Home Theater & Smart TV

Home Theater & Smart TV: a reader asks…

I have a new Samsung Smart TV, and have connected that to my home theater system (powered by a Yamaha RX-A2030 receiver). I have DirecTV and a Sony Blu-ray player connected to this system (via HDMI). I ran an HDMI cable from the receiver’s OUT to the TV’s HDMI input, and also have an optical cable I ran from the Samsung TV to the receiver. When I use the DirecTV or Blu-ray player, they work just fine. But when I try to use the streaming apps on my Smart TV, I don’t get the sound out of my speakers. What do I need to do or change to get this to work?

In general, you connect source devices to the receiver, and that outputs video and audio to your output devices. When you’re using your DirecTV or Blu-ray player, those are your audio and video sources, and your speakers and the SmartTV are your output devices.

However, when you are using the streaming apps on your Smart TV, that TV becomes your source device for audio only. which is delivered to your receiver (via the optical cable) as a source for output to the speakers.

Assuming you plugged the DirecTV into AV 1, the Blu-ray player into AV 2, you should have then plugged the optical cable into the optical port labled AV 3. If you plugged an HDMI cable and an optical cable into the same-numbered input ports on the receiver, then likely the optical cable wouldn’t be used. Don’t mix the numbers when using different types of cables.

When you’re trying to play streamed apps on your Smart TV, you need to set the Yamaha receiver to use AV 3 (on the remote it’s the number 3 under the AUDIO group, but I think the number 3 under the AV group would work too, as long as you don’t have anything plugged into the HDMI port labeled AV 3). Then you’ll hear the audio coming from the Smart TV streaming apps through your speakers.

When setting up a home theater, it’s often confusing to know which is a source device and which is an output device. That’s because those designators are used in relation to the device you’re dealing with. For example, the TV is a source device when referring to the optical audio output port, but is an input device when referring to the HDMI ports (I’m ignoring the complication of ARC). For your receiver, it treats AV IN ports as source inputs, and both the HDMI OUT port and the speaker ports as output devices.

So when playing DirecTV, the HDMI cable going into the receiver (say, the HDMI IN 1 port is your source for audio and video, and the output goes for Video to HDMI OUT and the speakers. Same for when using the Blu-ray player (say, the HDMI IN 2 port).

But for the SmartTV, it functions as both a source and an output device when streaming apps. Those apps stream video to the screen, and output audio through the optical cable as a source for the receiver. If you don’t change to the correct source, you’re not going to get the output you want.