5.1 Extracted from HDMI

[crazydrum95]

Hi All,

 

first off, I wasn't sure whether to class this as sound or A/V so I went with here, apologies if its the wrong spot!

 

The School I work for has just bought a new projector, and due to the improved size, resolution and generally every part, they have decided they want to run a movie night every so often to try raise some funds. They have asked if it will be possible to have 5.1 audio.

 

I run an audio rental company, so I have 5 matching speakers and subs, designed for live audio and music, but would probably work. They are active however, don't know if this will cause issues.

 

Is there something I can stick between the Blueray player and the projector that will extract the audio from the HDMI and split it into a 5.1 surround signal that I can then send off to these active speakers?

I want to be clear that I have next to no money for this; £200 or less.

 

Any options?

 

Cheers

 

[timsabre]

Google "HDMI 5.1 Audio extractor" and you will get a number of options - both boxes which do the whole thing, or boxes which will give an optical toslink output for you to feed a normal 5.1 decoder

[Shez]

I trust your school have suitable licences in place - showing films for money is a long way outside of the scope of the educational exceptions that apply to in-lesson use.

 

De-embedder is the magic word to search for. Or you may find a cheap AV amp whose audio outputs you could use.

[Robin D]

We do this in our village hall (correctly licensed). Originally the HDMI went through the 5.1 HDMI provisioned amp to the projector, but we had several drops outs of video. Solved by a cheap HDMI splitter. So Blu-Ray player to splitter. One leg to the projector, second to the amp.

[Joe Fernand]

Licence - agree with Shez, you may run into issues in terms of cost!

 

Hardware Options - in terms of hardware, you have a few.

 

A. There are BD Players with 5.1 analogue Outputs which you could connect to your Active Loudspeakers (potentially via a six channel mixer to give you a bit more control over the Output level as the BD Player may have a fixed Output),

 

B. Install a 1080p/HDCP1.4 capable AVR with multi-channel analogue out second hand and use that to control the Active cabinets.

 

C. HDMI Switch with multi-channel analogue Output and again connect into a six channel mixer to allow you to control the Volume.

 

C. Optical to Multi-channel analogue processor - again via a six channel mixer.

 

Joe

[chelgrian]

 

C. HDMI Switch with multi-channel analogue Output and again connect into a six channel mixer to allow you to control the Volume.

 

 

This won't work on most Blu-ray players. It used to be the case that most players would decode to 5.1 or more LPCM. However these days most players can only do a stereo downmix decode as the license is cheaper.

 

Only the higher end players which also tend to have discrete analogue outputs tend to have the decoder license to do multichannel LPCM output.

[Joe Fernand]

Multichannel PCM ought to be the 'default' Output on all players as that is how you are supposed to set the Player to ensure you have Primary + Secondary audio out to your amp.

 

Not sure how 'cheap' you are going but my £200 Panasonic BDP has no issues with decoding multi-channel PCM and having supplied hundreds of HDMI Switch with multi-channel analogue Output sockets I have not come across this issue.

 

Joe

[chelgrian]

Not sure how 'cheap' you are going but my £200 Panasonic BDP has no issues with decoding multi-channel PCM and having supplied hundreds of HDMI Switch with multi-channel analogue Output sockets I have not come across this issue.

 

This is a fairly recent thing. Sony started it with 2018 model year players. For Panasonic the UB 320 the £200 player at current RRP can only do 2 channel although the foot note for this is missing from the specs and the information is only present in a tiny footnote on page 42 of the manual.

 

The UB 420 which at RRP was more expensive (but is a curry's exclusive) does do the decode. Next stop is the 820 RRP 399.

[Joe Fernand]

Cheers - will keep an eye out for that new 'Feature', seems bonkers when you require PCM for Secondary audio.

 

Joe

[adamharman]

I trust your school have suitable licences in place - showing films for money is a long way outside of the scope of the educational exceptions that apply to in-lesson use.

 

Just to expand on that slightly, as it's something I've dealt with relatively recently.

 

Not sure if it's the same for schools, but for other venues cinema is a licensable activity (along with live music, sale of alcohol, etc) which has to be covered by either:

 

A premises license - if you already have a license that doesn't include cinema, I can't see any council objecting to it but there will be an ammendment fee

 

or:

 

A temporary event notice which means paying a fee for each event

 

 

In terms of the rights to show a particular film, it's actually very easy and not too expensive to license films on a per showing basis. I've done it through filmbank who deal with most of the major film distributors, fee is usually 35% of box office with a minimum of around £100. You can also make quite a bit selling refreshments so it can be quite profitable.

[Joe Fernand]

At our Community Centre we hold an MPLC Umbrella licence which allows us to run 'non advertised titles' with Free entry from a fair range of Distributors - that suits our all year round requirement pretty well.

 

http://www.mplcuk.com

 

Joe