How to setup digital Optical Audio

**dispatch88** · July 5th, 2009, 07:55 PM

I want to hook up my pc to my 50" plasma tv, video works fine but i cant get any sound using analog cables. My tv has digital I/O so i figured i could just buy an optical cable and that would be it. Unfortunately I discovered that the optical cable only plugs into audio Out ports. Whats the point of a cable that only works going out on both ends?

Anyway, my question is how would i go about getting digital sound from my computer to my tv? Would i need a digital coaxial cable instead?

I have searched google but all i can find is either information on the idividual cables or someone showing off their sweet media center without showing how they hooked any of it up.

**ScottW** · July 7th, 2009, 04:01 AM

You haven't provided enough info here for anyone to answer your questions. "digital i/o" isn't descriptive of the types of inputs that your TV supports. there is digital optical audio, and coaxial digital audio. Also, computer wise, your PC would need the same kind of port (optical or coaxial) as your tv, to output to your tv.

**dispatch88** · July 7th, 2009, 09:59 PM

both my tv and computer support optical and coaxial cables.

**ScottW** · July 7th, 2009, 10:18 PM

And you want to output audio from your PC to your tv? Does your tv allow audio in via optical, or audio out? If audio in, then you should be able to just get an optical toslink cable to connect from pc to tv. but that's not going to give you video. either you need a pc card that does HDMI out and a tv that supports it, or a card that does component video out, or vga or dvi out, and a tv that supports component video, vga, dvi in (or s-video, though that's junky).

**ScottW** · July 7th, 2009, 10:18 PM

You might also try posting over in the HTPC forum at avsforum.com.

**dispatch88** · July 8th, 2009, 03:06 PM

i already have a dvi to hdmi cable for video, i just cant get any sound. I have an optical toslink cable and i thought it would work but apparently the tv only uses the optical cable to output sound to an external sound system. There is also the coaxial ports on both the computer and tv, although on the tv it says (PC IN) and has the a VGA port and sound port, so im assuming the sound port is for a coaxial cable. The tv is a Samsung plasma series 450, if that helps.

**MTAtech** · July 8th, 2009, 03:29 PM

First, the SPDIF optical output on a PC card is the same as Toslink. Second, the SPDIF output can be connected to any Toslink audio input that accepts one.

My receivers accept digital audio inputs and I was therefore successful at connecting the SPDIF output of the PC to the receiver Toslink inputs.

DVI only is video. HDMI cables are capable of transmitting both audio and video on the same cable. All HD cable boxes and Blue-Ray DVD players do this. Some component manufacturers don't implement audio over the HDMI cable. If you had a source that outputs both you can connect that to your TV via HDMI and get both video and audio.

As you later said, your TV only has optical OUTPUTs not inputs. Therefore, you do not have any way of outputing optical audio to the TV. That's really not a problem, in my view, because TVs have crappy audio. You are better off outputing to a sound system.

I really can't comment on your particular Samsung TV. My advice is to consult the manual.

As a solution, you could get a audio/video card that outputs the audio and video over HDMI.

**dispatch88** · July 8th, 2009, 06:35 PM

well, thanks for the helps guys. I think i'm gonna snag the speakers and sub woofer from my brothers computer, if anything they're probably better than the tv speakers.
I didnt really intend to use the tv as my permanent display (image burn mostly). It was more of an experiment in trying a different form of audio transfer.
thanks.