I purchased the ROKU Streambar Pro and hooked it up using the included HDMI cable to my TV's HDMI ARC port. I also want to hook up a hearing aid device to the TV's optical port, however, when using the ROKU function the optical port does not transmit any sound to the hearing aid device. If I use my TV's apps I get sound through the Streambar Pro as well as the hearing aid device so it seems that when using ROKU apps it disables the TV's optical port. I tried hooking up the Streambar Pro using the optical cable and switched my TV to optical audio but that didn't help when playing ROKU apps. As I said, if I use my TV's apps or my TIVO the sound is great through the Streambar Pro and the optical port. Before I got the Streambar Pro I had a Roku Premier with a Bose Solo 5 soundbar which worked fine. I just wanted to upgrade to wireless subwoofer which I couldn't do with the Bose. Unfortunately I gave the Premier away and some of the channels I liked on ROKU are not available on my Samsung TV. If anyone has A solution I would appreciate your input. I put a request into ROKU customer service but haven't got an answer
Someone else had this same sort of problem in the last couple of days, but I think I understand the problem better now and I'm not sure there's a solution. I don't think the Streambar ever sends audio to the TV - it only receives it from the TV. So it's not disabling the optical port, it's just that the TV only receives video. I tried a couple different configurations with my Streambar and I could never get any audio from the TV speakers or the optical port when using the Streambar.