Contributor II

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BEAM HDMI INPUT QUESTION

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Is it possible for the BEAM to accept an HDMI signal directly from a source (cable box/ dvd. etc) instead of the HDMI arc or optical out to hdmi converter

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Keith NAnswer

Sonos Staff

pmecchi: Actually, it's a little more complicated than how I originally posted. When it comes to ARC and setting up the Beam, the Beam needs to be plugged into an ARC port if using HDMI. My original answer was missing a crucial point of how ARC works. Before we used HDMI-ARC, we were able to plug in any source (via optical) and it would come through without hassle. Now using HDMI-ARC, the Beam is looking for a handshake (over the Audio Return Channel) from the source via specific pins on the HDMI cable before even getting an audio signal.

While I understand you did not want to use an HDMI-to-optical converter, I wasn't sure if you knew the Beam already includes an HDMI-to-optical adapter. It's much smaller and snaps right onto the HDMI cable, rather than most "breakout-box" style HDMI converters. This would require your source (older AppleTV's, Xbox, cable box) to have an available optical audio port. Just now, I tested this with my own Beam setup and wasn't able to set up my new AppleTV via HDMI (no optical port), but my Xbox was able to use optical to finish TV setup and it was able to pass an audio signal to the Beam.

Building community is like building a garden. You build the frame, till the ground, plant the seeds, feed the plants & sometimes you gotta pull the weeds.

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xpiranhax

Lyricist III

Is there a hardware solution to convert an HDMI signal to an HDMI-ARC signal? S/PDIF doesn’t support Dolby Digital Plus which Netflix uses for 5.1.

I’m using a projector and Beam and want to send video to projector and audio to Beam. The problem is that the audio signal isn’t HDMI-ARC. I can use optical but only for stereo in some cases.

Any ideas?

Sjoop1985

As you may know HDMI-ARC and optical TOSLINK both use the S/PDIF protocol, only over a different physical interface. Not sure if there are separate devices that can do what an HDMI-ARC TV does, but you are in the right direction with optical.

I have a projector and a Playbar myself and use an HDMI splitter with an optical audio out.

There is no need to consider that S/PDIF doesn't support DD+, as Sonos doesn't either - anything you send to it should be stereo or DD5.1, which is fine over S/PDIF. Making sure that the signal is DD5.1 and not something that Sonos or the cable cannot handle, should be done before the signal is sent on its way, at the source.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans (John Lennon) --- Living room: Arc, Sub, 2x One - Kitchen: One - Bedroom: Play 3 - Office: Beam - Bathroom: Play 1

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xpiranhax

Lyricist III

As you may know HDMI-ARC and optical TOSLINK both use the S/PDIF protocol, only over a different physical interface. Not sure if there are separate devices that can do what an HDMI-ARC TV does, but you are in the right direction with optical.

I have a projector and a Playbar myself and use an HDMI splitter with an optical audio out.

There is no need to consider that S/PDIF doesn't support DD+, as Sonos doesn't either - anything you send to it should be stereo or DD5.1, which is fine over S/PDIF. Making sure that the signal is DD5.1 and not something that Sonos or the cable cannot handle, should be done before the signal is sent on its way, at the source.

Thank you. That makes sense. The problem seems to be then that the Nvidia Shield TV isn’t scaling the Netflix DD+ signal down to DD5.1 so that Sonos can handle it. The PS4 does this.

The Nvidia Shield TV doesn’t have an optical out so I’m running the HDMI source through a 4x2 matrix which is then extracting video over HDMI and audio over optical. Presumably at some point the DD+ signal has to be converted to DD but if the NVIDIA Shield isn’t doing it, what can.

I’m probably getting myself confused and making little sense but appreciate any help!

Sjoop1985

It depends if the Shield "knows" what devices it should be catering to. According to the DD+ spec, a DD+ capable device should downconvert DD+ to DD5.1 if the downstream device cannot handle DD+.

You might need to force the Shield to output DD5.1 through its settings.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans (John Lennon) --- Living room: Arc, Sub, 2x One - Kitchen: One - Bedroom: Play 3 - Office: Beam - Bathroom: Play 1

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xpiranhax

Lyricist III

I restricted the Nvidia Shield to use AC3 (DD) only.

Good news is Netflix has sound on the Beam without having to select the audio stream on each piece of content (before it clearly thought that the Beam supported DD+ and defaulted to it, so I’d have to select a stereo stream to get any sound).

Bad news it is stereo. Looks like there is no way to get DD 5.1 from an Nvidia Shield TV on Sonos (without something in the middle).

Any other ideas anyone?

controlav

Lead Maestro

It depends on the TV. The Shield could be wanting to send DD 5.1, but if the TV says it can’t accept it then the Shield will down convert to stereo. Check if your TV supports DD 5.1 pass through over optical on rtings.com.

There are often ways of forcing broken TVs to accept DD 5.1 over optical even if their engineers misread the HDCP spec and blocked it, but first you need to make sure the Shield is capable of sending it.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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xpiranhax

Lyricist III

It depends on the TV. The Shield could be wanting to send DD 5.1, but if the TV says it can’t accept it then the Shield will down convert to stereo. Check if your TV supports DD 5.1 pass through over optical on rtings.com.

There are often ways of forcing broken TVs to accept DD 5.1 over optical even if their engineers misread the HDCP spec and blocked it, but first you need to make sure the Shield is capable of sending it.

Thanks but as per previous post I’m using a projector not TV. HDMI into matrix with audio extracted out through optical to Sonos.

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SonosBeamUser

Lyricist I

It depends on the TV. The Shield could be wanting to send DD 5.1, but if the TV says it can’t accept it then the Shield will down convert to stereo. Check if your TV supports DD 5.1 pass through over optical on rtings.com.

There are often ways of forcing broken TVs to accept DD 5.1 over optical even if their engineers misread the HDCP spec and blocked it, but first you need to make sure the Shield is capable of sending it.

Thanks but as per previous post I’m using a projector not TV. HDMI into matrix with audio extracted out through optical to Sonos.

I have the same problem with my sonos beam, xiaomi mi laser projector and nvidia shield. I don’t know if the problem is that the projector only accepts stereo from nvidia shield and the projector send it this stereo signal to the beam…

Apart from this it would be helpful to add a simpler option to see the type of audio input that arrives at the beam sonos from any source than the one currently available via "About"

controlav

Lead Maestro

Apart from this it would be helpful to add a simpler option to see the type of audio input that arrives at the beam sonos from any source than the one currently available via "About"

Preaching to the choir on this one. Thats why my Sonos apps show the exact type of music source right in the Now Playing area. No idea why Sonos bury it in About, same reason they bury Alarms I guess.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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Cartxo

Lyricist III

Same thing here:

I have APPLE TV 4k, Sonos 5.1 with Beam and an Optoma Projector. Using Airplay 2 you only get Stereo sound on Sonos for movies and it sounds bad. You can’t understand well the dialogues due to the channels distribution.

I bought a splitter which has 1 HDMI in and 1 HDMI out and a 1 Audio Optical out. I’ve put the Sonos adapter from Optical to HDMI into the Beam and… It didn’t work. I had the audio coming out again from the projector instead of the Sonos.

So, Does anyone knows which HDMI splitter hardware would work? I’ve seen on which has 1 HDMI in and 2 HDMI out to replicate simultaneously the signal. https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B07DW2445X/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza

Would this work maybe?

Any thoughts?

cheers

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