Home Theater Geeks 459 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks I answer a question from Sota Audio Guy about whether or not to connect HDMI sources to the TV or the AV receiver A perennial question. So stick around Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey, there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the Home Theater Geek. In this episode I answer a question from Sota Audio Guy, who posted in the Home Theater Geeks Discord forum the following question I have a Samsung TV connected to a Yamaha TSR700 receiver over HDMI eARC. The Yamaha drives my speakers. My question is about my Roku Ultra Streamer. Currently it's plugged into a spare input on the TV. Would it be better plugged into the Yamaha receiver? Everything works okay now, but I do have some audio lag between mouths moving and sound appearing some milliseconds later. Thanks for considering this. Well, it's my pleasure, sota Audio Guy, and it's a good question.

01:34
First, let me make sure that everybody understands HDMI eARC, which stands for Enhanced Audio Return Channel. So basically what that means is that the HDMI cable that connects the output of the receiver to the input of the TV can carry audio from the TV back to the receiver. This is illustrated in graphic one and we'll take a quick look at that and show you that before audio return channel, you had a source, an HDMI connected to the home theater system we'll call that the receiver and then another HDMI cable connected to the TV and then another HDMI cable connected to the TV and then if you wanted to hear audio from the TV say it's built-in tuner or it's built-in streaming apps you had to connect an audio cable back from the TV back to the receiver. That's the yellow one right there. Typically that's a TOSLINK optical cable. But with audio return cable, that audio cable that goes from the TV to the receiver is no longer needed. The audio goes from the receiver to the TV when it's playing built-in tuner or the streaming apps on the TV itself. The audio gets sent back to the receiver along the same cable as is carrying the information to the TV from the receiver from different source devices. So you have an HDMI cable from the Yamaha TV TSR 700 and I have a picture of the back panel of the TSR 700. So you can see the HDMI output is in the upper left corner-ish. It's the HDMI connector that has a. It's colored differently, shaded differently. It's colored differently, shaded differently. That HDMI output, notice it's labeled HDMI ARC or ARC. That's connected to your TV and then your Roku, which has an HDMI output as well. It's a much smaller device and it has only a small little, a few little connectors on the back, one of which is HDMI. That HDMI output connects back to a different input on your TV. You didn't tell me what model of TV you have, or I would have shown you its back panel as well, shown you its back panel as well and ARC carries audio from your Roku Ultra which goes into the TV directly back to the receiver, back to this HDMI ARC output, which actually also serves as an input.

04:49
Now, generally speaking, I prefer to have all source devices, such as the Roku, connected to the receiver and use that to switch between devices. The way you have it now, you're using the TV to switch between the TV itself and the Roku streamer. I prefer to have the receiver do the streaming. That way there's only one connection to the TV which is acting like a monitor, and since you have an external sound system, that's really what it's doing. It's acting as a monitor and that way you only have to set the TV's picture controls once for that one input. If you have the Roku connected to a different input on the TV. Ideally, you'd want to set the picture controls for both inputs, which is more work, and so that's one thing. That's the primary reason I prefer to hook things into the receiver and use the receiver as the switcher, which it's designed to do. It's designed to be the switcher. Now the TV has more than one HDMI input, but that's mostly for if you don't have an external sound system. Then you would use the various HDMI inputs on the TV, but you do have an external sound system. So that's why I would do it the other way.

06:19
Regarding the lip sync issue, I don't know if your Samsung TV has a lip sync control. Some do, some don't. If you tell me the model number, I can probably look it up and tell you if it does, or you can look in the manual yourself. It will probably say in the audio menu if it has a lip sync feature or an audio sync feature. Then you could control and adjust the audio delay problem there. If it doesn't, I don't see any way to correct the problem or improve the situation the way you have it set up now.

06:59
The Roku Ultra I have one too, and I looked in its menu system pretty carefully and I did not see any lip sync or audio sync control in the Roku menu at all. So the way you have it set up now, with the Roku connected directly to the TV, there's no way to address the problem. On the other hand, the Yamaha TSR 700 does have a lip sync control that should let you bring the visuals and the audio into sync. You turn it on in the option menu and then you adjust it in the settings menu Sorry, the setup menu and I've learned that by downloading the owner's manual for the TSR 700 and looking it up, and so you should be able to do that too. I don't know if that control is global for all inputs or individual for each input. If they were smart they did it individually for each input. But this is another argument for connecting the Roku to your receiver, because that's the only way you're going to solve that lip sync issue problem, by using the lip sync control in the Yamaha receiver. So I hope that helped.

08:20
Now, if you have a question for me, just send it right along to htg at twittv. I love answering these questions and I will do as many as I can right here on the show. And as always, we thank you for your support of the Twit Network with your membership in Club Twit, which gives you access to all the shows Twit produces in their video form, and you can come into the Discord channel and interact with the hosts and all kinds of cool stuff like that. So hope you'll consider it. Until next time, geek out.