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Please help with Digital Optical Cable (Toslink) Not Working

#1
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10/14/09 at 3:24am
  • Joined: October 2009
  • Post Count: 3
 Hello-

I tried running an optical cable from my Dish HD DVR box to my Pioneer receiver 5.1 and I'm not getting any sound. I notice the red light is on inside the optical port at the DVR box, but when I plug the cable in I do not see the red light at the other end of the cable at the Pioneer receiver. Should I see a light at the other end? Since I don't, does that mean my cable is bad? Thanks for your help
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#2
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10/14/09 at 4:56am
  • Joined: August 2000
  • Location: Southaven, MS
  • Post Count: 4,540
Sounds like a bad cable because you should see the light at the end of the cable as well.  Don't forget to assign the digital input to the proper source if your receiver requires it.
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#3
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10/14/09 at 8:49am
  • Joined: October 2009
  • Post Count: 17
If the optical cable continues to give you trouble, try the copper digital output (orange RCA jack).  Same quality sound, less fragile cable.
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#4
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10/14/09 at 10:26am
  • Joined: November 2008
  • Post Count: 137

I don't know what box your dish system uses but I did find out that the Scientific Atlantic 4250 which my cable company uses has settings to turn on and turn off Audio outputs for HDMI, Optical, and Digital cable.  I found this out after a power failure some how turned my HDMI sound off from the cable box to my receiver.   It took me a few frustrating hours of trouble shooting and manual reading to figure this out.   I kept thinking my problem was with my receiver when It was my cable box.

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#5
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10/14/09 at 2:31pm
  • Joined: October 2009
  • Post Count: 3
 Well, I did set up the digital dolby settings in the DVR box. And also I can see a bright red light shining from the optical output, but the red light isn't making it to the other end of the cable. Thanks for the help.
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#6
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10/15/09 at 1:38am
  • Joined: October 2009
  • Post Count: 3
 Problem solved! It was in fact a faulty cable. As soon as I replaced it I could see the red light shining at the other end. It now works great. Thanks for the help, guys.
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