Apple TV to surround sound

[Gary S11]

Sorry me again,the ATV is going great , so I thought I'd try to set it up to utilise the surround sound for music and tv I have pioneer DVR-745h-s and a strong srt5431 set top box both have what appears to be only HDMI out so to run the ATV into either I assume I need a HDMI in port am I right or confused :eek:
thanks again ....Gary

[dmdigital]

There are two ways to get surround sound from the Apple TV to a surround system.
1) HDMI will transmit both digital video and Audio
2) TOSlink (SPDIF or optical digital) cable will transmit digital audio only

Do you have a surround sound amp in your system or are you trying to run it to a pseudo surround sound on the TV? The Pioneer is a recorder/player and doesn't have inputs for HDMI Or TOSlink. You assumptions are correct.

I run mine via HDMI to my Denon Surround amp and then run HDMI to the TV. The Amp is setup to send the sound to the speakers and not to the TV (via HDMI). I could have put HDMI to the TV and TOSlink to the amp and this would have achieved the same thing.

If your TV will detect DTS or Dolby Digital encoding then the HDMI cable to the TV will be giving you the best ability of the TV to output surround sound.

If you don't have anything at all a sound bar is the best alternative or 5 speakers a subwoofer and a surround amp.

[Gary S11]

Hi, that my problem my surround sound amp doesn't have a HDMI input jack, so was try the others but as we said they are out put only, so I figure a different amp is the only solution ...Gary

[dmdigital]

You only need the audio (TOSlink) to go to the amp the video will still go to the TV via the HDMI. You can get synchronisation problems between video and audio this way but as it is all digital it usually is down to the digital/analogue converters in the amp. If the amp doesn't have a TOSlink input then you can buy a TOSlink to5.1 RCA convertor but does this risk sync problems too.

What make/model is your amp?

[Gary S11]

Hi the amp i have is a JVC RX-5022VSL ....because of a cassette ,DVR, set top box, turn table, surround sound set up the back of the amp is pretty chockas, ..Gary

[dmdigital]

On my old Amp I had 97 cables attached to it at one stage. Even the new one has over 50. HDMI allowed me to simplify things. Gets painful doesn't it :(

As for your amp. Given it doesn't have component video I'd just forget about using it for the video signal. Down converting HDMI to composite video is basically pointless sand the money spent on a convertor would be better put towards a newer amp.

As you would already know with the audio you have only one option for the Apple TV, the DIGITAL2 optic input. If you already have the set top box or DVR plugged in to this I suspect that the device will more than likely have a digital coax out on it and you could then plug this in to DIGITAL1 using a digital coax cable.