Panasonic Home Theatre system no sound through Optical

[Zippyworld]

Greetings

Can anyone shed some light on this please ?
I have aPanasonic HT1500 home cinema kit, its about 17 years old, I dusted it off and just love the sound quality and it plays DVD’s no problem.

What I cannot get it to do is play the sound from the TV or the Sky box, It has an optical connector on the HTS. I have connected a new Optical cable but just cannot get the audio, I am certain its not a setting on the Sky box or TV because I tried each one.

Does it require some sort of convertor maybe ?
I wouldnt have thought so as its simply audio and its optical out to optical in.

[wong]

Try selecting the source on the remote. Mine (not sure of model, but a cheap Pana dvd with 5.1 sounds) cycles through DVD > RADIO > EXT-IN.
Choose EXT-IN which cycles through (each time you press the button) USB>AUX > D-IN. Choose D-IN (Optical IN)

[Zippyworld]

I do cycle through, there are 4 types of AV input, an optical and an aux. Nothing pics the sound up.
I would have thought optical to optical would br straight forward !

I may have to resort to the old fashioned red, white sd yellow AV cables next.

Stumped on this

[KingofKong]

Plug one end of the optical cable into the tv, put a piece of paper in front of the other end, do you see a red dot?

[Zippyworld]

Yes the red LED’s are on

[Zippyworld]

When i switch the tv to optical output it muted the sound on the TV speakers which tells me all is as should be at the output end

[FunkyGibbon]

it could be that your panny system is not coping with digital output of TV and/or sky q if there output is set to Dolby Digital and/or Dolby Digital +

In TV and/or sky dial down the sound output from DD+ -> DD if that doesn't work then dial down to normal.

HTH

[Zippyworld]

I thought that too, and did do the switching about.
Am I right in thinking that it should be working just via the optical connection ? No converter or anything else required ? If the answer is no other kit / converter required I will start again and go through every pisdible switching scenario. I may connect to the optical on the skybox, that will be simpler as there are less sound outputs to change

[Miserablegit]

yes - there are no adaptors for optical - if it fits it fits - I recall on an old sony minidisc and mac mini that the 3.5mm audio jack was also an optical output- a special adaptor was used that was basically a hollow 3.5mm plug with a fibre optic cable in it - but if you've managed to connect it you should be good to go.

It might be the digital signal cannot be converted by the old home theatre system...

One thing to check- my home theatre amps have all had selectable audio input for certain channels - most are hdmi these days but for one or two things back in the day I used an optical input from a DVD player for the audio - I had to tell the AV receiver to take the audio signal from the optical input on that source - all others were set to HDMI audio.

As others have said - if the audio signal on the optical output is one of the new Dolby variants and cannot be decoded by your amp have a look at putting the optical audio out to its mot basic setting (might just be a stereo output) to see if the av amp is reading/decoding any optical signal. Is there another bit of kit with an optical output (cd player (ideal as it will be a stereo signal)/ bluray??) you can use to check this as well?

[Zippyworld]

OK, thankyou for these ideas. I will go and have a play, not with myself, with the kit haha

[Miserablegit]

just done a bit of google-fu (as I have an urgent document to get out but this is more fun!!) and this might help -

[QuartzDad]

I set up my first optical connection a few months ago, soundbar to TV. Could not get it working for love nor money, googled for hours, tried every combo possible.

<click>

Didn't realise optical cables had a positive click action to connect.

[Zippyworld]

Cable definitely clicks in, funnily enough I get an error message when I switch to optical, thought I would just run directly from the skybox and its still the same

[Miserablegit]

What is the error message -“unlock” or something?

It might be possible that the optical cable is damaged - I’ve seen some bent too far and they then don’t deliver a bright enough light level

[Zippyworld]

It just says ERROR, not much use really

[Miserablegit]

Is this of any help
https://www.avforums.com/threads/ps3-optical-5-1-s...

Seems the receiver can’t decode dts from the optical link. Is there anything else you have that can output a non-dts signal ( CD player for instance).

[Zippyworld]

That is of help, if its disabled that explains a lot !

I see the workaround for PS did the trick, alas no such capability with a skybox or my LG tv, will see what else I Can do.

Thankyou for this

[Zippyworld]

Bring back SCART ffs !

[Miserablegit]

You are welcome - best of luck

[Miserablegit]

Zippyworld said:

Bring back SCART ffs !

Scart brings its own problems - running some old rgb outputs via a Scart cable works on some equipment and not others - Scart is as much witchcraft as the new-fangled stuff with voltages on certain pins dictating rgb or composite etc!!!