XfinityTV and Equipment

[wimmy]

OK, here is some help for all those people who bought a VIZIO SOUND BAR for their HD TV and lost thier sound.  I have a comcast DVR MOTOROLA DX3400.  I hooked up a HMDI CABLE and ended up with the lights flashing errors on my soundbar and NO SOUND.

YOU HAVE TO PUT THE CABLEBOX DVR ON PCM.  you would also have to do this for any sound system besides tv speakers, because the HMDI CABLE RUNS THE SOUND AND THE VIDEO.  You would NOT HAVE TO CHANGE THIS SETTING if you are using the COMPONET OUT HOOKUP CABLE, because there is a separate RCA CABLE that runs the audio out.

HOW TO CHANGE TO PCM...

   1. LEAVE YOUR TV ON

   2. ON YOUR CABLE BOX REMOTE TURN OFF YOUR CABLE BOX

   3. HOLD THE MENU BUTTON DOWN UNTIL THE FACE OF YOUR DVR SAYS 16:9

   4. LET UP ON THE MENU BUTTON

   5. PRESS AND HOLD THE MENU BUTTON AGAIN UNTIL YOU SEE A MENU COME UP ON YOUR TV.

   6. SCROLL DOWN TO WHERE IT SAYS ADVANCED HMDI SETTINGS HIT ENTER

   7. SCROLL DOWN TO SOUND AND HIT ENTER ON SETTING NAMED....  AUTO

   8. THIS WILL TURN YOUR SETTING TO PCM.... THEN YOU WILL HAVE SOUND...

HOPE THIS HELPS SOMEONE... I KNOW IT HELPED MY COMCAST REPRESENATIVE... who started to tell me I had to hook up extra RCA CABLES ALONG WITH MY HMDI CABLE.... no not sooo....!!!!

wimmy

[JMC123]

Thank you for this post. A year and a half ago we got a new visio tv and the sound would only work thru certain channels. The Comcast technician came out and spent an hour trying to make it work. he finally hooked me up with component and audio cables. Today  I came across your post and had  my hdmi cable working in about a minute.

[Av_Duchy]

Hey, 

thanks for this tip. it worked like a charm. I am not sure exactly how our dvr got its hdmi settings

corrupted, but this fixed our problem (no sound). 

Thanks.

[Orhornet1]

Hey Wimmy. Not sure if you will see this or not but hopefully you will. I followed all the instructions to number 7 and then the dvr box got upset and pretty much locked up. It currently won't do anything except momentarily flash up 'picture not available'. I unplugged everything but to no avail. Any ideas? Thanks.

[leibowt]

Thanks Wimmy.  The menu titles and options on my "hidden menu" were somewhat diffferent than those you described (it is 2 years later, after all), but the key was finding that menu and resetting the audio to it's default settings.  Audio returned immediately.  Such an odd problem for those preferences to have just -- poof -- changed on their own, but that they did.

Thanks so much for posting your findings.

For others with this problem -- I wasn't even using external speakers, I couldn't even get sound through my TV's built-in speakers, so this fix works in those cases, too.  For me, at Step 5 I had to let go of the Menu button for the special menu to come up on the screen.  Once that was up I poked around, reset audio to default settings, and I now have sound again,

[susanursini]

Comcast had me resest my DVR and I lost sound.After seeing this thread I went into the menu, then main menu, then audio set up and changed default to "English" and then selected to optimize and this restored the sound. 

[itsguy]

wimmy,  For some reason my sound just went out.  I could not get it back on.  Then I found your post and it is back.  My sound was on Auto.  Thank you for your post!  Now wondering what would have happened to knock it out.

[CyndeeC]

Hey!  I realize your post is realtively old, but still very relevant.  I purchased a Vizio TV about 2 months ago.  No trouble at all until this morning---no audio through cable/DVR.  XBox works fine.  I searched Google, yours was the 1st post I read.  Tried your suggestion and it is now working.  

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post your solution.  It was very helpful to me and I am sure many others.  Have no idea why the audio just didn't work after several months, but your solution quickly rectified the problem.  Thanks again!

[shotts]

Nice work! Just wish the guy from Comcast could have told me that. He said it should be left on auto. Just wasted 4 hrs trying to figure this out.

[Latufamily]

Hello,

I followed your instructions and was able to get to the menu.  I found the HDMI settings, I don't know how but it was set to use the HDMI as a DVI (no audio), so I changed this to HDMI and the sound worked no problem.  Thank you for these instructions, 3-4 minutes and my problem was solved.