Samsung 530 and SurroundBar 3000

JeffRussell

Working through Blu-ray but not through TV. Any thoughts?

BeefJerky

I don't own that Surroundbar, but I do own a Samsung 530 TV. I think I know what the issue is, and can give you some suggestions.

First, I'm assuming that you have the surroundbar hooked to your TV via the optical cable.

The SurroundBar 3000 only supports 2 channel PCM audio via the optical cable. Your TV, however, will pass through the audio from digital channels untouched. That means that it will be sending out a Dolby Digital signal on channels that use that audio format (nearly all digital channels). Since the surroundbar doesn't support that, you get silence. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to make this TV send out 2 channel PCM via the optical cable for those channels. I tried everything I could, but was unable to make the TV do it.

This means you have two options:
1) Hook the TV to your surroundbar via the left and right RCA jacks.
2) Get a different surroundbar. The Polk SurroundBar 4000 and 6000 do support Dolby Digital input via the optical jack.

The 3000 and 4000 are pretty much the same except of the Dolby Digital support. As such, I'm not sure the upgrade to the 4000 would be worth it over just connecting the 3000 via the RCA jacks. However, the 6000 would also give you a significant upgrade in sound quality, so upgrading to that one would certainly be worth it!

Hope this helps!