# Media audo with USB?



## TomFord (Jul 15, 2014)

How's it going fellas? 

When I connect usb drive to the TV it will play the video, but no audio. Don't believe any AVR will play videos from a usb when plugged to the AVR. Connecting RCA cable to TV/CD is the only thing I haven't tried that I believe may work, is that correct? Is there not a way for the media to be played over HDMI?


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## TomFord (Jul 15, 2014)

Hello?


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## selden (Nov 15, 2009)

How are you creating the video?

i.e. what movie editing software are you using?

When you create a video, you have to make sure that the audio file that's included is in a format that the TV recognizes. AVI, for example, is just a container format. You can use it to contain audio and video that are in a large variety of formats. TVs recognize only a small number of them. You need to check the TV's manual to find out what it recognizes, and make sure your movie editing software is writing that format.


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## TomFord (Jul 15, 2014)

selden said:


> How are you creating the video?
> 
> i.e. what movie editing software are you using?
> 
> When you create a video, you have to make sure that the audio file that's included is in a format that the TV recognizes. AVI, for example, is just a container format. You can use it to contain audio and video that are in a large variety of formats. TVs recognize only a small number of them. You need to check the TV's manual to find out what it recognizes, and make sure your movie editing software is writing that format.


Selden, thanks for the reply. The TV plays the movies, I usually have them in MKV, but sometimes AVI or MPEG4. The formats are fine, if I connect my laptop to the AUX input on the AVR via HDMI it plays fine. Just using the 15 ft HDI cable for the AVR to TV now that I've mounted it to the wall so that I could have my center channel near ear level. The mount is very nice for anyone considering it. Being able to pull the TV out nearly 3 feet, rotate it nearly 180 degrees & tilt up or down 15 degrees is great. 
Reason I'm trying to do it is so I can have a remote control for the movies, TV shows that I watch that way. Don't have time to keep up with all the good series so I save them to an external hard drive. Most prime time shows don't need it but I convert some to 7.1 ac3, DTS-HD, etc. Before getting my AVR I didn't know I wasn't getting 1920x1080 which is 1080p or Full HD. Majority of if not all channels on comcast broadcast in 1920 x 720 which is considered HD but notice a huge difference when the receiver upscales it to Full HD vs the 1080i most cable/sat companies offer from what I've read which i thought was that the Full HD previously 

The cyberlink software I have says it will play MKV yet most times it will not. When I can use Cyberlink I have an app by them on my phone that allows me to use it as a remote. Have any of you been able to get the AVR remote to work with a laptop? Tried running RCA cables from TV/CD to the TV but they won't reach now that it's mounted. When I connect the usb to the TV you have to click source which switches from the HDMI 1 & 2 that play audio for DVR, & DVD. It plays the video, but will only do the audio of the DVR or DVD. If I utilized ARC would that resolve it?
I thought one of the 3 digital inputs (composite I believe they're called) in the AVR were assignable, but that's only for video. The 3 digital inputs (which I have a cable long enought to reach TV) are BD/DVD, CAB/SAT, & STB/DVR. Can look again, yet don't believe any of those are assignable 

If you understand what I mean, I'd appreciate any advice 

Feel bad even asking such a thing with the real problems people are enduring


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## selden (Nov 15, 2009)

Tom,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Can you provide the exact manufacturer and models of TV and receiver that you have?
There are enough differences among them that my answers below are just generic.



TomFord said:


> Selden, thanks for the reply. The TV plays the movies, I usually have them in MKV, but sometimes AVI or MPEG4.


 Those are "container" file formats (something like Zip). Unfortunately, they place few restrictions on the encodings used for the individual video and audio files that they contain. Evidently some encodings can be decoded by your TV and some cannot.


> The formats are fine, if I connect my laptop to the AUX input on the AVR via HDMI it plays fine.


 The laptop's media player software doubtless has many more audio and video decoders than the TV does. The laptop most likely is converting the audio tracks into LPCM before sending the audio to the TV over HDMI.

