HD200, online videos and S/PDIF

[MacDaddy]

I have my HD200 connected to my AVR via toslink S/PDIF. Currently any TV source shows that its playback is either Dolby Prologic or Dolby Digital on the receiver. DVD playback also shows Dolby Digital. When I attempt to play back an online video source (for example the TED talks), there is no sound and no indication on the AVR.

I would imagine that the S/PDIF connection is just sending the audio stream as digital passthru for decoding by the AVR. I would also imagine that the online videos only have stereo audio. Is there anyway to have the stereo at least passed to the AVR over the toslink? I know I would probably have to shift between anolog and digitial processing, but it would be better than no sound at all.

Are there better solutions for getting the Dolby streams from the main media selections and the stereo streams from online selections?

Thanks in advance for any advice or wisdom.

[Taddeusz]

What are the capabilities of your AV receiver? With online videos the HD200 is probably passing standard PCM audio rather than Dolby Digital. Your receiver needs to be capable of detecting both from the same input.

I've seen some receivers that are very limited in that regard. They won't automatically accept any input. Most, if not all, receivers should be able to do at least Dolby Digital and PCM since that is specified by the DVD standard.

[MacDaddy]

Thanks for the info. My receiver is an old Denon AVR-2700. It has a digital/analog toggle button for this source (I have the HD200 connected to the TV source input), but my understanding is that it will switch between the digital inputs (toslink or coax) and the RCA inputs in back. I thought that PCM would just be the analog stereo signal sampled at the appropriate rate (44.1?) and converted to digital.

I guess another way to test PCM input is to select an album and play it over the HD200. I'll try that tonight.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by MacDaddy

I thought that PCM would just be the analog stereo signal sampled at the appropriate rate (44.1?) and converted to digital.

Why would they do that when the audio is already digital? Converting it to analog and back to digital would be a waste of resources. All they need to do is uncompress the audio from whatever it's in to raw PCM and send that out the SPDIF. It will come out at whatever sample rate and bit depth it was at to begin with.

[MacDaddy]

I think it might have been my AVR hung on the signal processing. I thought of what you said about PCM and remembered a setup option to use bitstream or PCM in S/PDIF playback. I had bitstream checked and flipped it to PCM. When I restarted the HD200 to test playback, the online videos, music, TV recordings and DVDs all played perfectly. I was ready for a victory lap.

However out of curiosity I wanted to try the bitstream option with music to say if there was any difference. Flipped the setting and after restarting, played music with no hiccup. Then I tried the online video to see if the problem still existed. Everything worked.

The only thing I can think of is that my receiver somehow got stuck in Dolby Digital or ProLogic mode and would process the PCM signal. It's working now, so I'm not going to screw it up.