Roku with digital audio output
Does any current Roku product support digital audio out so I can connect to my avr
Forum Discussion
If you have the model right, you might not have the access to need. There are five different versions of a Roku 2, and even the newest version is 8 years old. Many channels no longer work on older devices. We would need the actual model number to know for certain.
Still working on this. Looks like the tv has hdmi inputs but neither one marked ARC. And the tv only has coax digital not optical. Using Roku express which I would connect via hdmi to the avr, my output to the tv would not be arc. If I connect from tv to avr using rca cables for audio, I don’t think it will work because I believe it has to be hdmi or optical. Anybody have any comments or suggestions? Thanks for any input
Gary-kc wrote:Still working on this. Looks like the tv has hdmi inputs but neither one marked ARC. And the tv only has coax digital not optical. Using Roku express which I would connect via hdmi to the avr, my output to the tv would not be arc. If I connect from tv to avr using rca cables for audio, I don’t think it will work because I believe it has to be hdmi or optical. Anybody have any comments or suggestions? Thanks for any input
Very strange there's no optical output. Coaxal audio out really fell out of favor from TV displays a long time ago. However, I see no reason you can't make it work. With the Roku connected to an HDMI audio input on the AVR, the sound never reaches the TV, as the AVR processes it. They only need for audio to come back to the AVR from the TV is for over the air broadcasts. Worst case scenario is you could always just use the TV speakers for that, but if your TV has a coaxal audio in you should be able to use that for the TV audio return.
ARC is only for returning audio from the TV to the AVR. It doesn't do anything for the audio of devices connected directly to the AVR. So feeding the TV audio back to the AVR via coaxal will put all the OTA sound out the AVR. And any other device directly connected to the AVR will also have their sound handled by the AVR. Assuming the AVR has 5.1 audio and you have all five speakers, then you will get surround sound from the Roku. Using a coaxal output, you still get 5.1 from the OTA broadcasts.
But if you use the analog audio out from the TV (the red and white cables), then you are only going to get two channel stereo. Remember coaxal audio is still digital, and only uses a single cable (although it's still an RCA connector). If you have the dual red and white outputs, those are not coaxal, and just analog stereo outputs.