To find out what formats are actually in the container files, you need to use something like MediaInfo. It provides more information than you could imagine about the contents of a "video" file. http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo



> The cyberlink software I have says it will play MKV yet most times it will not. When I can use Cyberlink I have an app by them on my phone that allows me to use it as a remote. Have any of you been able to get the AVR remote to work with a laptop?


There are lots of ways to do that. Do a web search for the words
infrared control computer

Essentially you need an infrared receiver which plugs into a USB port on your computer and software running in your computer which recognizes the commands.

The Logitech Harmony Smart Keyboard might be appropriate. See http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/harmony-smart-keyboard?crid=60



> Tried running RCA cables from TV/CD to the TV but they won't reach now that it's mounted. When I connect the usb to the TV you have to click source which switches from the HDMI 1 & 2 that play audio for DVR, & DVD. It plays the video, but will only do the audio of the DVR or DVD. If I utilized ARC would that resolve it?


If you're already getting audio from the TV to your receiver, then that connection should work for all sources, provided that the audio is in a format that the TV recognizes. This usually means the audio format has to be either LPCM or Dolby Digital. You'll need to read the TV's manual carefully to find out what those formats are.



> I thought one of the 3 digital inputs (composite I believe they're called) in the AVR were assignable, but that's only for video.


 Sorry, but "composite" is the designation for a specific way of encoding color video, and only video, so it can be sent as an analog signal over a single coax cable. (For convenience, usually a cable intended to be used for composite video is color coded with yellow ends.) That won't be enough in this case, since you need to get audio from the TV to the receiver.



> The 3 digital inputs (which I have a cable long enought to reach TV) are BD/DVD, CAB/SAT, & STB/DVR. Can look again, yet don't believe any of those are assignable.


 Those are all inputs to the AVR. It doesn't matter whether or not they're assignable. The names are just for your convenience. They all provide exactly the same functionality.


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## leej (Jun 9, 2010)

I may have missed something, but are your trying to get the audio from the TV speakers, or the AVR? 
The AVR that I use has Return Audio feature, via HDMI, so I can select that audio on my AVR. Before upgrading to my current AVR, I had to run an optical cable from the TV out to the AVR, or just use the TV speakers when playing video via usb.
Can you get the audio on the TV speakers when playing video on the usb?
Do you get audio from your TV to AVR when playing OTA sources?


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## garcianc2003 (Sep 5, 2014)

Ditto on the Logitech smart keyboard. That is what I use to control my Linux HTPC instead of a remote. I tried other remote solutions but found that I can do more with a keyboard (go figure). However, unlike the link that Selden provided, I have an older keyboard that uses a trackball and which I like much better than a touchpad since it provides a nice mental/tactile reference between trackball position and pointer position and you can lift your finger and then go push the click button without misfiring on some of the tiny on-screen controls. Some of us "of a certain age" have a hard time tracing a touchpad and double-tapping at the same time while trying to hold the mouse pointer over an icon that is 4 pixels square. My keyboard also has hard buttons for play, pause, fast forward, etc. that all my applications recognize.

But I digress...

Tom, regarding your issue, I might have gotten a bit lost but, then again, I don't have any experience with using USB connections on televisions. I have used an Oppo universal player to play files from an external hard drive and it works like a charm, so it could be like Selden said that your television may not be able to properly decode what your are sending.


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## TomFord (Jul 15, 2014)

selden said:


> Tom,
> 
> Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
> 
> ...


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## selden (Nov 15, 2009)

Tom, 

Sorry: I dunno what you mean by "PM me about the speakers you suggested getting rid of. " I don't have speakers to get rid, am not in the market for more speakers and haven't suggested that you get rid of any. I suspect you've confused me with someone else you've been communicating with.

I personally don't use a remote to control my computer, so I dunno what support is available for the Harmony you mention.

It isn't clear to me from what you wrote if you've resolved your problem of playing directly from a USB device plugged into one of the TVs. The manuals for the TVs don't have numbers on their pages, but both have a page titled "Supported Video Codecs" which lists the audio and video codecs that they can read. You have to ensure that the files you create contain audio and video which was encoded using one of those codecs. Note that these codecs are *not* the same as the file formats that they support.


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