Can a TV decode audio passed to it from a HDMI port?

Simple question: A movie is being transmitted via the hdmi port of a tv from a device like laptop/computer/mobile . Which device does the audio decoding ?

Will it always be the device sending the movie (laptop etc) that will decode the audio and then send it to HDMI ?
Can it be the TV that does the audio decoding ? ; Depending upon on the capabilities and features of the TV and device sending the movie.

My specific case:

Device playing movie: Computer/mobile
Transferred to TV HDMI via a wifi HDMI streaming stick. (that does NOT do audio decoding)

gyaani_guy

Posted 2015-09-19T08:01:08.220

Reputation: 321

What have you read up about HDMI so far? HDMI is just a digital interface. The end device decodes the digital data and then performs D-to-A conversion to get audio out. There is, however, more to HDMI as there is such mechanisms to protect the digital content - much like DRM - to ensure someone can't just hook up a recording device to bypass secure content protection mechanisms and copy, say, movies. – Kinnectus – 2015-09-19T08:25:09.093

Answers

The baseline requirement for any audio capable HDMI device, like a TV, is that it can handle stereo PCM sound input. Other than that it may support different channel counts, different sampling rates and any IEC 61937 compliant compressed streams, like Dolby Digital and DTS. This is how e.g. many amplifiers work: the sound is sent as DD or DTS to the amplifier and it handles the decoding and DA.

With digitally transmitted audio it doesn't matter much for quality which device decodes the compressed stream (unless the decoders have differences in quality), but if the sending device can't decode something it is possible to send it to the receiving device and let that handle the decoding if it can.

So in short: yes, your TV might support decoding some audio formats and your stick might allow throughput of it without trying to decode it.

Sami Kuhmonen

Posted 2015-09-19T08:01:08.220

Reputation: 2 052