Apple tv 2 and 1 not playing sound through optical out.

Question

Hello all, just bought a new atv2. Thought I'd stress the difficulty i had in getting it to stream from the main Mac in the house. What a pain. Silly home sharing, why it couldn't be as simple as atv1!
Anyway it's working now. My issue is this; I want to use the atv2 as a music streaming device and not attach it to a screen. I will control it from my iPhone remote.
After connecting it to 2 hifis with optics I can't get sound to come out. In fact none of the 3 atvs seem to work by simply connecting directly to the optical out. Sure they are all fine when connected by hdmi. But I don't always want the tvs left on.
Also, I'm having difficulty in getting the atvs to act as remote speakers systems when i operate the main music library. I guess this will all be resolved when i work out how to get the optics to work!
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Apple TV may or may not work without a screen. Some devices will not function unless they "sense" a display. This is particularly likely to be the case with a HDMI device, which uses a communication protocol that requires handshaking with the display.
The most common reason why optical inputs might not work with a receiver is that the receiver is not configured to take the sound off the optical port. Most modern receivers can accept sound from multiple ports, and optical is often not the default. Note that you can tell whether the AppleTV is generating a signal by unplugging the optical cable from your receiver and looking for the red light. at the tip of the cable.