360, hdmi, and digital sound.

So, MY 360 has an HDMI port. Would love to use it, except the awesome MS Marketing decided that the other critical plug I need, the HD component octopus cable w/ the digital sound out, would block the HDMI port.

So I'm running component to my TV. Which is perfectly fine. But, the component cables are JUST long enough. So close that I cannot move the xbox anymore. I have a 10ft HDMI cable that would give enough slack.

I definitely don't want to spend 50$ on a MS HDMI cable, all I really want is the smaller sound adapter that ships in the HDMI kit from MS. I've seen writeups on using a dremmel to alter the component plug to make enough room. Are there any alternatives?

What's wrong with using the digital audio you get via HDMI?

nsmike wrote:

What's wrong with using the digital audio you get via HDMI?

I can't speak for taer, but in my case HDMI would be feeding video only to my TV and the digital audio would be fed separately to my receiver. I haven't yet upgraded to a receiver that includes HDMI.

LiquidMantis wrote:
nsmike wrote:

What's wrong with using the digital audio you get via HDMI?

I can't speak for taer, but in my case HDMI would be feeding video only to my TV and the digital audio would be fed separately to my receiver. I haven't yet upgraded to a receiver that includes HDMI.

Exactly. I have a receiver I want the sound to go through. I have the TV speakers disabled.

I guess I don't get HDMI. Most people wouldn't want the TV speakers. Perhaps that is just me. Also, a buddy of mine has an amp w/ 2->1 HDMI switching. It allegedly can pull the sound out on the way out. For him, the cable box got spooked, and thought he was a pirate, and put up a screen saying HDCP not found, use component cables. He spent a lot of money on that amp, and didn't call TW to complain at all.

I have a optical out on the TV(sony). Haven't tried it yet. Tried it on my dad's samsung, and it didn't work. You'd think it would strip the digital sound out and send it back out. But on his, it altered the stream, and only 2 channel PCM made it out.

Ah. Well, I don't have this problem, as my receiver processes HDMI audio, it doesn't just act as a passthrough. And it stays HDCP compliant. *shrug* I have one of those adapters, as it came with my Elite. Pay for shipping and it's yours.

taer wrote:

I have a optical out on the TV(sony). Haven't tried it yet. Tried it on my dad's samsung, and it didn't work. You'd think it would strip the digital sound out and send it back out. But on his, it altered the stream, and only 2 channel PCM made it out.

It could be that the HDMI audio signal was too high-bandwidth for a digital out, so it dropped back to mixing it down to two-channel PCM as a fallback.

It's definitely a frustrating market at the moment -- I looked at receivers a few months back and gave up, because I didn't find anything much in my price range that really supported HDMI, as opposed to just passing through the video and requiring separate digital audio anyway. If you pay enough you can get a receiver that'll take inputs from everything, analogue or digital, decode/process the audio internally, and then do whatever upscaling/conversion/processing is required to pump the video out via HDMI. Some of the reasonably affordable Onkyos can do that, but it's apparently only the expensive ones that have high quality conversion for incoming analogue video.

taer wrote:

I have a optical out on the TV(sony). Haven't tried it yet. Tried it on my dad's samsung, and it didn't work. You'd think it would strip the digital sound out and send it back out. But on his, it altered the stream, and only 2 channel PCM made it out.

That is a Samsung thing. Only nitpick I have with mine.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
taer wrote:

I have a optical out on the TV(sony). Haven't tried it yet. Tried it on my dad's samsung, and it didn't work. You'd think it would strip the digital sound out and send it back out. But on his, it altered the stream, and only 2 channel PCM made it out.

That is a Samsung thing. Only nitpick I have with mine.

Ah, so my sony might work. Oh well. Might have to get a 15 ft optical to fish through the wall.