I have had my Roku Ultra for more than a year. It is working great with a Samsung TV and Auvio sound bar. However, only certain channels can communicate with the Auvio sound bar.
Works with sound bar: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube
Doesn't work: HBO MAX, Roku Channel
When I try to play a selection from the second group of channels, the sound bar gives a loud static sound and then occasional static after that. Otherwise, silence. The movie plays on video, but no sound.
I had this problem previously with a new Blu-Ray player I just bought a few months ago. I was able to resolve it by changing the encoding type setting on the Blu-Ray. I changed the Dolby Audio setting from Bitstream to PCM and the DTS/DTS-HD setting from PCM to Bitstream. Sound started working great through the sound bar.
Any ideas? This seems so strange that different channels would use different encoding schemes.
Dang! I guess this community isn't very active. Well, I figured it out for myself. For people searching for this particular solution, I will post what I did.
As I stated, the HBOMAX channel was giving me static through my Auvio sound bar whenever I choose a movie or TV show there. All other channels seemed to work fine for audio.
However, when I went into the Roku player with these menus: Settings / Audio / HDMI and set it to PCM-Stereo. This caused the HBOMAX channel to begin working for audio again.
That was it! I hope this helps someone. It was very frustrating for me, that's for sure.
P.S. Don't bother trying to DM Roku Support on Twitter. I think it is just a bot - zero help.
Dang! I guess this community isn't very active. Well, I figured it out for myself. For people searching for this particular solution, I will post what I did.
As I stated, the HBOMAX channel was giving me static through my Auvio sound bar whenever I choose a movie or TV show there. All other channels seemed to work fine for audio.
However, when I went into the Roku player with these menus: Settings / Audio / HDMI and set it to PCM-Stereo. This caused the HBOMAX channel to begin working for audio again.
That was it! I hope this helps someone. It was very frustrating for me, that's for sure.
P.S. Don't bother trying to DM Roku Support on Twitter. I think it is just a bot - zero help.
Thank you! No one thanks to Roku. It would be nice of they'd use some of their money for customer support. I'm watching HBO this second when I seen your post. I hope this works for my family too! Great work my friend!
Okay, it looks like Roku updated their Settings menu and now my advice above is not up-to-date. Here is what you should do instead:
On the Roku menu, go to Settings.
Choose Audio.
Go to Audio Mode. Choose Stereo (if you have Auto [DD, DTS] selected, that is the problem.)
That should do it. You are forcing the Roku to broadcast in plain-old stereo, rather than the fancier Dolby Digital or Digital Theater Sound. Probably if you have an audio device that can handle those, you won't have this problem that I have with the Auvio Sound Bar. But for me, this is the **updated** version of what works.