Hi everyone, for the DHF'ers with a 5.1 Surround Sound system, what settings did you select in the 6412 to enable surround sound please?
Hopefully this will help alot of us that got a surround sound system this Christmas from good ole Santa. :-)

I am with Shaw and don't know if the audio options are the same as with Cogeco. With Shaw, the digital audio output is always enabled and you don't have an option of selecting it.

Just go into Menu>Setup> Audio and check what options you have.

With Shaw the options you can change are to change the way the analog audio output behaves. I assume the digital audio is always on and is just being "passed through". That is, the digital audio stream is separated from the incoming digital stream and is passed through to the digital audio out.

Yeah, I went into the audio setup and put on advanced audio, heavy compression (if set to none, my whole house jumps with audio flunctuations from very low to standing-beside-a-1000W-speaker-at-a-rock-concert sounds) and matrix.

Hope that helps others.

I'm confused.

If you have a 5.1 surround sound system you should be using a digital audio cable connection from the 6412 to your receiver. If you do, then then compression setting and the stereo setting should have no impact on the audio played through the receiver. At least that is my understanding of the behaviour of the 6412 sound settings. I did a test years ago after finding a web page that described in detail what was supposed to be happening with the Motorola cable box sound settings and confirmed that was what happens with my DCT2000HT cable box.

Regardless, note that setting the compression level to high greatly reduces the sound dynamic range. The sound level variations in a programs content are meant to be heard as is. The sound level changes that can occur when changing channels can be minimized, sometimes, by setting the sound compression to MEDIUM or HIGH but that is distorting the sound. A better way is to just adjust the sound volume as required after settling on a channel.

The system I bought is a 5.1 Home Theatre sound system, the receiver has a 5 disc DVD changer, AM/FM tuner. Only thing missing from it is the digital audio inputs so that I can listen to some cable shows in Dolby surround sound. This is not a major issue for me as I watch alot of DVD's (DVD's play in True Dolby 5.1 surround sound) and the 6412 runs great to the Panasonic receiver/all-in-one box and outputs nice pro-logic surround sound. It's not Dolby 5.1 for the television shows but I still get audio from the center, left front and right front, left surroudn and right surrond speakers.

There are quite a few programmes on the HD channels that are DD5.1 and the number is growing quite quickly. I find quite a difference between DPL and DD5.1. The decision is yours, however, you may regret it if you plan on keeping that system for a while.

I echo 57's comments on the difference between DD2.0 processed into (Surround) sound. When there is a good DD5.1 sound track, you miss an awful lot by just getting the 2.0 sound out of the cable box. Remember that it is only with the cable box that you can get HD with DD5.1.

You might want to try the following to see what the difference is if your DVD player can be set to only output PCM 2.0 or DD2.0 on a DVD with DD5.1 sound. If the DVD player settings can be changed try playing the DVD with a DD5.1 sound track with DD5.1 and then change it to output 2.0 sound. As I said, there is a big difference for most of the DD5.1 sound tracks. I admit some of the DD5.1 sound tracks do not fully use the DD5.1 sound field potential but on the good ones it can be so much better.

It is too bad your HTIB doesn't support any digital audio inputs. While I recognize that it may cost more for a HTIB with digital audio inputs, it is a significant deficiency for anyone who also goes for a HDTV and a HD cable box. Even without a HDTV, there are some movies on the movie channels, TMN in your case and Movie Central in my case, to at least consider getting support for a digital audio connection from a cable box to a HTIB.

To close, I do hope you get pleasure from your current system. It is not that is a bad choice but that it could be significantly better with a better choice of the HTIB functionality.

You really need to return that HTIB. I'm pretty cheap myself, so I'm only using a JVC TH-A35. HTIB, with one-disc capability. But it does have one digital input, at least. I bought it two years ago for $350.

I look at Dolby Prologic as a sort of surround upconversion. My Wega tv, for example, supposedly upconverts all analog signals to 960i. What you are doing is like me saying I am satisfied with 960i on my tv, so I won't purchase a 6412 to see programs in 1080i.

It's not the same, just as Prologic is not the same as DD 5.1.

Return the HTIB and get one from a 2nd tier maker like JVC or Samsung. With Sony and Panasonic, you tend to pay more for the name. Besides, neither are known for audio.

Funny you should mention it asif9t9, I'm gonna go Thursday and return the Panasonic HTIB and get a store credit for a real speaker system with digital coax and optical. I was watching the NFL games on Sat and Sunday and everytime I saw the DD5.1 icon, I felt a sharp pain in my heart. I can't stand it anymore! I need my REAL 5.1 Suround Sound! :-)

Just got a quick question, hope you guys don't mind answering it:

1) The Motorola 6412 has 2 digital audio outputs: 1x SPDIF and 1x Optical SPDIF. Are these the same as Digital Coaxial and Optical? Why is SPDIF even mentioned? What cables do I need to connect the bad boy 6412 to a receiver with 1x coax and 1x optical.



