It sounds like Miscanthus's TV can handle PCM stereo over the HDMI input, but not DD and DTS bitstreams. That's not too surprising - I don't know how many TV's with HDMI inputs include even rudimentary DD/DTS decoders. There's some discussion of this issue in this thread at AVS forum - sounds like a common affliction that may not have a good solution (there is mention of an option under "Display" to turn the on-screen messages off, but it sounds like it may reset to "on" when the unit is turned off).

Gonk,
My tv is the Samsung 50" plasma. The new model with 2 HDMI inputs. The message does not appear when I set it to PCM. It does, however, go away after a couple seconds,as stated in the above post, when set to bitstream. So with this being the case, do you think I should leave it set to bitstream or PCM?

It sounds like your TV is telling the player that it can't process a Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream, which is not surprising. Do not set the player to PCM, though. Your TV has no problem getting PCM over the HDMI connection, but you'll also be feeding the 990 a PCM signal over the optical cable, and that means you will lose both Dolby Digital and DTS audio - you'll be feeding the 990 the a downmixed stereo signal stripped down from the Dolby Digital's 5.1 and nothing at all from DTS.

If setting "Screen Messages" to "off" in the player's display menu gets rid of the message permanently, that's probably the best solution. The alternative is to ignore the message.

This is driving me crazy. Now I canot get the tv to "source" to HDMI 1, which is where the dvd is plugged into. I go into the tv menu and into input setup and it will just pass right over the HDMI1 and not let me highlight it. When I use the source button on the tv remote it just passes by the HDMI1 screen straight to HDMI2 screen, which I have nothing connected to at the moment. Anyway, on the dvd menu, I have bitstream on, and DTS on, and PCM "down somehting" set to off. Does this sound right.

The DVD player settings (bitstream on, DTS on, and PCM downconversion off) are right.

When trying to select HDMI1 on the TV, is the DVD player turned on? Also, my dad's 26" LCD has an option to disable certain inputs (so you only have to scroll through the ones that have something connected to them) - does your TV have that option, and could HDMI1 be disabled there?

The dvd player is on. I will check to see if anything is disabeled. Thanks.

From the samsung manual:

HDMI
- If your TV is not compatible with compressed multi-channel formats (Dolby Digital, DTS, MPEG), you should set Digital Audio to PCM.
- If your TV is not compatible with LPCM sampling rates over 48kHz, you should set PCM Down sampling to On.

From what I've read there is no way to disable audio over the HDMI cable, so it looks like you'll have to endure for the time being, unless your TV allows disabling of the messages.

I do wish that CE manufacturers had waited to push HDMI out of the garage until the audio spec was implemented. DVI would have worked just fine for people until then. Perhaps you should convert the signal to DVI and back through the 990?

The 990's DVI switching is transparent to HDMI - the audio would survive the trip unaltered. It looks like the best bet for Miscanthus is to either ignore the message or see if the "screen message" option in the DVD player will prevent it from appearing.

EDIT: Don't mind me, I'm just quietly losing my mind. See the next two posts for what really happens to HDMI audio passed through DVI switching...

That's new. Everything I've read has indicated that DVI will not pass the audio signal from an HDMI source, not only due to bandwidth limitations, but also that the CEC pin on HDMI has no equivalent on DVI. Did you test this on your 990? I'd love to know more.

Hmmm... Maybe I'm remembering wrong. We had an extensive discussion here in the saloon about the 990's DVI switching last year, particularly in relation to how it interacted with HDMI. Now that I think about it, though, the big focus was on HDMI blacker-than-black being lost - the official answer was that it was not because the DVI switching was equivalent to an HDMI-to-DVI adapter (all the signals passed unaltered). I think I transposed that with the HDMI audio signals - based on the pin layouts, the HDMI audio would be lost. Yeah, it's been a long week - thanks for catching my slip-up.

With that in mind, your idea of using the 990's DVI switching to filter out the audio is an intriguing one.