Thread: Home theater experts please chime in

For the past two years I've had a Samsung PN63C550 HDTV and a Sasmsung 5.1 home theater system hooked up in my basement working flawlessly.

About a month ago I started having problems with the external speakers. All of a sudden the speakers will only work when watching a blu-ray/dvd movie but for normal cable only the built in tv speakers will work. I've already tried replacing the HDMI cable, nothing. Unplugged everything and reboot, nothing. Checked for loose connections, nothing. Replaced cable box with new one, nothing.

I checked the settings menu to make sure its set to external speakers and even with that setting enabled I still can't hear anything. I also did a sound check calibration and all of the speakers work fine... just not with cable. I'm just about to give up at this point as I don't know where else to troubleshoot. If anyone can come up with an explanation as to what is going on I'd love to hear it and I would certainly appreciate the help.

Do you have an XBOX, PS3, AppleTV or some other device you could use with the same HDMI cable the Cable Box is using to see if you get sound?

Originally Posted by E46_Project

Do you have an XBOX, PS3, AppleTV or some other device you could use with the same HDMI cable the Cable Box is using to see if you get sound?

BINGO! Gonna go on a limb here but seems as though your home theater system is shitting the bed To verify, as E46_Project pointed out, plus the HDMI into another device to verify you are getting sound out of it. (borrow this other device if you have to so you can be sure)

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Yeah, I have a PS3 I can use. Just to clarify, you want me to disconnect the HDMI plug from the back of the cable box and plug it into the PS3 or am I disconnecting the HDMI cable from the receiver unit and plugging it into the PS3?


EDIT: Alright so I disconnected the cable box and hooked up my PS3, set the tv settings menu to external speaker and still no sound.

assure yourself the cable box has output set to or routed through HDMI (if there is a setting like that) in the cable box. Barring that it almost sound to me like the HDMI input on the home theater unit isn't working properly, so you want to connect the PS3 HDMI to the same HDMI input the cable box was using and see if you can get it to play some sound. If it works (which I am not expecting at this point) its the source (wherever the signal is coming from). If it doesn't then its going to confirm my suspicions, which are that the home theater unit is the culprit and can either be settings or the unit gone bad. Let us know how you make out