Sonos and Panasoninc TV's

[BoostMonkey]

Experts I've got a slight issue, I was all set to buy a Sonos Soundbar, sub and 1's to finish off my full house refurb.

However on looking at the new (2015) range of Panasonic TV's none seem to have optical out's? Are there any, they all seem to just use ARC.
I've already laid all the cables I thought I needed through the walls (3x hdmi's, 2x CAT6's, power and ariel) so no chance will putting additional cables through.

Is the Sonos is no a no go, what other systems would be comparable (wireless sub and tweets etc)?

Thanks

[ASK1974]

This had me a bit stumped as I couldn't believe Panasonic would drop an audio out, had to check as we sell the things. Just looked up a few models and they all have an Optical connection. Which model are you getting?

[F18RSC]

I may be incorrect but I do believe most TVs optical out is only 2.1 and not 5.1.

Could you not get a simple optical switch?

[JimbobVFR]

If you want to do it properly a few companies have started making HDMI switches specifically designed for the Play bar.

Octavia make one that has 4 HDMI ports and 4 optical inputs. The clever part is the audio can be extracted from the HDMI inputs or from separate optical inputs from the devices, you can also use ARC to get audio from the TVs internal tunerd and smart features.
http://www.tmfsolutions.co.uk/Octava_HD41-ARC-UK.h...

[BoostMonkey]

Its going to be either be TX-50CX680B or TX50CX802B, which do have optical outs (I should not have listened to the man in Curry's).

Am I correct in thinking optical outs from the TV are 2.1 and the Sonos digitally engineers these back to 5.1?

So to get true sound I would need a box as per the link above?

[JimbobVFR]

Hard to say, not that long ago it was very rare for a TV to output 5.1 via optical, I believe it's getting more common but even then some only have 5.1 for internal services (tuners and smart features) but not for external devices.

Realistically a sound bar is never going to be that convincing at surround compared to proper discreet speakers IMO so it may not even matter.