I know that the model of my Denon AVR is old but I don’t understand why that should make a difference except for UHD or 4K compatibility. Here is the situation
I have a Sony PS4 and an Asus TUF15 gaming laptop. With my older 47 inches LG TV everything was working fine with the following connection set up -
PS4 HDMI out connected to Denon HDMI Game input port. Laptop HDMI connected to CBL/SAT or DVD input port. Denon AVR ARC port connected to LG TV ARC port . Both the connected devices would display the video on the TV screen and the sound would come from the 5.1 channel speakers connected to the Denon AVR.
My new TV is a Samsung UHD 58" smart TV. I configured the same device set up, that is, both the PS4 and Laptop connected through their respective HDMI ports to the input HDMI ports on the AVR and the ARC output from the latter to the eARC port on the Samsung TV. The PS4 screen and game play work fine, no problems. The TV screen shows the game video and the sound comes from the surround sound speakers. However, when I connect my laptop to the AVR nothing is displayed on the TV. It shows some error of resolution not matching, external device not found etc. The laptop works only if I connect it directly to one of the HDMI ports on the TV and connect the eARC port of the TV to the ARC port on the Denon AVR. With this connection set up the video on the laptop is displayed on the the TV and the sound comes from the surround sound speakers.
Also with this set up when I try to watch Netflix or the Samsung TV channel provided (TV connected to WiFi), I can watch YouTube but when watching Netflix or any other TV channel, I get a very glitchy sound from the surround sound speakers.
So my first question is when the PS4 connects to the AVR and works fine with the TV, why doesn’t the same work with a similar connection with the laptop. I have tried two laptops and both have the same issue.
Second, how does YouTube play and not other channels like Netflix?
Can someone explain this weird behaviour?
It smells like an EDID problem. The AVR may well be interspersing itself in the chain, and not reflecting the full capabilities of the TV to the Laptop. Things like on-screen menus and overlays mean the AVR wants to mess with your video when you don’t expect that it should. If it is older, it may simply not be up to coping with the extent of options the new TV can present in terms of resolution, and somewhere in the negotiation the TV and laptop deciding on what resolution is going to be used gets messed up. Or, they resolution is negotiated but ends up exceeding the bandwidth the chain can handle, or a mix of mess.
If when plugged directly into the TV, your laptop decides that is can display at much higher resolution (up to 4k probably) you have an answer as to whether running through the AVR makes much sense.
It also sounds as if there is a problem with the sound codecs the system is trying to use. You may need to go in and force the sound format in the various setups. Make sure that the Netflix setup and TV all agree on sound output format. It may be that some parts of the system are trying to automagically work out the format and getting lost.
Smart TV is an oxymoron. Using an external streaming box, be it Apple TV, Zidoo, Nvidia Shield or whatever, you get something that works well and will get updates. A few years down the track and your smart TV vendor won’t want to know you.
I don’t think that this will be of much help, but my Samsung smart TV got a firmware upgrade earlier this year and the symptoms I experienced sound very much like yours. It turned out that my Yamaha AVR was not completely compatible with the ARC (audio reverse channel) of the HDMI connection. It was mostly the sound that was affected, but the video also did some bizarre things. And it was most noticeable only on certain streaming services or on certain devices (e.g., my Roku).
My solution was to move the AVR HDMI output of the AVR to an HDMI input on the TV that did not have ACR. That cured the problem, though I lost the ability to “reverse control” the audio level of my receiver. Also, whenever I turn on the TV and the AVR, the TV shows me that the AVR is not connected to an HDMI input that supports ARC. This message disappears after about 20 seconds.
I do not know what is happening here but I would consider that there are different versions of HDMI. Just because the plug fits may not mean you are getting what you expect between two components.
Also, know that there are copy protections built into these devices. An older device may lack some protection the other devices want to see.
Just guessing though. I really do not know.
There’s a small chance that it might be a cable issue. Have you tried swapping the HDMI cables to see if the problem is linked to a specific cable?
I also had issues with HDMI ARC not being automatically configured when I bought a new TV. I had to dig pretty deep into the TV settings to enable ARC before everything worked as advertised.I might have also had to do the same with the receiver too, but definitely for the TV. ARC definitely wasn’t a plug and play feature.
A similar question came up in one of the home theatre forums. Denon receivers may provide an option to avoid any messing with video.
Video–>Output settings–>Video Conversion.
Make sure it is not doing anything.