Thought I'd try here for help in case I'm missing something obvious. (Long)
Got a cheapy Vizio 36" 5.1 sound bar system (wireless sub, 2 rear speakers wired to sub). Wife had had enough of wires ran all over LR and no good way to hide wires for rear speakers.
First attempt was with 12 year old Panasonic plasma. No HDMI arc port so had to use optical connection. Got sound but only from cable, no sound from streaming (which makes sense since optical ran from cable box to sound bar). Also, sound randomly jumped high for no reason.
So, brought TV from garage and swapped to LR-it is a smart TV and has an HDMI arc port. Hooked everything up according to instructions-which matched straightforward with settings on TV. No confusion here, should have worked. No sound at all. Cycled through sound bar inputs, nothing. Checked the CEC settings, TV recognized sound bar, said "arc" was active. No sound. Tried changing audio settings to PCM in both TV and cable audio settings (was text that said some TV's don't support audio pass through so may have to set to PCM). Nothing. Checked all remote mutes, checked everything I could think of, can't get any sound.
Read forums, tried everything. Every combination. Tv speakers enabled and disabled, nothing works.
Read something about using Vizio Smartcast app, tried to download and use that, app can't find my sound bar, so useless.
Im no expert but I've set up home theater systems with discrete speakers before, with no issues. This is driving me nuts though, I've wasted about 8 hours this weekend screwing with this junk system. Now I probably will waste a few more on some help line, followed by repackimg all this crap and having to deal with the return (which drives me nuts, just infuriates me).
Seems like I must be missing something obvious. Anyone with any ideas?
Got a cheapy Vizio 36" 5.1 sound bar system (wireless sub, 2 rear speakers wired to sub). Wife had had enough of wires ran all over LR and no good way to hide wires for rear speakers.
First attempt was with 12 year old Panasonic plasma. No HDMI arc port so had to use optical connection. Got sound but only from cable, no sound from streaming (which makes sense since optical ran from cable box to sound bar). Also, sound randomly jumped high for no reason.
So, brought TV from garage and swapped to LR-it is a smart TV and has an HDMI arc port. Hooked everything up according to instructions-which matched straightforward with settings on TV. No confusion here, should have worked. No sound at all. Cycled through sound bar inputs, nothing. Checked the CEC settings, TV recognized sound bar, said "arc" was active. No sound. Tried changing audio settings to PCM in both TV and cable audio settings (was text that said some TV's don't support audio pass through so may have to set to PCM). Nothing. Checked all remote mutes, checked everything I could think of, can't get any sound.
Read forums, tried everything. Every combination. Tv speakers enabled and disabled, nothing works.
Read something about using Vizio Smartcast app, tried to download and use that, app can't find my sound bar, so useless.
Im no expert but I've set up home theater systems with discrete speakers before, with no issues. This is driving me nuts though, I've wasted about 8 hours this weekend screwing with this junk system. Now I probably will waste a few more on some help line, followed by repackimg all this crap and having to deal with the return (which drives me nuts, just infuriates me).
Seems like I must be missing something obvious. Anyone with any ideas?