Hello all, as some of you know, my family and I are selling our home and building one from the ground up. I’ve been thoroughly researching a nice setup for the living room before I proceed to a new theater build. The problem I was having is finding bookshelf speakers shorter than 12” that will fill a very large room in a 2.1 setup. After everything I’ve read, I decided to skip the bookshelves and purchase a hi end soundbar.
I opted for the Samsung HW-Q80R. My goal is to get brackets for the soundbar, install them to the tv mount and use a digital optical cable from the tv to soundbar instead of the hdmi ports. After more research, I’ve read Dolby Atmos is not possible unless the connections are HDMI through the soundbar, however I’ve chatted with 2 product support agents from Samsung stating Atmos will play via optical cable. My reasoning for this is simple...controller clutter. I want to use the tv remote to control the volume, input selection and everything else. I know it’s silly but some of you can attest for the multiple remote struggle.
I could use HDMI, but looking ahead for future proofing the home, I plan on finishing the basement with a hi end receiver with multiple hdmi outs and want to run a cable up to hdmi 3 input on the tv for when we host gatherings. Unfortunately the bar only has 2 hdmi in’s. Again, this is not a big issue as if I really had to, I can always purchase a good hdmi switcher for the blu ray player and hdmi from basement receiver.
So after getting different answers, I decided to turn to the experts here. Is Dolby Atmos possible via digital optical cable or is the best option to run HDMI?
