[dschlic1]

I don't know if this is the correct forum for this post. Say you have a late edition "smart" TV. You also have a late edition multi-channel AVR surround sound system. When using the "apps" on the smart TV you will need to get the audio from the TV to the AVR. I may be wrong on this but I believe that there are only two ways to do this: Optical (Toslink) and ARC (Audio Return Channel). And there is the problem. According to the information I can find, neither of those is capable of more than two discrete uncompressed audio channels. So the Smart TV is limited to stereo or lossly compressed audio. Are there any alternatives or ways around this? If not I find this an excellent reason for using an external streamer.:surprise:

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Yes, an external streamer is what you need if you want streamed contentment with Dolby Digital. IMO smart TVs aren’t of much use to people in our hobby until TV manufacturers get this fixed (if an external streamer can deliver DD, no good reason why a TV can’t).

We use a TIVO unit that accepts a TV antenna input.

Regards,
Wayne

 

[LCSeminole]

My 2016 Samsung KS98800 sends a Dolby Digital 5.1 bitstream via optical to my pre/pro. I had been using an Amazon FireTV, but because it doesn't support HDR 4K video, I had to exclusively start using the on-board NetFlix & Amazon apps on my Samsung for this. I'm hoping Amazon will offer a FireTV with HDR 4K video at 60fps in the near future, if not I'll have to look into a Roku Premiere+ .