Audio to TV via HDMI?

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 2:55 am

I just got a new TV. It's Samsung LA32B450. Anyway, I'm trying to connect my laptop to it via HDMI, but I can't get audio through it. Video works just fine.

With my other TV, Panasonic 40W4000, my laptop found a new "audio device" as the TV, and I just switched my audio output from the internal laptop speakers to that and it worked. With this new TV I can't find the TV at all as an audio device.

My laptop is Asus N71VN.

Any clue what I should do? The TV should have at least the capability to play HDMI audio so I don't understand what the problem is.

lodestar · Post by **lodestar** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 7:21 am

It doesn't seem to be the laptop, but hopefully it is just a configuration problem. Does the input menu on the TV show the laptop as a signal source? Does changing the type of input source help? Any difference if you use HDMI2 or HDMI3 instead of HDMI1?

lodestar · Post by **lodestar** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 7:22 am

Does your TV have a diagnostic menu which might help?

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:35 pm

I tried all three HDMI inputs. One of them is DVI/HDMI and doesn't support audio. It says so in the manual. That suggests the other two DO support audio.

The TV recognizes the laptop just fine. Like in all Samsungs it refreshes the connection list in real time and the laptop shows up when I plug it in so I can look at the video through the HDMI.

What exactly is a diagnostic menu? I think it has some kind of diagnostic thing in it but I can't try it out right now. I really have doubts for stuff like that ever doing anything. But I'll try it once I get home.

Maybe there's something I need to do with the laptop to enable it to work with this particular TV? Can't really think of what that might be, but somehow it'd make more sense than the problem being at the TV's end. I tried to hook it up to another Samsung before and it didn't work either, so I doubt the TV's broken or anything like that. It seems to be a feature of the Samsungs...

lodestar · Post by **lodestar** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:39 am

I was asked by a gamer relative to setup the HDMI between a desktop PC fitted with onboard sound and a nVidia GTX 285 graphics card, and a Samsung TV. This particular graphics card uses an S/PDIF cable connection between itself and the motherboard. So I checked that the cable was there, and connected to the right output and input. The onboard sound driver and the graphics card driver were updated to the latest versions, as a precaution.

Plugged in the HDMI cable and set up the display. Vision fine but no sound on the TV. This was a Vista machine, so I went to Control Panel->Sound->Playback. From what I recall there was no sign of the Samsung TV as an audio device, or any HDMI audio device. Set, I think, Realtek Digital Output as the default playback device, and it worked - sound and vision on the Samsung.

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:33 pm

Yep that's one of the first things I tried. Now I've also installed two different versions of the Realtek audio driver, and one NVIDIA audio driver (which is what the old Panasonic used) but nothing works.

I also tried the "diagnostics" tool in the TV but as I suspected it's a joke. It asks "did you hear a sound?" and of course I did because it plays an internal sound from the TV. If I click no it says "call customer support". Great diagnostics.

I also went back to the store where I got the TV, the guy there had never heard of any problems with this, and the model there played a DVD via HDMI and audio worked just fine.

I'm still convinced it has something to do with the audio drivers. I bet it would work if I installed Windows XP or something instead of Windows 7, but I'm not about to do that.

I'm sure I could get audio to work if I bought a separate audio cable, but that's just stupid.

lodestar · Post by **lodestar** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:40 am

Puffi wrote:I bet it would work if I installed Windows XP or something instead of Windows 7, but I'm not about to do that.

Looks like a common Windows 7 problem, try googling "windows 7 no sound hdmi".

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:59 am

Aside from changing your computers sound output, if you're using like WMP or something, did you try changing WMP's audio output? That would make a difference I would assume, I had to do that to get sound output with my two Delta cards.

Puffi · Post by **Puffi** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 3:49 am

I fixed it!

I really tried EVERYTHING else... including bonestone's suggestion and a million other suggestions I found through google, but this did it for me:

I uninstalled the video card drivers (NVIDIA) and then reinstalled the exact same drivers. Now it finds the TV just fine and everything works. Crazy. I thought I'd update the drivers but they were the newest ones already, so I just reinstalled them for no good reason and there you go. I still have no clue why it worked but it did so who cares