Thanks again,

FreeBSD (Soon to be surroudned by REAL Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, from a few channels lol)

You can use either coaxial or optical depending on what your new "system" will accept.

For more on these connections and SPDIF explained, see the Digital Home FAQ "Cables & Connections"

You can use either coaxial or optical depending on what your new "system" will accept.

For more on these connections and SPDIF explained, see the Digital Home FAQ "Cables & Connections"
Perfect, thanks alot.

I just read the FAQ. Got just one more question: the name SPDIF means nothing then? There are only 2 digital audio connectors: digital coax and optical right?

Yeah, you got it right. There are two digital audio connections to be concerned with. Digital coaxial, and digital optical. I've heard some people suggest that the digital coaxial can be susceptible to outside interference. And it's kinda cool to hook up your system with an "optical" cable. Well, I thought it was.

The good thing too, about the 6412, is that you can use one digital audio out and an analog audio (red/white) at the same time. In other words, for my system, I have the optical going to my HTIB. And I have my red/whites going straight to my tv.

If my wife just wants to "watch tv" (as opposed to immersing herself into the experience of "being there"), she can turn on the tv, and get regular volume controls like she would expect.

Maybe all set top boxes can send out both analog and digital signals at the same time....I was pleasantly surprised.

In my 6412 setup, I have the analog audio connected to a recorder along with a S-Video connection and use both digital audio outputs through the receiver to be able to convienently switch between the video component connections to my TV and the composite video to my TV. Analog channels from my 6412, the original one, is noticeably poorer on the component video connection than the composite video connection.

It sounds a little cumbersome to switch inputs as you switch channels from an HD channel to an SD channel. But if it's worth it, it's worth it. The SD channels have always looked like crap on the 6412, but I've never tried a "lower" video connection.

Their is noticeable noise, dot crawl, on the video when I use the component or S-Video connections from the 6412. If I use the internal tuner on the TV or the composite video output from the 6412, this noise is reduced noticeably. The video quality is still pretty poor on most of the analog channels but the noise introduced by the 6412 on the S-Video and component outputs is quite annoying. I have my equipment connected so that I just have to push a key to change A/V source inputs. One of the sources has the composite signal in and the other the component video signal in. My A/V receiver converts the composite video signal to component without the level of noise that the 6412 introduces so it relatively easy to control. If my receiver didn't do a good job of conversion I would have to change both the source inputs on my TV and A/V receiver to make this work and that is not user friendly. My TV just cycles through the input source so is difficult to setup as a macro and takes quite a bit of time to accomplish. There is another issue with the composite source selection as it doesn't carry some of the 6412's generated video such as menus, etc.

I usually leave the component video selected unless I stop on an analog channel which I want to watch and the noise is distracting then I'll switch to the composite video selection. A pain but better than living with the noise on the analog channels through the component video connection all the time. I would like to see whether the newer 6412 is better as reported but I am certainly not going to pay anything to trade up at this time. I am watching the analog channels less and less and hope I'll get to the point of never having to watch them sometime in the future.

You guys are technoGODS! Thanks for all the help once again.
I did find that by using a monster DVI-to-HDMI cable, the 400 series and if I put the SD channels to show as 480P and put my tv's color matrix to HD, that SD channels look much clearer. Maybe you guys can try that. My tv is the 47" Panasonic PT-47X54 CRT.

GL

Over component I get the best results by turning 4:3 override off and outputting as 1080i. I have not tried any other cabling and I am happy enough with this that I have no desire to try.

Well, I did it. I'm in Dolby Digital 5.1 heaven :-)
I went back to Best Buy to return the analog only Panasonic SCHT680S and got the YHT160S Digital Home Theatre System. This system rocks! It auto senses the audio source and selects between DD 2.0, DD 5.1, DD 6.1, Dpl, Dpl2 and over 2 dozen pre-programmed effects. I've watched a few shows in DD 5.1 and they're incredible, I'm so happy :-)
I got the last 2 optical cables that Best Buy (Burlington location) has. I found an optical 4 foot cable and thought I was in trouble because the sales guy told me after looking in the database that they got no more in stock. No optical, no digi coax anywhere to be had. So I went on a treasure hunt and found an 8 foot optical cable next to an Infinity audio demo machine. Both optical cables are Monster THX Certified.
I drove home, hooked everything up after going back to Home Depot for more wall bracket bolts and I'm pleased as punch. I HIGHLY recommend this Digital Home Theatre Audio System, it works beautifully with the Cogeco 6412 DVR (component video + optical audio) and Yamaha progressive DVD player (region-free with code, component video and optical audio).

Thanks everyone for the patience you had with my newbie questions. :-)
I'm going back to 5.1 :-)