# Connect all HDMI to TV and optical to Receiver?



## FargateOne (Mar 3, 2015)

The technical service of my cable company gave me the following suggestion. I am suspicious because I am not an expert.
To get better sound in my 5.1 HT, he suggested to connect hdmi output from the DVD-player to hdmi input to the TV and to connect the hdmi out from the set-top box (cable decoder) to the tv (see my system in my profile) and a toslink cable from the tv to the receiver. He said that the optical would carry only audio signal for a better resut. Does this make sens ?
Actually, my connections are dvd and set-top to the receiver and from the recever to tv one hdmi.


----------



## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

FargateOne said:


> The technical service of my cable company gave me the following suggestion. I am suspicious because I am not an expert.
> To get better sound in my 5.1 HT, he suggested to connect hdmi output from the DVD-player to hdmi input to the TV and to connect the hdmi out from the set-top box (cable decoder) to the tv (see my system in my profile) and a toslink cable from the tv to the receiver. He said that the optical would carry only audio signal for a better resut. Does this make sens ?
> Actually, my connections are dvd and set-top to the receiver and from the recever to tv one hdmi.


It will work but one should do that only if absolutely necessary. Keep it the way you are doing it. Typically, feeding the sound through the TV will limit the format options available to the receiver. Also, there is no inherent advantage of toslink in this situation.


----------



## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

what Kal said. unless you're getting artifacts in the audio or glitches I would keep it the way you have it. you it's illogical. you can test it out and A/B the results to see if it's better, but unless you're having issues that makes no sense


----------



## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

Kal Rubinson said:


> Also, there is no inherent advantage of toslink in this situation.


Just curious as to when it does offer an advantage?

Sent from my iPad using HTShack


----------



## FargateOne (Mar 3, 2015)

Thank all for your quick replies.
Maybe I am a dinausore in this computor and digital sound world (atmos with...123456789 speakers set up !!!) but I supected something wrong about this advice.
...and I am a lesser dinausore since I am member of HTS.


----------



## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

Lumen said:


> Just curious as to when it does offer an advantage?


When you need galvanic isolation, I guess.


----------



## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Lumen said:


> Just curious as to when it does offer an advantage?


Can’t speak for this particular connection scheme (the one proposed by the cable company), but I’ve seen plenty of situations where HDMI to the receiver and then HDMI to the TV resulted in drop-outs in the audio with some components. Adding a toslink or S/PDIF connection eliminated the problem.

Regards,
Wayne


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Also note that optical will not carry the Dolby TruHD or DTS Master audio signals. So from the cable box that is ok but the Bluray player you will loose the uncompressed audio.


----------

