Playbar TV Input disconnects after a while

Hi, IggyLites. Welcome to the community. As a first test, can we have you check the optical connection between the television and the PLAYBAR? Do you happen to have a spare cable that we might be able to test, or an alternative device with an optical port that we can connect the PLAYBAR to? Thanks in advance.

I do, and I can. That being said it doesn’t seem to be the connection. The Playbar works perfectly well, it just looses the TV Input after getting no signal for a while. If I pause a show and...dunno go make coffee, when I come back it’s stopped playing the TV Input. Once I re-select it on the app it works well once again.

I'm having the exact same problem with my PLAYBASE. I used to not have this issue, but it started doing this within the last couple weeks.

Edward R wrote:

Hi, IggyLites. Welcome to the community. As a first test, can we have you check the optical connection between the television and the PLAYBAR? Do you happen to have a spare cable that we might be able to test, or an alternative device with an optical port that we can connect the PLAYBAR to? Thanks in advance.

Hi Edward, changing the optic cable had no effect. It happens 100% of the time. If I pause whatever is playing for a while, Sonos goes into "No Input". It's not immediate, but it DOES seem to be very related to the time it's paused. It seems to be some sort of power conservation.

Is there any advance on this? It most definitely looks like a form of “sleep” function. If the TV is not playing anything, for example when AppleTV goes into screensaver mode, I can’t choose TV as an input in Sonos.

It seems that as the Sonos component has already been told to receive a signal from the TV, it feels it does not need to be told to look for it "again". For whatever reason, the television seems to stop outputting via the optical port after a length of time. Would it be possible for you to recreate the issue and submit a diagnostic, responding with the confirmation number? This way we can identify exactly what is happening. May I ask if you have spoken to the television manufacturer regarding this issue?

Done. 8477684
Again, paused the TV and after a while Sonos turned off my TV input and went into “No Music”

Hey there, IggyLites. Thanks for the diagnostic report. Does the only happen with TV audio or does this also happen with streaming audio? This will help us to understand if this is a problem globally or just from the signal given by the TV. Thanks!

So far only with TV and ONLY when there’s no sound. I’d have to mute a streaming source for a while to check I would assume

I also have a similar but random problem when selecting to play back a recording from Sky Q. There is no pattern on channel or time that I can determine but the solution is to unplug the Optic cable and plug it back in and everything works fine. I've had the Sky engineer check their components and everything appears to be working from their perspective. It does seem to have got better over the last week or so, this may because of the recent updates or unrelated.

IggyLites: Understood. By chance are you using Sky Q as well? Additionally, is this PLAYBAR connected to the cable box or to the TV directly? Thanks!

UKMedia: Our senior technicians are currently tracking a problem where the PLAYBAR will stop outputting sound when the channel is changed from HD channels to SD channels. Can you tell us a little more about what causes this problem you are experiencing? Is the PLAYBAR connected to the TV directly? Do the issues persist if you plug the PLAYBAR directly into the cable box? Thanks!

Okay. Let’s try again. AppleTV conected via HDMI to the TV. TV connected via fiber to the Playbar. When I use my AppleTV I set my Sonos input to “TV”.

Everything works fine until I pause the AppleTV, or have no activity through it, ie the AppleTV isn’t outputting any sound for a resonably extended period of time, say a couple of minutes of no sound.

If I start playing sound from it again, by that point Sonos doesn’t show “TV” as a source, but instead says “No Input”. This happens every time, and it happens all on it’s own.

Now, as far as I can tell my TV may or may not be muting the output, but that doesn’t explain why Sonos decides to disconnect the output.

I’m headed out of town for a few days but I’ll try and plug the Playbar straight into the AppleTV when I’m back. I don’t have another source of TosLink sound, I route my cable through as well.

Keith N wrote:

IggyLites:

UKMedia: Our senior technicians are currently tracking a problem where the PLAYBAR will stop outputting sound when the channel is changed from HD channels to SD channels. Can you tell us a little more about what causes this problem you are experiencing? Is the PLAYBAR connected to the TV directly? Do the issues persist if you plug the PLAYBAR directly into the cable box? Thanks!

Hi Keith

The Playbar is connected directly to the Sky Q mini box as my TV has the HDCP restriction of not allowing output via Optical when receiving HDMI. I'll try and isolate the problem with more tests, I haven't noticed a pattern but the move from SD to HD is not a specific test that I've tried. I have tried changing the Audio from Dolby Digital Plus to Stereo and that has made no difference.

The problem only occurs in the following scenario:

1/ I use a Harmony 1100 to switch the TV and Sky Q mini box on;
2/ Sky outputs the Audio and Video channel correctly from live TV;
3/ I select an existing recording but occasionally the Audio fails on the recording.
4/ If I stop playback of the recording, the Audio restarts on live TV but stops again if I restart playback of the recording.
5/ After restarting the Recording playback, if I unplug the Optic cable from the Sky Q mini box briefly and then re-connect it again then the Audio is resumes okay.
6/ I can pause, rewind and forward the recording after step 5 and the Audio is not effected.
7/ If I try the same recording on my main TV which is passed through an AV Receiver to a set of 5.1 Mordant Short speakers, there is no issue with the Audio on the same recording played through the Sky Q Silver box.

I'll revert back after more testing.

Well so far I’ve seen a few software updates from Sonos and this is still happening. I’ve searched throughout my TV’s menu and I can’t find any option to stop output of sound from the optic cable.

I get this too. When I either pause or mute my satellite DVR for more than a few minutes when I re-start or un-mute it takes a couple of seconds for the audio to return.

It's not something that causes me an issue but I'm dropping this here as I suspect it is the Sonos Playbar that is causing this rather than the Humax DVR

That slight delay is the auto play kicking in and. Bringing the playbar out if sleep mode.

Surprised no one as asked if impacted users have auto play enabled on their playbar/base