Originally Posted by Bobbych:
“Hi I have a Samsung UE55ES8000U smart TV, a SKY+ HD 2tb box and a Sony HBD-E870 bluray/home cinema system. I have it connected with 2 HDMI and 1 optical cable and all seems fine. The audio is coming from the tv to the cinema system via the optical cable but I have just found out that this is not the best way to set up. I belive HDMI is it. Cinema box only has 1 HDMI(arc) port so I'm lost as to the bbest way to set up. Can take pictures of i/o ports if needed.”
The only advantage of using the HDMI connection is it is one less cable to mess around with.
The Sky box has to be connected to the TV, the Sony system does not have any HDMI inputs so no way to connect the Sky box to that. If what I have managed to find on the TV is correct HDMI 2 may be ARC compatible. If that is correct then you could connect the Sony to HDMI 2 on the TV and enable the ARC connection which, if it works, would remove the need for the optical cable.
But there will be no real difference between the two, apart from the obvious one that one uses pulses of light and the other uses pulses of electricity to convey the data. But both should be outputting exactly the same digital data so will sound exactly the same.
Unless that is you are one of those nutters who believes that the identical digital data carried over two different connections can sound different simply due to the different cables involved.