I have found that the Optical out of the 811 is not at fault when you are not receiving sound through your receiver. The 811 needs to be set at DD/PCM and your receiver should be set at either AUTO or DD/PCM for the optical input that you are using for the 811 to work. I believe that for most of you that are having problems the problem is with your receiver settings and not your 811.
I have had two 811's and they worked exactly the same way. I have a DENON 982 and have noticed that if you set the receiver to PCM only or DD only you do not get any sound most of the time. However, on the DENON there is an AUTO setting and I get sound all the time. My uncle's Yamaha works with the DD/PCM setting. Trying to use just one setting seems to do the same as the Denon--no sound. I do not use RCA jacks on my 811--just the Optical.
There is an easy way to check your optical out port. If there is light coming out of the Optical jack on your 811 then the port is working. No light -- than it is not. Plug in your Optical cable and look at the other end--light your cable is working--no light cable is not working or it is not seating in the optical port correctly.
I came to the above conclusions from experience with a Toshiba DVD player whose optical out worked exactly like the 811's does. If you did not chose the DD/PCM setting I could not get sound out of the player thru the optical port. I just applied that experience to the 811 and my optical port started working and has worked ever since.
Now concerning the audio drop outs--this has nothing to do with the Optical port. I have tried mine with the RCA jacks and have experienced the same thing happening. The audio drop outs only happens when you switch to an HD channel. Does not make a difference which way as the lose of signal is only on HD channels. This includes OTA HD and the HD channels being provided by E*. This even happens switching between HD channels--even from the same station.
My conclusion on the audio drop out is that it is not the optical port but the problems the 811 is having switching between a HD channel and any other channel. It is losing the audio sync with the picture and is not finding it until you switch between channels. Sometimes going to an SD channel and back to the HD channel you are trying to receive is all you have to do. I believe this to be a software not a hardware problem.
Initally in my area when all the stations went to HD there was a problem with the ABC station losing its audio. This usually happened when you switched to their station. Sometimes after a minute or two the sound would come in and sometimes you had to switch back and forth in order to receive it. The problem was in ABC's Psip information. It allowed your HD receiver to lose the audio sync and some receivers could not sync the audio. It took them 3 months to correct this problem.
I am not saying that your 811 is not dysfunctional--just that there are other reasons the optical port might not be working and from my experience when there is light at the optical out port than the receiver settings is 90 % the fault most of the time when dealing with an Optical signal. I just hope that this post can help some of you.
I have had two 811's and they worked exactly the same way. I have a DENON 982 and have noticed that if you set the receiver to PCM only or DD only you do not get any sound most of the time. However, on the DENON there is an AUTO setting and I get sound all the time. My uncle's Yamaha works with the DD/PCM setting. Trying to use just one setting seems to do the same as the Denon--no sound. I do not use RCA jacks on my 811--just the Optical.
There is an easy way to check your optical out port. If there is light coming out of the Optical jack on your 811 then the port is working. No light -- than it is not. Plug in your Optical cable and look at the other end--light your cable is working--no light cable is not working or it is not seating in the optical port correctly.
I came to the above conclusions from experience with a Toshiba DVD player whose optical out worked exactly like the 811's does. If you did not chose the DD/PCM setting I could not get sound out of the player thru the optical port. I just applied that experience to the 811 and my optical port started working and has worked ever since.
Now concerning the audio drop outs--this has nothing to do with the Optical port. I have tried mine with the RCA jacks and have experienced the same thing happening. The audio drop outs only happens when you switch to an HD channel. Does not make a difference which way as the lose of signal is only on HD channels. This includes OTA HD and the HD channels being provided by E*. This even happens switching between HD channels--even from the same station.
My conclusion on the audio drop out is that it is not the optical port but the problems the 811 is having switching between a HD channel and any other channel. It is losing the audio sync with the picture and is not finding it until you switch between channels. Sometimes going to an SD channel and back to the HD channel you are trying to receive is all you have to do. I believe this to be a software not a hardware problem.
Initally in my area when all the stations went to HD there was a problem with the ABC station losing its audio. This usually happened when you switched to their station. Sometimes after a minute or two the sound would come in and sometimes you had to switch back and forth in order to receive it. The problem was in ABC's Psip information. It allowed your HD receiver to lose the audio sync and some receivers could not sync the audio. It took them 3 months to correct this problem.
I am not saying that your 811 is not dysfunctional--just that there are other reasons the optical port might not be working and from my experience when there is light at the optical out port than the receiver settings is 90 % the fault most of the time when dealing with an Optical signal. I just hope that this post can help some of you.
