I think my AV has lost its mind (1 Viewer)

[AverageProfessionalHuman]

Hello, I have a Yamaha VX477 and I think its going crazy. If I select surround decode on the remote Dolby Digital + displays for a couple of seconds the DDPLX displays, they alternate back and forth. If I select Movie of the remote the Dolby Digital + and the DDPLX continue to alternate, but the sound stage sounds different and the AVR used to display standard, spectacle, sports, etc.... Even though the sound level of the back speakers is up higher than all other channels, I can barely hear them. All speakers are 8ohm and I have calibrated the AV using the mic.

As far as connections go, I have an HDMI cable coming from the TV (arc) into the ARC HDMI port on the AVR. The sound option on the TV is set to Auto. If I select passthrough usually I can only get PCM.

The sources are Direct TV (Dolby digital out selected), Netflix, Hulu, etc.. from the TV.

Up until recently I would use the standard decoding, until I found out about the advantages of Dolby Digital over those modes.

Please help me.

 

[Jeff Whitford]

Are you sure your TV outputs a 5.1 signal thru HDMI? If it isn't or if the program you are watching doesn't have DD encoding you won't get much/anything out of your rear speakers. "standard decoding" as well Yamaha's DSP modes sometimes can simulate a false surround field with non Dolby encodings. They also can enhance DD & DTS encodings to make it sound like you have more speakers than you do.

 

[AverageProfessionalHuman]

Thank you for the reply Jeff. Yes I'm pretty sure that it outputs 5.1 through HDMI, its the Hisense U8. Some have complained that the output from the TV gets in a funk and only outputs PCM even thought Dolby Digital is selected. Today the encoding on the AMP was still switching back and forth, but it sounded like it stayed in 5.1. I have another AVR that I'm going to try sometime.