Sound on hdtv with dish

[William Hollenbeck]

I have an hdtv with dish. I have no trouble with sound except when they
show a movie and I have trouble understanding the dialog. It is a 32"
Samsung. I wonder if a cheap soundbar would help. Thanks in advance for
any info.

[J G Miller]

On Tuesday, February 25th, 2013, at 14:47:15h -0500,

Post by William Hollenbeck
I have an hdtv with dish. I have no trouble with sound except when they
show a movie and I have trouble understanding the dialog. It is a 32"
Samsung. I wonder if a cheap soundbar would help. Thanks in advance for
any info.

This is not an unusual problem.

The movies are probably being broadcast in 5.1 sound and your
satellite receiver is downmixing the 6 audio channels to 2 channel
stereo for your TV?

Dialog is most often on the front center channel, so when the 6
audio channels get downmixed to just left and right, the dialog
gets buried in the other audio streams.

On flat screen TVs the built in loudspeakers are generally of
adequate quality (not high quality though) and sometimes even quite poor,
and generally do not perform well if the volume is turned up.

At the very least you should consider using a better quality pair
of powered stereo speakers or even a proper 5.1 system.

A cheap soundbar is only going to provide a half-hearted fix.

Of course if the dialog is not in English or in a dialect with
which you are not familiar, and you only understand English, a
soundbar will not help you to understand it either
;) ;) ;)

[whosbest54]

In article <5041-512D1143-***@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net>, ***@webtv.net
says...

Post by William Hollenbeck
I have an hdtv with dish. I have no trouble with sound except when they
show a movie and I have trouble understanding the dialog. It is a 32"
Samsung. I wonder if a cheap soundbar would help. Thanks in advance for
any info.

Just on the Dish pay per view channels?

How do you have the Dish receiver hooked up to the TV? An HDMI cable? Or a
componenent vid cable with analog audio?

The other responder so far has likely hit on the issue - the way the movie
sound is being downmixed is the problem.

You could try the other way to hook up the TV to see if the mix is different.
You can keep both connections and switch between them.

whosbest54

[William Hollenbeck]

I have the dish connected with hdmi. As usual after all else failed I
looked at the instructions. On the menu there is a tru surround sound
which said it would work with only the two speakers on the tv. You can
then select for movie, music or clear voice. After I selected movies
bingo the dialogue was very clear and easy to understand. I would
recommend this Samsung TV to anyone. Thanks for all the info anyway.

[J G Miller]

On Tuesday, March 5th, 2013, at 10:11:11h -0500,

Post by William Hollenbeck
I have the dish connected with hdmi.

I would hope you had the dish connected to the satellite receiver
with coaxial cable, and the satellite receiver to the TV with an
HDMI cable. ;)

Post by William Hollenbeck
On the menu there is a tru surround sound which said it would work
with only the two speakers on the tv. You can then select for movie,
music or clear voice. After I selected movies bingo the dialogue was
very clear and easy to understand.

Can you detect what is the difference in sound when you select
music or clear voice?

[William Hollenbeck]

On clear voice the dialogue is crisp and a little louder while the
background sound is lower. I have not tried the music. I was only
interested in the movie dialogue. I really don"t use the music channels
on Dish.

[William Hollenbeck]

I tried the music setting to answer your question. It's hard for me to
explain. Maybe more full bodied ( more bass) than clear voice.

[J G Miller]

Post by William Hollenbeck
I tried the music setting to answer your question. It's hard for me to
explain. Maybe more full bodied ( more bass) than clear voice.

Thanks for trying. So I guess the different settings reflect the
way they are boosting or attenuating the different frequencies and
the levels of the different streams when downmixing 5.1 to stereo.

[William Hollenbeck]

That's exactly how it's done. I had an RCA hdtv for about 6 years but
the picture was not nearly as good. The quality of this Samsung is
superior in every way.