Question Using a digital optical cable

Phil Russell

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Again showing extreme ignorance. Equipment is a new TV, Panasonic 50DX700B. I have no soundbar but thought I could use my old Sherwood 6095RDS from surround sound, instead of a soundbar.
The TV has an optical digital output. The Sherwood has an audio optical digital 'IN'.
I have tried connecting with an optical cable while watching TV but no sound issues forth. There is no other way to connect TV sound to this receiver ... TV is all HDMI and receiver is just scart inputs. Maybe I was hoping for too much and the digital connection only works if there is a dvd or vcr etc scart connected to the receiver. I have searched menus on the TV wondering if the digital sound out is switchable but found nothing ... the manual is quite dire in this respect. I believe if I had a soundbar I could just connect via the optical cable rather than HDMI ... so thinking of connecting the receiver in the same way seemed logical.
Am I being a daft old man?
Maybe I have to bite the bullet, ditch my old sound system and get a soundbar.

all help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Phil
 
Probably not much of a help, but my samsung needs change of options to enable sound via optical.
Try all the menus once again.
 
Thanks for above. No luck with more menu searching but I seem to have done it at last. I am not sure how but the optical input only works when the receiver is set to certain input types e.g dvd. No other connections are needed other than the optical cable.
No doubt one day I will get used to all this 'forgotten' technology (I come from the days when you could not buy ready made interconnect cables ... you bought the plugs and cable and made your own).
Anyway ... thanks to all who looked at this.
Cheers, Phil
 
I'd guess it's probably because your old sound system will only decode Dolby or whatever the TV is passing out over optical when your system is in DVD mode.

On a modern sound bar you wouldn't even set that, all inputs would decode the audio stream. Inputs like DVD/Blu-ray still exist but they are merely labels nothing more.
 

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