Question

surround problems with surround and panasonic tv

  • 8 November 2019
  • 12 replies
  • 491 views

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I have a beam and sub, sky q, Panasonic dvd and tv (TX L37ET5B) and have just added a pair of play 1’s to get surround. No matter what I do I cannot get either the sky q or dvd to play anything but stereo. All settings are as they should be for it to work but for some reason….nothing. If I put the sky q to Dolby I get no sound at all, on “normal” just stereo. I have both the dvd and sky connected through hdmi and beam through optical from the tv. The Panasonic tv is in “hotel” mode. I’ve read all I can but frankly don’t know what else to try. If I use Netflix through the tv, get full 5.1 which makes it all the more frustrating! Any help much appreciated as always


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12 replies

Hi. Panasonic TVs are not very good as passing 5.1 sound from HDMI sources out over optical.  Does the Sky  have optical out?  As an experiment, run the optical from the Sky Q box to the Beam and use the optical to HDMI converter.  

Post back with what happens.  You can check what you are getting in About My System in the Sonos app.  

You need to be sure that the program you are watching is being broadcast in Dolby Digital 5.1, not stereo.

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Hi, I’m not sure what you mean by “use the optical to hdmi converter”? Also this would mean sky connected to tv for picture only and to sonos for sound only, correct?

Correct.  The Beam comes with a device that allows you to connect an optical out to the Beam 

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Ok, switched the optical from the tv to sky, works perfectly thanks. Problem now is that the tv and blue ray have no “out” to the sonos, not too bothered as we usually only use sky but I’d like to be able at least to use the blue ray through sonos if possible and it has an optical out. Is there any way two get two optical feeds into one on the sonos?

Yes there is - a digital optical switch.  But I just thought - does your TV not do HDMI-ARC?  Is that why you are using the optical?

 

What make is your Blu-ray?

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Hi there, yes the tv has hdmi arc, that is where the sky was (and still is) attached for the signal “in” but did not work. The blu-ray is also Panasonic same as the tv

I don't understand your previous post. What didn't work? You should run HDMI-ARC to Beam.

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The hdmi arc was where the sky q box was connected to the tv, I then had optical from the tv to sonos. This is how the sky engineers set it up originally (before I had the surrounds). I thought that is what sky required for all aspects of picture and sound to work…..is this wrong

I am no expert on Sky, but my sources are connected to HDMI (not rhe ARC), and I have a cable from HDMI-ARC to the Beam. It works. Try it. 

You may hsve to tell your TV to output audio over HDMI-ARC. Keep the optical out of it completely.

This is just sn experiment.

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2659?language=en_US

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Excellent I’ll give it a shot tomorrow, nice to know I have a fallback that works now though!

OK. Please let us know how it goes. You may still have a bit of an issue with getting surround sound from Blu-rays but we can come back to that.