clckworang

I have posted in a couple of threads about the outdoor theater that I have built, my work in progress. One of the most recent additions to the setup is the installation of 2 HDMI/optical audio/Component wall plates, one inside the house and the other outside. I decided this was the ideal solution for being able to watch HD recordings on my DVR (DirecTV2PC was too laggy).

The idea is that I *should* be able to have pretty much anything shown in my living room also shown outside. My living room TV only has one HDMI, so long ago, I bought a 5x1 HDMI switcher, which is completely filled. My receiver is older and doesn't have HDMI, so all of those components are hooked up via optical audio as well. My receiver does have an optical audio out, so that is now being used to go to the wall plate. In addition, I bought a powered HDMI splitter so I could have a signal going both to my TV and to the outside.

All right, so the wall plate has been installed. It works perfect ... sometimes. Here's the thing. It works with my DirecTV DVR, except I get a weird echo sounding effect outside during some commercials, end credits, opening credits, standard definition programs. Considering I record almost everything in HD and the actual programs tend not to be affected, it's a weird annoyance but no deal breaker. Then I decided to check how it worked with my other components. It worked perfectly with my Oppo DVD player. When I tried it with my PS3, I get picture but no audio inside or outside. When I tried my 360, I got picture but audio only worked inside, not outside. Any ideas why some of these things are occurring? I thought there might be a setting I could change on the 360 or PS3 or that this is a copy protection thing. I have an outside Blu-ray player, so the PS3 not working isn't *that* big of a deal, though it will be really inconvenient if I had to remove the optical cable out from the receiver every time I wanted to be able to watch a Blu-ray inside on my PS3 rather than outside. I was really hoping I would be able to play the 360 outside, though!

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for any help.

Spiky

The DVR thing sounds like any 2 channel source is causing it (credits, commercials, etc), while 5.1 source is ok. So, that could actually be the settings for 2 channel in the receiver.

I'm unclear which cable is sending audio. Is it optical, and that is what is cutting out with PS3 and others? Make sure they are setup to send over optical, they may be defaulting to HDMI.

clckworang

I figured that might be the issue with the DVR.

Yes, the PS3 and 360 are both hooked up via optical, and I'm using the optical out on the receiver to go into the wall plate. When I get home, I'll check the settings on the PS3, but I know before the wall plate was put in, it was set up to send audio via optical and not the HDMI. Maybe a setting got switched or something.

Spiky

You might check the input settings on the receiver, too. Don't know what you've got, but mine allows me to assign digital inputs to any input, so you could potentially get them mixed up.