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I recently bought my Sonos Beam and hooked in up with my 10 year old plazma Panasonic Viera TX-P50S20 E through its HDMI ARC slot. To other HDMIs on my TV I plugged my cable box outputing Dolby Digital and Google Chromecast device. The problem is no matter which one I use I’m not getting DD, only PCM. I also tried the optical output from my TV - same thing. I googled on this issue a bit to find out I’m not the only one and even in Sonos community I found folks reporting the same problem. 

The BIG question is: has anyone been able to fix / workaround this or the situation is hopeless and there’s no way this could work as Panasonic does not passthrough DD ?

 

Anyone?

Unfortunately your TV doesn’t pass through Dolby Digital 5.1 audio from external media devices. It might be able to play Dolby Digital from the TV’s internal apps like VUDU though. Your only options are to get a new TV or get a sound bar that allows you to connect media devices directly to the sound bar so they can bypass your TV’s limitations.

EDIT: Or see the option mentioned below.

It sounds like your older TV is unable to pass the DD codec through its ports. The workaround for this is to use an audio extractor/switcher box to bypass the TV, such as the various examples shown here:

Thanks guys. Not great news but not much I can do other than getting the switcher

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