Answered Marantz NR1506 - No sound from some devices after moving to 4K TV

S

Sifox211

Guest
Hi all!

I bought a 4K Panasonic TX-65FZ802B TV recently to replace a decade old Samsung LE40. I use a Marantz NR1506 AV amp to connect three devices - a Panasonic UHD, a US Samsung BD player and a Humax HDR-FOX T2 PVR, all using HDMI. Between the UHD, amp and telly I use high speed HDMI cables, with normal HDMIs from the BD and PVR to the amp. The amp is connected to the TV using HDMI2, in order to get UHD support.

With the old telly, this all worked fine, but on my new set up I cannot get any sound from the Samsung or Humax devices, if using HDMI 1 or 2 on the telly. Connecting the Samsung or Humax direct to the HDMI 3 or 4 ports gives me sound via the TV.

This seems like an issue with using non-UHD devices with the UHD-enabled HDMI ports on the TV.

Obviously, I need to have all my devices routing through the app to get the benefits of surround sound and I have to use HDMI 1 or 2 on the TV to get UHD; at the moment the only solution I've found is to use the optical and digital (coax) connectors from the Samsung and Humax to the amp, but they are limited - playing a disk on the Samsung BD with DTS HD Master Audio results in only DTS at the amp.

Does anyone have experience of this? Would using high speed HDMI (or different ones... like Panasonic) fix this?
 
Have you assigned the inputs correctly? Turn off all video enhancements, scaling etc. Your connection on the Panny should be HDMI2 as that is the ARC enabled port.
 
The Humax and Samsung inputs on the amp were originally getting everything through HDMI - currently they are set to analogue and digital just to get round the silence. In the TV I am using HDMI2 as you suggest, for the ARC (which works - I put on the TV and it powers up the amp and sends the sound through it).

I might try a couple of things tonight -

1. Use HDMI3 on the TV; I'll lose UHD but it should confirm my suspicion it's something to do with non-UHD devices.
2. Use a high speed HDMI cable with the Humax and Samsung to see if that's the issue.

All video enhancements are off - don't want my films looking like a soap opera :D
 
So some results:

1. Using a high speed HDMI cable between the Samsung BD and the amp made no difference.

2. Putting the HDMI cable from the amp into the TV's HDMI4 (which does not support UHD), before I set the audio input from the Samsung in the amp, brought back DTS HD MA! (So, a UHD connection to the TV causes the amp to get DTS instead of HD MA from the coax input - even though this part is between the player and the amp).

3. Restoring the input to HDMI only from the Samsung now gave HDMI/DTS HD MA audio all the way along the line.

Sadly, it doesn't provide me with an answer :(
 
Looks like this is the answer, from Marantz FAQs here:

This behaviour is caused by the incompatibility of the older HDMI 1.3 compliant device and the modern HDMI 2.0 (or later) TVs or projectors. In most cases, you will also not get any audio when you connect the player directly to the same input of the TV.

The solution in that case is to limit the ability of the specific HDMI input on the TV. This function is called different for the manufacturers, e.g.

LG: HDMI Ultra HD Deep Colour = OFF
Samsung: HDMI UHD Colour = OFF
Sony: HDMI Signal Format = STANDARD
Philips: HDMI Ultra HD 4:4:4 = OFF

Please note that this will disable the capability of the TV to receive UltraHD signals in 60p in 10 or 12 bits at this input. It is therefore recommended to connect these devices to a different TV input.
 

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