unwanted sky "surround" dialogue !? am I doing something stupid !?

pashun4art

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Hi everyone... I have a question regarding Sky input via HDMI to my AV amp ( onkyo608 ). I am currently listening to sky news HD and I have the newscasters voice in my rear speakers as well as my front speakers !?!? this obviously sounds terrible since the dialogue should be coming from infront of me !
Am I doing something daft and have I got something set wrong on my AV amp , or ( and I hope not ) are SKY being daft enough to broadcast newscasters voices to the rear speakers !? I have "PCM" as the sound code input reading on the display,,, any help appreciated.
 
have I got something set wrong on my AV amp , or ( and I hope not )

HDMI doesn't carry surround sound from a Sky box - PCM stereo only. And your amp is interpreting this stereo signal (badly) as Dolby Pro-Logic and sending what it thinks make up the surround channels to the rear speakers. And getting it wrong.

Either change your amp to not convert stereo to DPL (you still won't get any dialogue out of the centre speaker if you do that though, but at least it will stop dialogue being routed to your surrounds) or connect the Sky HD box to amp using one of the audio outputs which carries digital surround sound - either optical or digital coaxial.
 
Even with optical connected , make sure that the likes of Pro logic is not applied to the signal or you will have the same problem , only some programs are broadcast in surround , like movies for instance.

To find out if the program you are interested in is broadcast in surround , hit the info button for that program and note the codes on the right of the title bar.

DS means Dolby surround , DD means Dolby Digital , if it doesnt have these codes it is not in surround , and any surround effects you get are purely down to the settings on your amp.

Sky manual is available here , page 22 has the codes Im talking about.

http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/expor...e-plus/__Content/hd_manual.pdf_1314843347.pdf
 
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DS means Dolby surround , if it doesnt have this code it is not in surround , and any surround effects you get are purely down to the settings on your amp.

On the contrary - DD means Dolby Digital, and is the only code used for DD5.1 surround sound. DS is the equivalent of Dolby Pro-Logic, and creates a psuedo single channel surround sound - which the same signal is sent to both rear speakers - but is not true surround sound where discrete audio is sent to all five speakers plus sub-woofer.
 
which the same signal is sent to both rear speakers -

This doesn't make sense to me.

I run DPL all the time and have never experienced what should be the centre coming out of the rears :confused:

I suspect the problem is more likely that the OP is running multi channel stereo mode and not DPL or Neo 6 etc.
 
ok , so connected using digital co-ax so now sky news and other channels are fine , but swapping over to BBC news 24 and its PCM again and rear speaker problems ,,, so I now need to fathom how to change whatever setting I need to change on the onkyo608... whatever that setting is , its not obvious !!:facepalm:
 
richer sounds guy just told me to press "movie/tv" on the bottom white listen mode buttons and check/select the correct sound processing , not I have PCM and Dolby PL II lit and no more dialogue from the rear speakers but surely there is a setting so that I dont have to press and select everytime I swap to bbc news 24 !?!?
 
ah.... just swapped channels and the setting is saved... powered off and on and its saved too... hopefully problem solved.... thanks guys , very much appreciated....
 

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