stations that offer surround sound

[freebird77]

What, if any, tv and or satilite companys over thier shows in surround sound? New to this. Have Direct tv now with hd tv, and a Zenith vcr/dvd player with 5 speakers and sub woofer. Thank you.

[BADuHamel]

What, if any, tv and or satilite companys over thier shows in surround sound? New to this. Have Direct tv now with hd tv, and a Zenith vcr/dvd player with 5 speakers and sub woofer. Thank you.

Hey freebird,

You can find a lot of material broadcast with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio be it via satellite, cable or over-the-air, but it is program dependent. Some of the series I can think of off the top of my head that are broadcast in 5.1 are Lost, 24, and Heroes. The premium movie channels also broadcast a good amount of their films with 5.1 where available.

[MrBoylan]

What, if any, tv and or satilite companys over thier shows in surround sound? New to this. Have Direct tv now with hd tv, and a Zenith vcr/dvd player with 5 speakers and sub woofer. Thank you.

As Brandon mentioned, there are plenty of shows broadcast in surround sound these days - either Dolby Digital 5.1 or matrixed Dolby Pro Logic, including most of the prime time comedies, special events and dramas on the major networks and many movies on the pay channels. But getting the surround sound into your home theater system can be a little tricky.

If your home theater system supports HDMI audio decoding, then your best bet is to connect the cable box or (in your case) satellite box up to your receiver via HDMI then connect an HDMI cable up to your TV. This way the digital sound will be decoded by your receiver and the video signal will be passed through to your TV via HDMI.

If your home theater system does not support HDMI audio decoding, then your best choice is to connect either a fiber optic or coax (S/PDIF DIGITAL) audio cable directly from your DirecTV receiver to your home theater receiver and connect the HDMI output directly to your TV. Without a digital connection from DirecTV box to receiver, you will not get discrete 5.1-channel surround sound. So don't connect the regular left/right white/red analog audio cables from your DirecTV box to your receiver. All that will give you is plain ole stereo (or, at best, matrixed pseudo-surround).

The tricky part in all this is that some HD receivers (like the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4250 HD DVR cable box, for example) DO NOT support concurrent output of audio over both the HDMI and S/PDIF digital outputs at the same time - you have to choose one or the other. And if you choose to send audio output over HDMI to your TV, and then from your TV out to your receiver via a fiberoptic connection, then your TV may not actually pass through the full 5.1-channel sound.

I recently set up a system for a friend where she wanted to have audio available both on the TV speakers and through her surround sound receiver (using a 4250 cable box). To get the best video quality, we used an HDMI cable from cable box to TV, but then (since her receiver did not have any HDMI inputs) we connected the TV's fiberoptic digital output to the receiver. When we did this, the TV would only pass a 2-channel (stereo) digital signal to her receiver even if the original program was broadcast in Dolby Digital 5.1 - her TV did not offer Dolby Digital pass-through from HDMI in to fiberoptic out. So she doesn't get any surround sound from TV shows or cable movies.

I could have connected the fiberoptic digital output from the cable box directly to the receiver, but then she would have no sound from the TV speakers (which she wanted). Also, her TV did not have any assignable analog inputs for the HDMI video input, so I couldn't run analog sound to the TV using the HDMI cable. The only other option would have been to run component video and analog audio to the TV (which would still support cable's max resolution of 1080i) and then run the fiberoptic digital output from cable box to receiver, but that would have resulted in a slightly degraded picture as well as more complicated wiring so she opted not to do that.

If your DirecTV box supports concurrent digital output over HDMI and S/PDIF *OR* if your TV supports Dolby Digital 5.1 passthrough then you won't have this kind of problem. But do make sure you use a digital connection from DirecTV box to receiver if you want to get full surround sound on shows that offer that. Your receiver should have some indication on it when it is receiving a 5.1-channel signal so look closely to make sure you're getting what you expect.

Regards,

-Chris