Using Remote for volume in Surround Sound mode

[watttwo]

yes its a denon avr i have

desperate to change to ee apple tv box but not sure when that will happen

[naylor2006]

I already had Apple TV’s prior to going with BT and prominently they are used but I do like having the ability to record TV again without ads, the Box came with Big Sport but I still use Apple TV predominantly to watch TNT and Now.

This is why I’m not overly bothered by the remote as it’s not used all that often I can suffer it.

[rbz5416]

If your amp & TV play nicely with ARC, which in my experience is a big if, you may be able to make it work by connecting the Pro Box to the TV rather than the amp. The remote should then control the TV volume via IR, which should in turn control the amp volume by ARC.

[naylor2006]

Oh man I never use ARC even the new enhanced version.

ARC is fine for the soundbar folks but for true surround it should never be used IMO 🙂

[SoupDragon57]

@naylor2006 i did try eARC as the TV and soundbar supported it. However, it did cause some issues between the Apple TV and the TV/BT TV. Apple uses Multichannel PCM audio (with Dolby MAT for Atmos), but it then started pouring the format of the other boxes. Instead of getting Dolby Digital/DD+, it would still say Multichannel PCM. 

I gave up and switched back to ARC, with Apple TV connected directly to the soundbar.

But on the main TV, ARC is reserved for Freeview. Everything else goes to the AV Receiver first.

[Midnight_Voice]

@naylor2006 

When you choose surround sound, the YouView box goes to its maximum volume, and the volume controls on Humax YouView boxes before the Pro box no longer control this volume. However, if you flip the controls from AVR to TV, then the volume controls will operate on the TV, provided you have set up your remote to control your particular make of TV. Not convenient, though.

On TalkTalk YouView boxes, the volume controls would ‘punch through’, as it is called, to control the TV even when the rest of the controls on the remote were still applying to the YouView box.

On the Pro box, the manual says the volume controls control the paired TV.

But you are running the YouView box into your amp, so that handles the audio, and the TV only gets the video. Have you tried pairing the Pro remote with the amp rather than the TV?

So a couple of apparently bizarre design decisions there on the earlier Humax YouView boxes, and maybe exacerbated on the latest one, by the auto-pairing. Though maybe someone knows the rationale?

[Midnight_Voice]

@naylor2006 

ARC I agree with you, but with eARC it’s a bit more complex. I’m a ‘soundbar merchant’, with an LG GX TV  and an LG GX soundbar. Both eARC, so nominally anything I feed to the TV should get its audio passed to the soundbar unchanged. BUT the GX TV doesn’t do DTS-X (or indeed any DTS at all), only Dolby Atmos. So DTS doesn’t get passed through; and to get DTS from my UHD player, I have to feed it to the HDMI In on the soundbar, which does support DTS as well as Dolby Atmos, and let that just pass the video to the TV. So, exactly as you describe.

But with the new LG G3, it does support DTS; so I reckon with that I could feed the UHD player into the TV, and let eARC pass the audio to the GX soundbar (still the current soundbar offering with the G3) and it would be as good as the current direct feed. What do you think?

[SoupDragon57]

@Midnight_Voice Spot on! When I had the mini box, it did drive the soundbar volume because it was paid with the TV. The TV knew the soundbar was doing the audio, so it passed the instructions to the soundbar. Works for soundbar setups, but as you say, you'd need to pair with the AV Receiver, if you want it to control volume.

[SoupDragon57]

@Midnight_Voice Got to be worth a try! Sounds plausible

[naylor2006]

Yeah my TV has eARC along with my amp but every device of mine goes to the amp and I only have one HDMI going to the TV, ARC isn’t for me, I just like the one way style traffic.