Okay purchased
TV - Samsung UE40EH5000K
& LG BH6620P Home Cinema system the other day

everything looked great in Currys, get home and different story

I have as you'd expect HDMI to SKY+HD box, digital optical from SKY+HD to LGBH6620P AMP/Blu-Ray player, and from there HDMI to TV

All hunky dorey till I sit down and watch a movie tonight.
And low and behold my system reports to me that its is only Streaming/Broadcasting in 2.0


Help!!!!!

What is streaming in 2.0? Do you mean watching something off the interweb? Or something else entirely?

It is possible that a movie streamed from the likes of Netflix or Lovefilm might be 2.0. If you are watching an SD TV broadcast either via Sky or the TV's Freeview tuner then they will also be in 2.0. Nothing unusual about that. Only the HD channels are likely to have surround audio tracks. But even then there could be programmes transmitted that were made with only stereo sound tracks.

Not everything is in surround. I would imagine there could be films on Blu-Ray with MONO sound tracks (especially from the early days of film).

You will have to use something like Dolby Pro-Logic to generate a surround effect from a stereo source. If the stereo track has been encoded in the appropriate manner then that enhances the effect. But even on plain stereo Pro-Logic can produce a reasonable surround effect.

Sorry about the confusion either my ears are screwed or the system is screwy as nothing sounds right - bar the test settings as that is fine.

What happens (and have tried this with recent SKY Premeire HD screening, PotC, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 s3)

I play the footage as per standard having the LGBH6620P speaker level set to broadcast on Natural (Should be switching between 2.0 and 5.1) I get a couple of chapters in to sample some action sound and press the INFO button for details.
Low and behold I receive the correct Title, time, and Chapter, button the Audio information presented is always the Dolby symbol with a 2.0 or 2.1 underneath.
Surely this should be reading 5.1 ???

Not necessarily. Dolby Digital can in theory be anything from 1.0 to 7.1 from a Blu-Ray disk. On Sky is more likely to be 2.0 or 5.1. Dolby Digital does NOT mean 5.1 and nothing else.

It sounds like you have both HDMI and optical digital from the Sky box. So first check is to ensure that when you have the Sky input selected you are getting audio from the optical connection and not HDMI. Sky boxes only do 2.0 over HDMI even if the source programme is 5.1. You need the optical connection for 5.1. So you could connect the Sky HDMI direct to the telly and not bother plugging it into the LG system. Just leave the optical lead attached. At least that would solve any confusion over which input you are listening to.

And you also need to double check all other connected devices to make sure they are set to output surround sound over whatever connection you are using. If you set them to output something like LPCM for example than chances are all you will get is stereo. There could also be a setting like that on the Sky box optical output. Don't have Sky so can't say for certain.

I wish it was that simple.

I have a Optical lead going from the SKY HD box to my LG and of course the HDMI going to the TV.

I have had a look at the manual for this unit. About as useful as a chocolate fireguard frankly.

It tells you three eighths of sod all about the optical input. It doesn't mention if it is capable of inputting a surround format signal or anything useful like that.

I have also had a look at an online manual for the Sky HD box and found this


So could be worth trying the above to see what your box is set to.

Seems my box (The new 2TB box released last Oct/Nov) has changed the presets automatically upon connection of the Digital Optical output lead.

So yes Digital Audio Output is set to - Dolby D

I'm starting to feel I've bought one 'lemon' of a home cinema system.