Trying to find a way to inject digital audio into an HDMI path

Question

There are lots of DVI to HDMI connection options out there, but I have yet to see one that allows one to incorporate digital audio into the HDMI path. Given that there are lots of early adopter video-only HDMI components out there that will be looking for a way to inject a digital audio feed into the HDMI path, so that a monitor can play HDMI video and digital audio natively, instead of either opting for analog audio (where it is available) or being stuck with no way to get audio to follow, one would think that there would be a big market for that sort of a device...
This gets a bit trickier with the Mac Mini when one considers that in order to have access to the TOSLINK, you are functionally locked into either using TOSLINK exclusively, or buying a TOSLINK splitter and then downconverting one of the splits to analog.
One would THINK that it would be in Apple's best interest to make a DVI to HDMI adapter available that would have a TOSLINK cable to plug in to inject the digital audio natively, so the whole thing would be seamless... it would be a very Apple sort of way to deal with it... but that doesn't seem to be in the cards at this point.
Any thoughts/suggestions/death threats?
Message was edited by: algor_langeaux

Answer 1

algor_langeaux wrote:
There are lots of DVI to HDMI connection options out there, but I have yet to see one that allows one to incorporate digital audio into the HDMI path. Given that there are lots of early adopter video-only HDMI components out there that will be looking for a way to inject a digital audio feed into the HDMI path, so that a monitor can play HDMI video and digital audio natively, instead of either opting for analog audio (where it is available) or being stuck with no way to get audio to follow, one would think that there would be a big market for that sort of a device...
This gets a bit trickier with the Mac Mini when one considers that in order to have access to the TOSLINK, you are functionally locked into either using TOSLINK exclusively, or buying a TOSLINK splitter and then downconverting one of the splits to analog.
As an aside I had hoped by now Apple as supposedly a seller of multimedia products might have switched to using HDMI as standard. It looks like they eventually might switch to using "DisplayPort".
Anyway, there are converters that will do what you want. Have a look at this as an example
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=3570
Before this particular one shipped their pre-launch information (and pictures) said it would support TOS-Link (which is what Macs use) but when it actually became available it was only for SPDIF.
However since then I have come to a realisation that these converters are probably a waste of time anyway. If you are going to connect directly to a TV which has HDMI then using such an adapter is not necessary because the TV itself only has stereo speakers so using a DVI-HDMI cable plus a mini-jack to pair of phono connectors will work as well even if it needs two separate sets of cables. If on the other hand you are going to connect the Mac mini via an AV Receiver, then all such AV Receivers can accept a DVI or HDMI video signal, and a TOS-Link audio signal and then pass the video out to a TV and the audio out to a set of 5.1 speakers. In effect the AV Receiver itself is such a converter.
This latter approach is the one I intend to use.
If you really do want to consider this approach then there are such converters, even ones which do support TOS-Link connections. A bit of Googling will show them up. In the mean time the one listed below
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=4298
would do what you want and also includes a 'scaler' to increase the resolution up to 1080p. This one has two HDMI and TOS-Link inputs. With a Mac mini you would use a DVI to HDMI cable and a TOS-Link cable, it would then output via a standard HDMI cable. It even looks a bit like a Mac mini.
However when you look at the price you can see you may as well use a full-blown upscaling AV Receiver like a Onkyo or Denon.