Sky Stream support is WOEFUL

[kdp99]

I moved from Sky+HD to Sky stream a few months back. I litterally unplugged the sky+HD box and plugged in the puck, to the same Network cable, and with the same HDMI cable connected to the same AV amp, TV and speakers. The puck is set to audio passthrough.

With Sky+HD I got 5.1 audio (when broascast), with the puck I get 2.0 audio. After several months of delibiration by sky's experts, they have concluded its a problem with my amp !!!!

They cannot or will not grasp that when one thing in a system changes and something goes wrong its 99.9% of the time the one thing that changed !!!

Rant over !!!

[Chrisee]

@kdp99 the factor you are missing is thst the Sky Stream puck supports a wider range of Audio codecs than your old Sky HD+ box which means in passthrough mode the puck will output audio signals your older amp may not support so switching to a stereo signal. I would set the audio output to either Auto or Dolby Digital which should avoid the issue.

[kdp99]

Thanks I did try those options and still got 2.0 audio. The amp is a top of the range Denon 8500 and gets 5.1 or more from TV, Freview box, Blue ray, Vero 4k+ media player (putting out atmos), etc. with out any issue at all so the problem is in the puck / Sky.

I also have an app on my tablet that lets me see what the Denon is getting via the HDMI and it 2.0 PCM.

[Mister_Dalek]

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@kdp99 wrote:

Thanks I did try those options and still got 2.0 audio. The amp is a top of the range Denon 8500 and gets 5.1 or more from TV, Freview box, Blue ray, Vero 4k+ media player (putting out atmos), etc. with out any issue at all so the problem is in the puck / Sky.

I also have an app on my tablet that lets me see what the Denon is getting via the HDMI and it 2.0 PCM.

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Make sure all HDMI cables in the chain (ie puck > Denon > TV) are of the same speed and spec. 

Certified HDMI 2.1 cables are recommended for maximum bandwidth passthrough. You can get them cheap on Amazon (less than £10). 

Also, give everything a full reboot - puck, TV and Denon off at the wall for a minute - so that new HDMI handshakes take place. Make sure the Denon is fully awake from standby before turning the puck and TV on.  

[kdp99]

Tried all that several times, thanks. Also tried different connection schemes (Sky direct to amp, sky direct to TV, then optical to amp, and 2 way HDMI splitter, 1 output to TV one to amp), all work 100% of the time with Sky+HD (and anything else I care to try), all just give 2.0 LPCM with the puck.

I do not pay the extra £5 for atmos, wondered if you need to do that to get simple 5.1 and no one has told us.

[Floydianslip]

@kdp99 Your amp supports eARC, have you tried that? If your TV also supports eARC it's worth a try.

[CoffeeDrinker]

@kdp99 Without the UHD & Atmos add-on, you should still get 'vanilla' 5.1. The difference between Sky+HD & Stream 5.1 is with the codecs. Sky+HD will have outputted 5.1 via Dolby Digital (AKA AC-3 back in the Laserdisc days), a codec from back in the 1990s.

Stream on the other hand uses Dolby Digital Plus, a much newer codec that can handle 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos. 

My own system has a Denon X3500H AVR handling the audio, same year of release but much lower down the range than the 8500 in terms of features (not that I'm envious of your 8500, not me! 😁). My setup is Sky Stream > HDMI > X3500H > HDMI > Sony TV, and handles 5.1, 7.1 & Atmos from the Sky Stream puck just fine. I have the sound output from the Sky Stream puck set to pass through, so the received bitstream from Sky is passed along to the X3500H untouched so it can do the processing etc.

Is your 8500 firmware up to date? When I first unboxed and installed ,my X3500H back in 2019, it had several HDMI handshake & passthrough issues ranging from audio bitstreams not being detected properly to erroneous HDCP errors when using it with my then Sony BluRay player & Apple TV 4K. The AVR has had several firmware updates over the years since, with the latest being installed this week.

From what I remember (I've not had enough coffee), Denon's firmware is not cumulative, so A has to be installed before B, which has to be installed before C etc, rather than going directly to the latest, Z. If your 8500 does need a firmware update, check several times to be sure that all available updates have been applied.

Denon's firmware updates over the years have improved HMDI handshaking massively, to the point that all of my source devices (Sky Stream, Apple TV 4K, Sony 4K x800M2 player, PS5 & XSX) all work flawlessly with both the audio decoding and HLG/HDR10/Dolby Vision passthrough.

[kdp99]

Thanks the TV supports only ARC not eARC, but I have tried puck to TV then TV to amp via both optical and ARC (which give 5.1 from the TV when broadcast). and in both cases I only get 2.0 PCM from the puck.

[kdp99]

Thanks CoffeeD.

The Denon firmware is up to date (latest update a year ish ago), and I check often and have auto update set on.

I get DD+ codec from several sources via HDMI (e.g. Vero 4k+). So its not that.

I set a full diagnostic to sky, below in case it sheds any light on things.

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When I received the puck it was a DIRECT swap for the Sky+HD box connected to the SAME AV system of TV and Home cinema amplifier using the SAME HDMI cable.

When using the Sky+HD box 5.1 audio (when broadcast, e.g. BBC1HD Dr. Who and European football), worked perfectly.

Once the puck was installed I only get 2.0 PCM (puck is set to output bitstream audio). On the same broadcast. 

To be 100% certain I even went back to the Sky+HD box, and got 5.1 audio again.

TV Is Samsung UE55JS8500

AVR Denon AVR-X8500H

HDMI Cable 4k rated that sends HD video perfectly (needing much greater band width that 5.1 audio)

I have tried 4 connection schemes, all which give 2.0 PCM audio when the Sky+HD gives 5.1 in each of the three cases.

Case 1 HDMI from Puck direct to AVR

Case 2 HDMI From puck direct to TV then from TV to AVR via optical

Case 3 HDMI From puck direct to TV then from TV to AVR via ARC

Case 4 HDMI from puck to an HDMI amplifier then to AVR and TV