Help to connect a soundbar to a tv

[Moovart]

Can any super techy people advise on this:  I have connected a soundbar to the TV with an HDMI cable into the HDMI ARC socket.  The soundbar works with the TV but when I switch to Netflix or other media that come through a virgin box, the sound disappears completely.  I can then only get the sound back on the TV by unplugging the soundbar from the TV.

The virgin box only has one HDMI socket which is used to connect to the TV so can't connect the soundbar to the virgin box by cable.

Any ideas on how to make this work or recommendations for a TV wizard to contact? Thanks.

[marctt]

Could be several things and varies by TV and soundbar.

If you have a spare HDMI socket, try connecting to the soundbar to the other HDMI socket and see if that works.

Some TVs have settings in the menu to set up soundbar, especially for use with external inputs.

Hope this helps

[OutOfFocus]

Perhaps you could post the make and model of TV and soundbar

[ianr]

I did the super techy thing of submitting your second sentence to a Google search, and got this "AI Overview", followed by a string of some offerings from more specialised forums. 

"To fix sound loss when switching to Netflix on a Virgin box, change the audio output settings from "Dolby Digital" to PCM (stereo or 5.1) in the Virgin menu (Settings > Audio & Video) to ensure compatibility. Also, perform a full box restart and check HDMI connections."

Submitting another selection might lead to some different hits.  The 'AI Overview' added  "set the TV's digital output to Bypass." to one.

I'd follow up marctt's suggestion about possible menu settings.  And then, if need be, try the comprehensible bits of the AI Overviews, step by step, and also see if anything else suggested in the other search hits looks possibly relevant to your situation and at the right technical level for you.   Be wary of false positives of course -- people confident that they have the right solution because it worked for them.

I'm grappling myself with a difficulty one particular computer has with usually getting its HDMI audio output audible via one particular tv: next stage is to try a trial implantation into it of an EDID file telling it what signal formats the particular tv might reasonably be happy with. 

Edited 7 hours ago by ianr
epexegesis?

[Moovart]

Thanks for the advice.  In the end I left the HDMI cable in the HDMI ARC socket but changed the audio output to PCM(stereo or 5.1) in the virgin menu, did a restart and that did the trick. So double thanks to Ianr.  I did do an AI search but didn't go in depth enough so thanks for doing that. 🤝