Sony STR-DG800 7.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver with HDMI Passthrough (Discontinued by Manufacturer)
The Pricy HDMI Swithbox Passthrough:   A Work-A-Round Solution !!
This is a follow up to my previous review on Sony STR-DG800 Receiver with HDMI Passthrough.  I mentioned that if a HD DVD is plugged in to the DVD HDMI port on the Sony Receiver, there will be no audio coming from the Sony Receiver audio system as all audio and video signals are passed-thru (hense by-passed) directly to the televison.  Consequently, you do not have the quality sound from your home entertainment center.    <br /> <br />Well I found a work-a-round for this problem but it still require either an Optical Audio Cable or a Coaxial Audio Cable.  It is similiar to the SAT/TV solution using the Optical Audio Cable that I memtioned in the previous review.   <br /> <br />Coaxial Cable:  You can plug a Coaxial Digital Cable coming from your HD-DVD player into the Coaxial Digital input port on the Sony receiver.  This coaxial input port will work with the DVD HDMI input port to give you audio through the Sony receiver.  Obvioulsy you will have to have a Coaxial Digital output on you HD-DVD Player.   <br /> <br />Optical Cable:  If your HD-DVD player only has an \\"Optical Audio Output\\", then plug the Optical Audio Cable into the \\"Optical Digital Video 1\\" port on the Sony receiver.  After that, use the Sony Remote Control and follow the \\"re-assign\\" insturctions in the Sony Receiver Manual. You will be able \\"re-assign\\" the audio input from \\"Digital Video 1\\" to the \\"HDMI DVD\\" port. It takes patience, but in this way, you can overcome the drawbacks of the \\"HDMI Passthrough\\".   <br /> <br />So now I do have audio to my home enterment system from both the Satellite HDMI port and the HDMI DVD Port, dispite the fact that these ports are designed to pass-through the audio to the television only.   <br /> <br />Is is odd that the nice people at Sony Technical Support could NOT help me with this or any other solution for the problem.  But I DO want to thank the fellows at J&R Electronic for brain storming these solutions with me.   <br /> <br />Now that I have this work-a-round setup finished, I am raising my rating to four stars for this receiver.  As of now, both the video and the audio from this receiver are everything I had hope for.  Happy Birthday to me.   <br />