Connecting MacBook Pro 17" unibody to HDTV with audio?

[PetteriM]

Hi.

I'm new to this forum and fairly new mac user as well. I got my wonderful MB pro 17 few weeks ago. Yesterday i tried to watch movies from Samsung M86 HDTV.

I connected like this: MacBook Pro was connected with mini displayport-to-dvi -adapter to a dvi-to-hdmi -cable. I added the audio with a 3,5mm plug from headphones jack.

I got the image right away, no hazzle and fuzz like i used to have with my PC. But i go no audio :-(

I tried to check everything to my best knowledge.

I was left with these two scenarios.
1. when outputting to hdmi, i should configure my mac to separately output audio to analog output. But how do i do that?
2. I should tell somehow to the television that audio is not coming in with hdmi signal. I have no idea how to do that... Or if it is even possible.

The latter case raises a huge issue. Does mini display port even output audio? If not, i'm quite sure that there will be millions of televisions that you can't configure /can't easily configure to use hdmi and separate audio. Because, why should you? hdmi should carry all the image, audio, drm etc. that's the whole point?

I would hate to use (even) more money to buy a minidisplay to vga and then use inferior analog signal to connect to hdtv. Especially as i've read that quite often you can't get it to work at full 1080p resolution with VGA cable.

I hope some of the users in this forum might have an idea how to solve this.

Best regards,

Petteri

 

[aresinferno]

I think that mini displayport technically can output sound but that is not yet implemented.

The thing about HDMI is that it carries the sound itself. Where are you plugging the 3.5mm jack into on the TV? Do you have some kind of converter that allows you to add sound into HDMI from DVI or did you put it directly into the TV? TVs have different inputs and often you can only select one, in this case HDMI. Is their a corresponding audio jack for the HDMI or is it part of another input. I know i have an audio input on my TV but that only works when using a VGA input and not with the HDMI because HDMI usually does the sound already.

 

[crazzyeddie]

The mini DisplayPort on the Macbook Pros currently doesn't output audio. The standard can do so, but it is either not included in the hardware or Apple hasn't written the software for it.

Therefore, you can use the video setup you have now, but need to add either a a pair of RCA audio cables or an optical video cable to get audio. Your TV should have a set of HDMI inputs with a separate audio in (usually the last HDMI input will have the extra audio input).

 

[PetteriM]

Thanks for the help, i'll see if i can find separate audio for HDMI inputs in telly.

petteri