Do you know about properly splitting an HDMI signal?

Question

I have an LG 3D TV (HDMI 1.4), a Denon AVR 1910 (HDMI 1.3a), an LG 3D BDP (HDMI 1.4), and an HDMI active splitter (HDMI 1.4).

If I hook up the BDP directly to the AVR and play a 2D Blu-ray, I get HD audio.  Because the AVR is HDMI 1.3a, 3D disks will not display properly this way.  Using the splitter, I can get the BDP to send 3D video to the TV and audio to the AVR.  It works.  However, I lose HD audio for all disks.  I drop from HD 7.1 to 48Khz 5.1 even for 2D playback.  If I remove the cable from the splitter to the TV, I get HD audio from the BDP to the AVR, but replacing that cable results in DVD-quality audio in all cases.

I think the problem is due to the fact that the TV itself is incapable of processing HD 7.1 audio and that in all of the handshaking if one of the cables is directly connected to the TV from the BDP, audio gets bumped down to whatever the lowest link in the chain can handle.  The TV is capable of passing the audio to an AVR via HDMI ARC and optical.  Of course, the optical cable is limited to 48Khz/5.1.  The receiver cannot interpret the HDMI ARC signal because HDMI ARC is an HDMI 1.4 feature not addressed by HDMI 1.3a.

Is there any kind of cheap, easy solution to get HD audio in all cases?  I am thinking that perhaps there might be a special HDMI ARC cable that translates an HDMI ARC signal into HDMI 1.3 audio.  Perhaps that is wishful thinking.  Purchasing an HDMI 1.4 AVR is not an option for me, and no upgrade is available.

Lance · Accepted Answer

The problem could be the settings in the LG Blu ray player the BMP Blu ray player has its own built in DAC and will convert and send a direct Digital signal to an Audio video Receiver bypassing the DAC in the Receiver..if the Blu ray player is set to DTS Master surround mode it will send out the highest quality DTS master signal but if the original signal is Dolby True or other formats the signal is degraded or you get no signal at all....you may have to manually set the signal in the blu ray player each time to get the best conversion signal or just disabling the surround feature in the Blu ray player sending a bit steam signal to the AV letting the AV receiver do the decoding may solve the problem....the problem could also be the converter box...if the converter box is incapable of sending a bit stream signal or it doesn't meet The HDCP protocol in every case you are likely to get illogical errors as described...The conversion to HDMI was really all about copy rights protection...Media production companies feared a higher quality format that could be pirated and were resistant to adopt HD quality so in order to make the conversion to HD the HDCP protocol was heavily lased with Copy rights protection to ease their fears; so if the HDCP protocol senses there may be some copy rights abuse even if there is none going on you start to get illogical malfunctions as described....and they can be hard to fix...some  times the solution is illogical also like turning the converter box on turning the HDTV on then off and lastly turning on the AV receiver or it could be any combination of turning things off and on in a certain order,,,,  or sometimes they can't be fixed without changing equipment.

Sam · Answer

The best you will be able to decode is probably going to be 5.1, not using any other device than what you are using now.
You can add a device but they aren't very inexpensive. 
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HDMI-To-5-1-7-1-Surround-Sound-Optical-S-PDIF-Audio-Converter-/250885247922

Oversimplifying, the only difference in 7.1 and 5.1, is two speakers

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Do you know about properly splitting an HDMI signal?

2 Answers