2. home-theater
  3. 1356627594

Should I upgrade home theatre to one with HDMI?

Hello - I was wondering if someone could give me some advice. I have a Denon 5.1 channel amp and pre amp that does not have an HDMI input. I recently got a plasma TV and wanted to hook up the home theatre setup, but was dismayed to find that the input and outputs on the directtv receiver don't correlate with the inputs and outputs on the Denon. Currently the television is connected only to the directtv receiver with the HDMI cable; i.e. only sound coming from the television. Is it time for an upgrade to a receiver with HDMI inputs and pass through or can I still get high def television and quality audio with an optical video feed and a coaxial digital audio feed? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks, KMW
kmw614214

Showing 2 responses by plato

plato
1,543 posts
 
Kr4 is correct but let me elaborate by saying that you need HDMI to get the highest quality audio meaning Dolby TruHD and DTS HD Master Audio playback. These formats are commonly found on many available Blu-ray discs and do sound considerably better than the lower resolution Dolby and DTS formats you can get with the Toslink optical or coaxial S/PDIF-RCA digital connections.

I also found recently that my AVR's HDMI 1.3 inputs will not pass 3D signals from a Blu-ray player although they have no trouble delivering hi-def 3D from Comcast Cable. If I plug the Blu-ray player directly into the TV and bypass the receiver then I can get 3D but have to settle for lower quality audio via Toslink or RCA S/PDIF. Blu-ray players and 3D tv's use the HDMI version 1.4.

I'll probably spring for a blu-ray player with 2 HDMI outputs in the future to circumvent this minor issue.
plato
1,543 posts
 
Imhififan, I see a lot of debate in the forums about being able to use a splitter (even a 3D one) to pass 3D video to a monitor and Hi-def audio to the receiver and everyone seems to be saying that it doesn't work.

Have you actually tried it using a Blu-ray with HDMI 1.4 and a receiver using HDMI 1.3 and got it to work for both 3D video and the advanced audio codecs???

For me the easy solution would be simply to buy the Sony S790 Blu-ray player that has both an HDMI Video output to the TV (for 3D) and an HDMI Audio output to the AVR that will do the advanced Dolby and DTS codecs. But since I have only one Blu-ray disc with 3D video so far it's not that big of a problem.
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