LG NB4530 sound bar advice

cunnas

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Hi all I've just bought the
LG NB4530 sound bar after reading a few good reviews. I'm completely new to the home cinema experience so was hoping to get some advice that's ok? I have a Panasonic 42 inch 3d smart tv. I connect to it via hdmi sky hd, Xbox One and a net top pc. The tv has an optical out. Do I just connect the sound bar via optical? This seems straight forward enough but the sound bar has this hdmi arc thing and having read about my tv apparently second hdmi port supports this. I mainly use the tv for sky hd. Should I do the sky via hdmi arc and the rest by optical or is it simpler and easier just do via optical? I've searched and read a lot on here and elsewhere but I'm none the wiser afraid
 
Since your TV supports ARC then connect all sources to the TV via HDMI and then use the ARC HDMI on TV to connect soundbar to TV. turn on HDMI control on the TV and then sound should be sent to soundbar.
 
Thanks for the advice mate but will this not just provide audio for the hdmi arc port device? Or will this work for all devices? Sorry I'm totally clueless with this but planning on setting it up letter once the kids are down!
 
No, you connect the soundbar via HDMI to the ARC HDMI on TV. Then connect sources to the TV via the other HDMIs. The sound from the selected input will then be output from the TV via the ARC HDMI to the soundbar. None of your sources will be connected to the ARC HDMI only the soundbar.
 
So just to be clear I have sky hd remaining in hdmi 1 on the tv, the sound bar now goes to hdmi 2 (arc) on the tv and my Xbox which was hdmi 2 on my tv now directly to sound bar with the netotop pc remaining in hdmi 3 on the tv
 
You can do it that way or if you have a 4th HDMI on tv then can put xbox into that.
 
I use an optical cable on mine. Keeps it simple and the optical cable can turn the sound bar on whenever the TV comes on (I ding think you can do that with HDMI arc?)
 
Cheers for your help....I think it is sorted now....think!

All works fine, sound seems excellent and can use the Sky remote to control the volume on the soundbar which is an added bonus.

Mind, I had a bit of a blip - Sky HD worked great, switched to the Net Top PC on HDMI 3 and that worked but then switched to the Xbox on HDMI (passed through sound bar) and nothing appeared on screen - realised there was a button on the sound bar remote which chose an option called HDMI and it worked fine.

That said, I do have a 4th HDMI port on TV so how would that setup?

Sky HD in HDMI 1, PC in HDMI 3, Xbox on HDMI 4 and then what do I do with HDMI 2? Just put a cable from there to the soundbar in?
 
The soundbar turns off and on when I turn the TV off and on so I'm assuming this does work with ARC
 
wow, that was easy, just took the Xbox HDMI out of the soundbar and stuck it in to the free HDMI 3 port on the TV and it worked, now no need to press a button on the soundbar remote to turn on the HDMI when playing on the Xbox

So, thank you thank you thank you - the manual was useless, as usual AVF comes up trumps! GREATLY appreciated!
 
Just one last question before I head off. All is working fine but do I need to setup any of the devices to improve the sound? Again, as I said I'm clueless and to be fair the sound is great but I was curious about Dolby stuff. In the Sky menu for example in the sound settings it has a setting for optical and HDMI - they both have either NORMAL or DOLBY - it is on normal now but when I choose DOLBY it just goes silent.
 
The only way I can get the DOLBY option to work with sound is to pass the Sky HD HDMI through the soundbar - the DOLBY option then does work and I can hear - whether it is better sound or not I don't know - my ears aren't that trained. However, by passing it through the soundbar I then get the problem of having to use the soundbar remote to select HDMI IN just to see the picture and then the volume controls on my sky remote are just doing the tv sound, not the soundbar - so its a bit of a mess on and I know for a fact that the wife won't be best pleased so I've gone back to what was working before!
 
it seems like Optical works fine with the Dolby thing on Sky if I connect to the soundbar via optical but I lose all use of the sky remote to control the soundbar when I do this unfortunately - the soundbar also doesn't turn on/off when I turn the tv on/off as it does with ARC. Is this something I need to setup somewhere?
 

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