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Optical audio to HDMI?? (1 Viewer)

Spencer Coles

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Hey guys, I recently installed a home theater in my basement. I have 1 HDMI, 1 coax, and 3 cat6 cables running from my tv location to the AV rack in a separate room. After installing my tv I found out that all of the HDMI ports on the tv are only “in” and the only “out” port is an optical audio out. How do I get the signal from the optical audio out to convert to HDMI so it can connect to my receiver? Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 

JohnRice

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I guess the first question is, why do you need to get audio from your TV back to the receiver?

The simplest solution is by having a TV and receiver that have hdmi with ARC (Audio Return Channel), plus the hdmi cable you used needs to be ARC compatible. ARC has been a pretty standard feature for about eight years.
 

Spencer Coles

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Maybe I am not thinking through this accurately, so please help me. I am not an expert by any means. My TV is a smart TV and we run Netflix and other things like Plex from the tv as the source. Wouldn't we need to send the audio to the receiver so it can play what is on the tv through the surround sound?

Also, is there a way to tell if my HDMI is ARC compatible from looking at the cable? I don't remember if it was when I ordered it. I only ordered it 1yr ago, so it is definitely not an older cable.

The receiver does have HDMI ARC. I couldn't find that info on the TV though.

This is the receiver I purchased:
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/av_receivers_amps/rx-a3060_u/index.html

This is the TV:
https://www.costco.com/Samsung-82"-Class-(82.0"-Diag.)-4K-Ultra-HD-LED-LCD-TV.product.100366532.html

I may have just purchased the wrong TV, but I would like to avoid taking it off the wall, re-packaging it and finding another one unless you feel it is critical. If there is another simple solution I am very open to that. Thanks!
 
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JohnRice

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That TV should have an ARC input. Look at the inputs and see if one has "(ARC)" with it, as in "HDMI 1 (ARC)" is usually what it says. Or look at the manual. Then you configure the ARC in your receiver and you should get audio from the TV back to the receiver. I've never used ARC myself, so I'm not going to be of much more use than that. I expect your hdmi cable should be compatible, but what I recall is that it is hdmi with ethernet, which carries the audio back.
 
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Spencer Coles

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Thanks John! I found the HDMI ARC on both the tv and receiver. I plugged the cable into those, I am just now trying to figure out settings on both the tv and receiver. I didn’t have any luck playing around with it so I’ll have to dive into the manual tomorrow. Thanks for your help so far! I’ll let you know how it goes.
 

JohnRice

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There should be a CEC menu in the receiver. I think that's where you set it up. I'm not sure I even own a TV with ARC, but there may be something in the setup to turn audio return on/off. Someone here has to know more about that than me.
 

Spencer Coles

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So I have two TVs running off of my receiver, zone 1 (theater tv) and zone 2(exercise room tv). I was able to get the receiver setup menu to display on the zone 2 tv but zone 1 shows that it has no source. Would that indicate that the cable is not working?
 

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