound AV Receiver RX-V365 HDMCI Dolby Digital 5.1. I have a samsung bluray DVD player, newest Samsung LCD TV and cable box from local cable provider. I hooked everything and only selected channels will play through the speakers. Some channels will play but when commerical comes on, it doesn't or some commericals do and some don't on the same channel. This is how I set it up:

- Bluray DVD player to Yamaha via red, white, yello cables AND DVD to TV via HDMI (only way I could get sound when watching DVDs)
-Cable box to Yamaha via opetical cable
-Yamaha to TV via HDMI cable

I hope someone can help with this mess!

Unfortunately that receiver isn't really a great match for Blu-ray Disc as it does not support any audio decoding at all via the HDMI connection - they are simple video passthrough only - so you'll always need to connect separate cables for audio and for video for any source. The best set-up, if you're going to keep the receiver, is to hook up the Blu-ray player directly to the TV via HDMI, and hook up the cable box directly to the TV via HDMI. The audio you'll handle separately via firberoptic digital cables - one fiberoptic cable between the Blu-ray player and the receiver, a different optical cable between the cable box and the receiver.

In the Samsung Blu-ray player's set-up menu, make sure you select the "bitstream" or "DTS Re-encode" option on the digital output. Either of those should work. The "DTS Re-encode" option is handy in case you watch any Blu-rays that have an uncompressed PCM soundtrack as it will re-encode this to DTS with all 5.1 channels intact. But if your Blu-ray Discs are all Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD, then bitstream will work fine and the player will deliver a standard Dolby Digital or DTS signal over the fiberoptic output. If there is an option in your Samsung player to disable HDMI audio, then you may need to set the HDMI audio to OFF in order to get output from the fiberoptic output (different players handle fiberoptic and HDMI audio differently).

Also, on the cable box, you will need to select the correct digital audio output in its own set-up menu. The correct setting name varies on different cable boxes, but it should say something about "Dolby Digital output" or "digital output," and (as with the Blu-ray), you may need to DISABLE HDMI audio output from the cable box in order to properly enable Dolby Digital output on the cable box over its fiberoptic digital output. On some cable boxes I've seen you select Dolby Digital in order to get the fiberoptic output active and you select "HDMI" to get the HDMI audio active - this means you will most likely *NOT* be able to get audio from your TV speakers if you enable the fiberoptic output on the cable box - audio will only come through the receiver.

In the above scenario, you do not need an HDMI cable between the receiver and TV as the video sources are already plugged directly into two different HDMI inputs on the TV.

A simpler (though more costly) solution would be to get a more recent receiver, like the Yamaha RXV-367 or above - one that properly handle HDMI audio, then you would plug the components into the receiver via HDMI and just connect one HDMI output from receiver to TV. Because this receiver handles both audio and video over HDMI, you don't need separate connections for audio and video.

Hope that helps and let us know how it goes.

-CB