Consoles and audio over HDMI

[Super Monkey Balls]

Got a new amp to set up. Do both 360 and PS3 now support audio over HDMI? I'm pretty sure 360 does and I have a feeling PS3 now does via firmware update. Anyone know if Sky HD boxes do? I have a feeling I'll still need the optical for that.

Cheers

[sj33]

Both the PS3 and 360 do. The PS3 has the advantage of being able to provide 5.1 lossless audio over HDMI (and quite a lot of games take advantage of this), whereas the 360 is limited to Dolby Digital and DTS.

I heavily suspect the Sky HD boxes will do too.

[Super Monkey Balls]

Thanks. A bit of googling seems to indicate most Sky HD boxes still don't support DD over HDMI, which is a bit gay.

[NekoFever]

I didn't realise that Sky boxes were homosexual.

The 360 can do audio over HDMI, but only the same stuff that can be piped over optical (Dolby Digital, DTS, two-channel PCM).

The old-style PS3 can do Dolby Digital, DTS, and up to 7.1-channel PCM over HDMI, while the slim can do all that as well as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD for Blu-ray.

The last time I looked into it, Sky boxes could only do Dolby Digital over optical, which required a bit of digging through the manual on my Onkyo to get video over HDMI and sound over optical.

[sj33]

It's worth noting that the old-style PS3s can decode TrueHD and DTS-HD anyway and just send it as 7.1 LPCM, though it's good that the Slim has bitstreaming support. That said, this all might not matter to OP!

[Gradius]

Which amp did you get?

I nearly bought an onkyo amp assuming it would carry the audio through the hdmi inputs when it didn't.

[Super Monkey Balls]

Yamaha DSP Z7

[Gradius]

Thats a serious piece of kit. I'm sure you wouldn't have the issue i mentioned above with that!!