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I have to ask if this is normal only I am sure it was not on my old Humax HDR. I have the 1000s connected, via optic fibre cable, to a Panasonic sound bar. With the 1000s box volume set to 0 only HD channels provide good volume through the sound bar. Going to ALL SD channels there is no volume whatsoever until I increase the box volume to almost MAX. I have carried out a factory reset with no resulting difference.
Is this normal for the 1000s.
When I switch to my Panasonic Smart TV, with signal through an element aerial, sound volume set to 0, ALL channels, SD and HD, play through the sound bar with ample volume.
Experimenting I find the 1000s volume has to be set on 45 (TV’s own volume still set to 0) so that both SD and HD channels are about equal in volume from the sound bar. I suppose this is to do with the HD bandwidth (listen to me).
It’s down to the fact that the box can only control the output volume of the MP2 audio used by SD channels. The HD channels use Dolby Digital (ac3) audio. The volume is encoded within the digital stream. As a result to vary the volume it has to be done after the ac3 decoder has processed the signal. Turning off surround sound will force the box to decode ac3 internally and output stereo lpcm as it does for SD channels so the box volume control will now work. Of course you lose the capability to use 5.1 sound when the HD channel programme has a 5.1 audio track.
Thanks for the explanation.
Yes, thank you Graham. That was nicely put and easy to understand.
For what it is worth, I tried connecting via optic cable to five different sound bars and the result was a very low volume level just as you described. I now use a Sharp HT SB-30 sound-bar that connects via the phono socket on the TV and found the sound quality pretty amazing.
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