FZ series, audio through HDMI question

Hi,

I've tried to search through the forums, but cannot find this ...

Can anyone confirm whether or not the HDMI port on the FZ actually carries sound?

Most forum entries that I found for other brands of notebooks say that HDMI can only output Video, but not audio.

For example, if you use an FZ as a part of a home theatre, and you connect HDMI to a A/V receiver, will you get 5.1 surround sound through the HDMI?

Thanks ...

 

I don't have an HDMI tv, but I think HDMI "should" be able to output both audio and video.

I haven't tried it on my FZ, but my brother has a Sony 52" Aquos with HDMI and HDMI player. I can't be sure about the surround sound, but the FZ does support that although the built-in stereo cannot play 5.1 surround sound. If you want 5.1 audio on your tv, I think your tv would need to support it too.

 

I agree, to get 5.1 you need an audio system that supports it.

Also, I think if you connect the FZ to a TV via HDMI, and you can hear the sound from the TV's speaker, that should confirm that the FZ's HDMI interface does carry audio.

 

It does work, but it's incredibly non-intuitive to do the first time. I've done this now on 3 different TV's and they all worked, so I'm pretty confident with the procedure.

1. Connect the HDMI cable to the TV and use Fn-F7 to switch the output to the TV. You should see video at this point.

2. Navigate to the device manager and locate the Generic Monitor. You'll need to change the driver for it to Generic PnP Monitor. My machine seems to have trouble installing drivers automatically, so I had to use the options to install drivers manually, Have Disk, and find the driver file in c:\windows\system32\driverstore\filerepository\monitor.inf_7e372832

3. Once you get the driver changed to the PnP version, then you can right-click on the volume control in the system tray (lower right corner), and click on Playback Devices in the popup menu. The resulting dialog box should show HDMI enabled, so click it and then click the "Set Default" button. Full 5.1 audio should now go out to the TV over HDMI.

4. When you disconnect from the TV, you'll have to switch the audio output back to the internal speakers using the steps from number 3.

Additional notes: you only have to do the driver switch once for each new TV you connect. Subsequent connections to the same device will work fine.

Protected BluRay content will not playon an external device until you make the driver change, and also will not play when you have both the internal and external displays active. You have to pick one or the other.

 

Hi, I'm a owner of a brand new fz21z and having some difficulties with hdmi. I finally got the blue-ray working with my lcd tv when I changed my drivers. But now I would like to listen to music only through my HDMI.

I have one HDMI cable connected from my laptop to my amplifier and one cable from amplifier to TV. I put some music playing to windows media player and only managed to listen it with my TV speakers but not with my main speakers. Any ideas how to do that?