Try watching something like Star Wars on ITV HD and giving it a bit of stick to get the old subwoofer working. At the end of the programme it drops out to mpeg sound and it's deafening. The problems not so bad using BBC HD as it's all DD so you can turn the volume down before changing to a SD channel

I am pleased I am not the only one with this problem as until I read this post I thought there was a problem with my equipment. I hope Humax address this issue soon because it was really handy being able to turn the volume down via the box whilst it was connected via the optical out. The only way I can do it now is to have my amp set to TV instead so as the sound goes via the HDMI to the TV then to the amp from the TV via the scart, then just set the amp to STB when I watch BBC or ITV HD.

Please Humax sort this out.

No problem Sir, please just wait one more year!

Hi Graham, I've seen a lot of your posts before I joined the forum so much respect sir!
I use an ONKYO amplifier and I always used to have the Humax volume control turned up full and never found much of a level discrepancy between the PCM (2.0) and the AC3 (5.1).
Tonight I checked the Jools Holland show on BBC2 and on BBC HD and I'm pushed to tell any difference between the levels. I've checked this on optical and HDMI and they are the same (as would be expected with a digital signal).

I wonder if it's a problem with the way some amps process AC3 signals? I know on my PC, using DVBviewer, there is a distinct level difference between the PCM decoder and the AC3 decoder.

After, reading all the posts on the loss of volume control via the Humax HDR when connected to an amplifier via the optical output (which I have to say was always set to maximum on my system), I decided to do some investigating as I have an HDMI cable connected to my TV and an optical cable from my TV to my amplifier.
I have a panasonic TV with built in freesat decoder so I can watch HD from either source and listen to the output from either source via optical as my amplifier does not have HDMI inputs.

Point is if I switch to the HDMI input on the TV and switch to the Humax optical sound input, I get 5.1 sound. If I switch to the TV and its input I get 5.1 sound.

However and here is this confusing bit, If I switch to the HDMI input from the Humax on the TV to watch a program and then set the amp to the TV output I get stereo ( and no its not cross connected or the wrong input. Because if I then switch the TV channel to its internal freesat decoder it bursts into 5.1 sound.


So my question is in a long winded way is where the hell do I tell the Humax to output the digital sound via the HDMI.
Because as far as I can tell the HDMI is not outputting the 5.1 sound.

Don't know your TV or Amp, but maybe the TV cannot ouput 5.1 ?

Rgds.


Les.

As Les says it's very rare (may be there are none) for a tv to output DD from a digital output that does not originate from it's own tuners. As freeview does not use DD it's always mpeg stereo from a tv with only freeview but in your case you do have an internal DD source in the Freesat tuner. Certainly the manual for my Sony TV makes this clear.

grahamlthompson & Savvy

I should have done some more testing!

Your comments made me re-think. I have just played a dvd with 5.1 sound and switched the amp to the TV output and not the DVD output and that was in mono/stereo.

Which is all rather odd, as to why Panasonic give you an optical out from the TV, but does not allow the HDMI to feed the sound to the optical out put...

Cheaper for Panasonic to just allow 5.1 from the freesat tuner only

I would think it's an uneccesary expense, the freeview spec allows DD transmission but nobody uses it , if they did I would imagine you would get DD from freeview as well