TV & Home Theater

[dwirth3]

Lignts on (the red light on the cable end opposite the TV), but nobody's home. Swapped a audio-working Samsung TV for the A80J, but no audio from the A80J optical connection to older Denon receiver. Set both sides to PCM. Executed the trouble shooting steps from Sony site. Tried a another cable. Have HDMI cables to TV direct from blueray 2.0 and one left unterminated 2.1 for future game console. No HDMI connected anymore from receiver to TV (want the TV to be the hub to get 4K that the older Denon would not pass thru) I would expect no sound back to the Denon thru optical for HDMI TV sources (owing to HDCP) but would expect sound from OTA and native google TV. Here's one observation - although the TV emits red light from its port, and from cable when connected to that port - the Denon emits no red light from its optical INPUT ports (take the caps off the ports and look for red). The Denon does emit red lights from its OUTPUT ports. Maybe thats expected given inout ports receive rather than transmit. Thoughts?

[dwirth3 · Accepted solution]

Found the problem. The presence of an HDMI jack (not necessarily connected on the other end to a device) in either HDMI1 (side panel) or HDMI3 ARC disables the optical connection for OTA and native TV apps. And you cant simply disconnect from either of these "offending" ports to re-enable the optical audio, you must power the TV off, unplug from AC for 2min, then unjack every HDMI and optical from the TV, then re-plug to AC, power-on with just the optical attached. That re-enables the optical audio (forgets the lock-out imposed by prior HDMI connections). HDMI 2 and 4 can now be attached and optical stays alive. This of course is a totally unacceptable condition. Sony should at least allow physical connections to all HDMI to exist, while still enforcing the copy protection rule of no signals from HDMI inputs to the optical output. Samsung allows all HDMI to at least be connected and optical stays alive. All who rely on optical audio for OTA and/or native TV app to an older soundbar or AVR now must forego use of 2 of the A80j's HDMI ports. And, go thru this inordiate remediation if they dare jack-in to HDMI1,3.