Getting sound through amp from USB AV source

[Benmychree]

Hi, I'm a newbie to the forum and pretty illiterate when it comes to AV stuff. I need help! I will try to give a much info as possible about the setup below, and apologies if I miss anything.

We have a Samsung S8000 55 inch TV, and a Harman Kardon AVR 265 amp. Hooked into the amp by HDMI we have a Iomega Director Media Player, DVD player, cable TV, and Apple TV. A single HDMI feeds out from the amp to the TV.

The TV has 3 HDMI in connectors marked - 1) DVI, 2) ARC and 3) MHL. The HDMI from the amp currently is connected to DVI, and we use the TV remote to choose HDMI DVI whenever we want to watch anything that is HDMI connected. The TV also has 3 USB connectors, 2 marked USB (5V 0.5A) and the third marked USB (HDD 5V 1A). There is also a Digital Audio Out (Optical) connector in the TV, and 2 in the back of the amp.

There are no issues with any of the above, until I try to play from a USB source, either a stick or a Seagate 5GB expansion drive that I use to store movies etc. The expansion drive has no HDMI connector. It connects to the TV through a USB, and is currently connected into one of the 2 USB (5V 0.5A) slots. We can only get volume through the TV speakers. To watch anything on the expansion drive we change the source to USB expansion drive. The interface for accessing the content is Samsung Link.

The question is, how to we get the sound from the USB source to play through the amp like all the other devices?

A friend said it was as simple as running an Optical cable between the amp and TV, but I got nothing there - I tried 2 cables to see if it was a cable problem, and I couldn't find anything in the amp menus about optical sources, so I am not sure if it is a setting issue.

Another guy said I just had to run the HDMI from the amp into the HDMI ARC connector - again, nothing.

So, it would be fantastic if someone could help me crack this issue once and for all.

Thanks in advance!

 

[slipperybidness]

You're on the right track. Moving HDMI to the ARC connection should have done the trick (ARC = Audio Return Channel). However, I have never used ARC myself.

The optical cable should have also worked. I suspect that you need to make only 1 of these connections, but you then need to go "configure something". Most likely, you need to go into the TV menus to make the configuration to do what you want.

When you tried the optical cable, did you switch the input source on the AVR to optical? If you did, then again, it's a TV config and/or a AVR config issue.

 

[Benmychree]

Thanks Slippery. When I moved the HDMI in the TV to ARC, absolutely nothing worked - the TV seemed to want the DVI slot used, nothing else, and having gone though all of the menus for the TV, I couldn't find anything to help.

"Configure something" on the TV - no idea what though and internet searches have not given a result.

Optical cable - no, I don't think I did set the AVR to optical, but I haven't actually seen such an option in the menus. Perhaps it needs an optical cable connected before the option shows. I might give that a try.