My work around 5.1 via HDMI, Playbar.

The suggestion for a tweak to LG Service Menu isn't relevant to the newer models. Whilst it was necessary a few years back to have an engineer (or use the YouTube instructions) to be able to get the TV to pass through the audio (from an HDMI external device) it's certainly not needed for any of the recent models.


Interesting, my TV is only a year old but I believe the premium OLED models have something of a slower development cycle. I know when I bought mine, the LCD models already had newer software that wasn't available on the OLED. My TV had a 2015 (rev. A) and 2016 (rev. D) model, the latter added HDMI 2.0a and HDR support at hardware level. I believe the HDMI passthru was something of a licensing restriction so they added it to the service menu to allow it to be added by engineers later once the licensing was sorted.

LG have made it relatively easy (and Sonos friendly) to pass through the audio untouched, and there is even an option in the menu to specifically pass it through as "Dolby Digital". What is weird, is that I can't get a single source to output DD+ from Netflix. LG TVs are DD only, same with Apple TV and same with PS4 (interestingly the PS4 used to do it until a firmware upgrade about a year ago where they decided it was more beneficial to spend the bandwidth on picture rather than the audio).

I've been playing with this too, I believe it may be an app limitation however. Netflix currently supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for one of its movies, but I get neither of those when playing them on either the internal app, the app on my Samsung UHD blu-ray player, or my Fire TV 4k - although it's well known the latter supports neither. The internal LG Netflix app could support either but appears to support none. LIkewise the Samsung app appears very restricted, along with other apps like Plex.

If you don't get DD+ working, however, it won't work well with Playbar. The on board Dolby decoder will understand DD+ but it won't be able to handle the bandwidth required and will work for a few seconds until the buffer gets full and it starts dropping data.

The handshake discussion is interesting because I feed one of my Playbars with a Zone 2 output from my AV amp in other room. If I play a Blu-Ray that was in DTS, then you obviously get silence. But if I play a Dolby TrueHD stream and turn on the LG TV, my amp does a handshake, realises it can't handle the audio, and so downgrades it down to Dolby Digital - which is quite neat (and you can see it change on the Amp display).

I've seen similar behaviour and was somewhat disappointed by it. We were watching a DTS-HD Master Audio movie in the living room and my wife turned on the Samsung kitchen TV to watch the end of the film whilst she cooked. This forced something of a handshake and the living room started putting out only basic Dolby 5.1. I would expect the zone 2 feed to transcode on the fly for that output and not interrupt the main feed. Hopefully it may be an option in the settings that I haven't found yet - I haven't had any time to investigate since.

With regards to Freeview - BBC gives 5.1 (but iPlayer does not!), ITV refuses to do anything beyond 2.0. All the recent showings of the Harry Potter films and The Hobbits etc all broadcast in Stereo (even via Sky).

Yeah, as Lucid AV said, it varies a lot not just between channels but between programmes. Top Gear will be 1080p/DD5.1 but most programmes will be 1080i/PCM2.0. Sky Q will even do Atmos now on supported broadcasts.

Had to remove the EDID emulator device, with it installed I had to reboot the entire system every time I turned the TV on. Not very convenient. Sounds like there's next to nothing being broadcast in DD5.1 anyway, so I guess I won't worry about it. Kind of a disappointment though, sure would have liked to hear what DD5.1 sounded like from this play 3s, sub, and playbar Sonos system. Dig out a DVD player or Blu-ray player (so long as it has Optical out) and play a movie.

Dig out a DVD player or Blu-ray player (so long as it has Optical out) and play a movie.

Just don't watch The Big Blue 🆒

I run Netflix through my Samsung BD-F6500 and there are plenty of series and films in 5.1 (all listed in the description).

As far as UK TV goes with my Virgin Media Tivo I've only really seen 5.1 on Sky Movies so far, Film4 and most "normal" channels are stereo..

Had to remove the EDID emulator device, with it installed I had to reboot the entire system every time I turned the TV on. Not very convenient. Sounds like there's next to nothing being broadcast in DD5.1 anyway, so I guess I won't worry about it. Kind of a disappointment though, sure would have liked to hear what DD5.1 sounded like from this play 3s, sub, and playbar Sonos system.

OK, so I confirmed that the TV is passing DD5.1 to the Playbar. At least when playing a DVD. It's awesome. Does that mean that I've confirmed that my setup will pass DD5.1 from any OTA sources, if it's supplied as such?

Laugh. Ask another hard question.....

There are some TVs out there that have different types of HDMI ports, where one works one way, and others work another.

You're probably 90% correct, but there's that small chance that your TV is different. Easy way to test that, though, is to connect that DVD player that you've tested with to the other HDMI ports on the TV, and check. 🙂

Bought one for my Roku 2, Samsung PS51E6500 TV, when the EDID was installed, the Roku recognised the the device and within the Roku sound settings it said Dolby Digital for the 1st time instead of Stereo! I thought great here we go, however, the TV will not recognise the DD feed, only says PCM which is very annoying. I have the EDID configured correctly on setting E, I also tried the device on another TV with another Roku 2, same again, the Roku recognises the output as DD but the TV only sees PCM, any ideas another before this device goes back to Amazon? Cheers. Oh and the reason I wanted this device was to output DD to my Sonos Playbase....

Just FYI,my Sony 46EX653 passes through DD5.1 on all HDMI ports, tested and working using my Sony BluRay Player.

What does not seem to work are the other devices that I have connected to the TV, namely ...

Sky+ HD (Only getting Stereo, even from movie channels)
Roku (Only getting Stereo even when playing DD5.1 demos)
Chromecast (Only getting stereo even when playing DD5.1 demos)

The TV seems to be passing DD5.1 out to the Optical as tested with the BluRay player on all HDMI ports, but the other devices either are not passing DD5.1 to the TV, or there is some other issue.

Any ideas peeps?

Just FYI,my Sony 46EX653 passes through DD5.1 on all HDMI ports, tested and working using my Sony BluRay Player.

What does not seem to work are the other devices that I have connected to the TV, namely ...

Sky+ HD (Only getting Stereo, even from movie channels)
Roku (Only getting Stereo even when playing DD5.1 demos)
Chromecast (Only getting stereo even when playing DD5.1 demos)

The TV seems to be passing DD5.1 out to the Optical as tested with the BluRay player on all HDMI ports, but the other devices either are not passing DD5.1 to the TV, or there is some other issue.

Any ideas peeps?

Not really much but -

Maybe those devices aren't really outputting DD 5.1?
Have you tried connecting those via optical directly to the Playbar? - Be worth doing that to see if it's the TV or not. But seems odd it works with Blu-Ray player but not the others. Only other thing is the HDMI cable - try using the one you used with the Blu-Ray on one of the other devices

Hey Stuart_W,

Thanks for the reply. Guess I can connect up the Sky+ box direct ... but neither the Roku or Chromecast will allow that. Good place to start though! I also did wonder about the HDMI cables, the DVD player is in a breakfront cabinet three meters away from the TV and the cable runs under the floor. It would be a B1tch to lift. Got some other HDMI cables I can try though. Will report back ....

Cheers,
John.