Help connecting a soundbar

[CAPP0]

I succumbed to Black Friday madness and purchased an LG soundbar. I've always meant to get one, I have a pair of not-lovely LG 2.1 speakers at the moment.

Current kit: LG LED TV, Sky HD box, LG Bluray player, Apple TV.

At the moment, I have secondary audio inputs all feeding into the bluray player so that when we want more sound, I can play it through there, using the Aux (TV out) and Optical (from Apple TV) inputs.

Now, the soundbar has two main inputs, one HDMI, one Optical. Plus what looks like a 3.5mm jack socket. And it does Bluetooth. Yesterday, I connected the Sky box to the soundbar and back out to the TV and that works fine. But that's just regular TV.

Is there any way I can get all of my devices working through the soundbar? The bluray player is the only one with additional audio inputs (well, and the TV). I could play the Sky box through the HDMI and the bluray through the optical, but that leaves the Apple TV out in the cold. The Apple TV only has optical audio out so I can't convert that to 3.5mm jack (can I?). Can I get an optical > bluetooth convertor or something like that and push the Apple that way? I'm a bit stuck! The TV doesn't have HDMI out, otherwise I'd push everything to that via HDMI and then back out to the soundbar. But looking at lots of other soundbars, they all seem to have the same (few) set of inputs.

As you can probably tell, I'm not looking for something to rival the Odeon Leicester Square, just something with a bit more sound quality than the 0.1mm tinny speakers in the LED TV.

Thanks.

[liner33]

Does the TV have a audio out ? If you connect that then anything on the tv will come out of the soundbar

[SS2.]

Have a look at the HDMI inputs on the back of the TV and Soundbar - do these each have a socket marked '(ARC)' ?

Edited by SS2. on Sunday 29th November 15:29

[Chris Stott]

Does the TV have an optical connector?

If it does you can run everything in to the TV and output the sound to the sound bar via the optical.

[Smiler.]

I was looking for a way to route various inputs having both HDMI & optical so they would work through the surround sound system.

I found this but held off from buying it for months, during which time I searched for something cheaper. My search was fruitless so bought one a few weeks ago.

Brilliant bit of kit.

[CAPP0]

I will have to re-check the TV connections but I'm not sure it has these. It's about 4-5 years old now, so maybe it pre-dates current tech?

Thanks for the move btw, I only Favourite forums showing and thus didn't see this place!

[Sparky137]

CAPP0 said:

I will have to re-check the TV connections but I'm not sure it has these. It's about 4-5 years old now, so maybe it pre-dates current tech?

I have a circa 2007 LG plasma that has an optical output (they have been around for at least twenty years!) so yours should have.

[CAPP0]

liner33 said:

Does the TV have a audio out ? If you connect that then anything on the tv will come out of the soundbar

Chris Stott said:

Does the TV have an optical connector?

If it does you can run everything in to the TV and output the sound to the sound bar via the optical.

Thanks guys, I found the optical out on the back of the TV, connected up, all working

Much appreciated!