HDMI to Optical

[Firestreak]

Well I was thinking. is there any box out there that'll take an HDMI signal and convert it to optical?

I've got my PS3 to use as an SACD player, and my surround sound system doesn't have an HDMI in. I had assumed with an optical in, I'd have no problems playing high-def surround sound SACDs, but now all I can do is hook it up analog and get regular stereo. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a surround sound.

I don't understand the purpose of making this high def sound connection that doesn't even support SACD. It's got no problem playing surround sound off blu-ray movies and games.

There's got to be some solution out there better than buying a new system. I figure, if you can buy a box that takes HDMI and will output it via wires to speakers, why not a box that takes HDMI and spits out optical at the same quality as blu-ray movies? Does such a box exist?

[nhaase]

The surround sound on SACDs is uncompressed, and optical cables don't have the bandwidth to support that. The surround sound you're using off blu-ray movies and games is dolby digital (or DTS, no matter which, it's not lossless). Simply put, you can't get lossless surround sound through optical. If you've selected PCM for a movie, you're just getting the front two channels. If you selected Dolby TrueHD, then the PS3 is just extracting the core Dolby Digital.

Be sure to do a search on the forums page, as this question has been discussed (I've asked something previously on this matter).