Uverse in DD via HDMI question.

I just had Uverse installed with HD while still keeping my Dish HD account active. My goal was to be able to compare both SD and HD performance and stick with 1. Both the Uverse receiver and Dish receiver are connect VIA HDMI to a Sony Receiver (STR-DG 1100) along with a PS3, which is connected to the HDMI Input 1 of a Samsung HLS6187 monitor. I can leave both the Uverse and Dish receivers on and switch from one to the other just by switching inputs on the Sony Receiver.

My question is: If i view the same HD station with the Uverse and Dish for comparison- the one thing that stands out between the two sources is the sound. When viewing Dish HD, my receiver flashes Dolby Digital 3/2.1 across it's display before defaulting to a "HDMI 2" display (the receiver will also show all 5 speakers and LFE active). When i switch to Uverse- my receiver flashes LINEAR PCM (48Khz) before defaulting to a "HDMI 3" display (receiver will show only the front 2 speakers and SUB active). There's an obvious surround sound difference between the two. I've searched through the settings menu to see if there was a way i could change the audio output to a bitstream setting (instead of PCM) but found nothing. Is there a "technician menu" setup that can be pulled up to change the settings. My old Motorola satellite STB would go into a "technicians menu" if you pressed a certain sequence of buttons before powering up. Anyone have any info? If not- what is LINEAR PCM?





Thanks!



JJ

Linear PCM means that the sound has already been decoded by the set-top box (STB) and is being passed along to your receiver. The STB tells the receiver which channel should get what audio basically.

Does your receiver have a Dolby Pro Logic II setting? It can create pretty lifelike surround sound from a standard 2 channel source which is what it sounds like you're getting now.

I didn't notice a difference in the sound between my U-verse service and Time Warner Cable, but not sure what the difference between Satellite and U-verse would be.

You may also want to check out uverseusers.com

Currently its a know issue that the Uverse STB's don't pass DD5.1 just stereo 2 channel audio, hence why your AVR shows PCM 48KHZ through the HDMI interface.

It looks like your receiver can do DolbyProLogic II(5.1) and DolbyProLogicIIx(7.1) decoding which will give you either 5 or 7 discrete channels of audio from the stereo source but it wont have the separation and definition of the true DD5.1 decoding, you will have to manually select either PLII Movie or PLIIx Movie using the A.F.D button on the AVR receiver itself or the remote for the source that the Uverse receiver is connected to.

The current work around if you wnat true DD5.1 decoding (which im certain you do) is to run the audio through the optical out on the STB to the AVR receiver, but then that has had some know issues with some receivers that the audio drops out for 1/2 second or so every few minutes. There is word of a fix coming early 09 to correct that, hopefully the HDMI 2channel audio issues are fixed as well.

there are a few topics on uverseusers and on the att uverse forums

utalk . att . com/utalk/board/message?board.id=Uverse_TV_Equipment&thread.id=13552&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

General HDMI issues that att knows about
www . uverseusers . com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,2/topic,5848.0/

another on the optical audio drops
www . uverseusers . com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,2/topic,5136.0/

copy and paste the link and remove the spaces from the dots, had to do that since this is my first post on here and i cant post links yet :(

If you do a search there is plenty of info out there on it, still stinks they release the service without it being fully functional

Hope this helps you out