HDMI Splitter Issue

[Wyrestorm]

I received a call from a customer who purchased one of our (Wyrestorm) 1-in 4-out HDMI splitters and is using a Samsung Blu-Ray BD-3600 and only wants to distribute digital audio via HDMI to 3 different Yamaha Recievers (RX-V365, RX-V565, RX-V765). He states that when he connects HDMI from Blu-Ray to Yamaha receivers, audio is fine, but when he tries to split the HDMI from the Samsung to the 3 receivers he gets no audio. Anyone have any suggestions to the cause and/or solution. This is my first post so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[dhitoshi]

Originally Posted by Wyrestorm

I received a call from a customer who purchased one of our (Wyrestorm) 1-in 4-out HDMI splitters and is using a Samsung Blu-Ray BD-3600 and only wants to distribute digital audio via HDMI to 3 different Yamaha Recievers (RX-V365, RX-V565, RX-V765). He states that when he connects HDMI from Blu-Ray to Yamaha receivers, audio is fine, but when he tries to split the HDMI from the Samsung to the 3 receivers he gets no audio. Anyone have any suggestions to the cause and/or solution. This is my first post so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

LCD's do not have Dolby TrueHD or any dts format decoding on board and most HDMI splitters were designed to split video to multiple displays. Your application being to split a blu-ray player output to multiple AVR's is not as common as the former. At the store I work at we use the Audioquest HDA-145 HDMI splitter and the original version did output lossless audio via the 4 outputs. That worked fine for the 2 demo rooms that have multiple AVR's, but in the other 4 systems I only needed to split the blu-ray player to a single AVR but the 3 additional LCD's in the rooms could only accept video, not the lossless audio track. When the blu-ray player detected that 3 devices out of the 4 could not accept a TrueHD or dts HD Master signal there was no audio out of any device. I contacted Audioquest's chief engineer Xiaozheng Lu and he designed a new firmware for the splitter that only output audio to output 1, but 2 through 4 passed only video. That fixed my problem. Now all the the HDA-145's ship with that setup. If you contact Audioquest they could probably program a splitter to work like the original firmware did, audio passed to all outputs.

[SlmShdy1]

^I don't know why he's talking about TV's.

Originally Posted by Wyrestorm

I received a call from a customer who purchased one of our (Wyrestorm) 1-in 4-out HDMI splitters and is using a Samsung Blu-Ray BD-3600 and only wants to distribute digital audio via HDMI to 3 different Yamaha Recievers (RX-V365, RX-V565, RX-V765). He states that when he connects HDMI from Blu-Ray to Yamaha receivers, audio is fine, but when he tries to split the HDMI from the Samsung to the 3 receivers he gets no audio. Anyone have any suggestions to the cause and/or solution. This is my first post so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

It's possible that the splitter is not HDCP compliant (you would know better than me since you work there). If it is not HDCP complaint and your customer is trying to play protected material, then they won't get a signal.

[blarneyrubble]

How long are the cable he is using? Digital is usually digital but I have read that most cable will fail to send both audio and video over certain lengths--I think 75ft. Also, are the cables and splitter 1.3 certified?

[dhitoshi]

Originally Posted by SlmShdy1

^I don't know why he's talking about TV's.


It's possible that the splitter is not HDCP compliant (you would know better than me since you work there). If it is not HDCP complaint and your customer is trying to play protected material, then they won't get a signal.

If you ACTUALLY read my reply, I stated that MOST HDMI splitters are designed to split the source to multiple tv's NOT to multiple A/V receivers!!!!!
All of those Yamaha AVR's are HDCP compliant, actually any device from Yamaha or Samsung that has HDMI would support HDCP. A device with DVI output may or may not support HDCP which is not the case here.
This application will need a splitter that can pass audio other than 2 channel PCM or Dolby Digital.
If you output ANY other audio codec via a splitter that was not designed for that purpose will either get no sound or the splitter may "tell" the blu-ray player to downmix the signal to 2 channel PCM.
I know for a fact the the Audioquest HDMI splitter models can do that if they are loaded with the original firmware otherwise with the current firmware they only output lossless audio via output 1 and the other 3 outputs are video output only. Audioquest's HDMI splitters amplify the signal so I have had no problems running over a hundred feet with mulitiple HDMI's coupled together.
I do all the displays at the hi-fi (not a big box store) shop I work at and I also do in home service calls for the company, so I can say that I am well versed in diagnosing problems.

[Wyrestorm]

He has all the gear in a rack (AVRs as well as Blu-Ray). I believe I mentioned that he's using HDMI for audio only and using component for video distribution. Thanks for the replies and if anyone has other suggestions, thanks in advance.

[ArieS]

Is your name really Michael Scott? When did you move from Scranton, PA?

[Wyrestorm]

Yep...it's really Michael Scott and I don't run Dunder Mifflin. That's funny because when I was a kid it was "He likes it, hey Mikey", now it's "Where's Dwight?" Anyway, any suggestions to the real issue?