Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Sky Stream and Meridian

Hi All, sorry I have been away for a while again. Life has a way of enforcing priorites...

Hopefully the hive mind can assist with a conundrum:

My Sky+HD box has died and I am considering going for the Sky Stream replacement.

For domestic peace reasons, I need the TV/Sky combo to work without the Meridian stuff needed to be active.

The Meridian system is a pair of DSP7200.1s with a Bluenode connected to the SPDIF input - that's it. Currently I feed the Sky+HD optical output to a BlueNode and thence to the master speaker - works fine.

The Sky Stream puck appears to have one HDMI output and no SPDIF connector.

The TV is a Pioneer Kuro 50" which has a very low power optical output and, being ancient technology, does not have ARC.

I have a spare HD621 which could be incorporated.

My options seem to be:

- A HDMI 1-to-2 splitter feeding the TV and an HD621 - do such splitters exist?
- A HDMI/SPDIF splitter which extracts the digital audio and outputs it via optical SPDIF; a poor man's HD621 as it were - do such extractors exist?
- Use the TV optical output into the BlueNode - likely to be poor sound quality due to the low level output
- Run the Sky Stream into an HD621 which is always active and which is not connected to the Meridian comms circuit - can an HD621 run 24/7 without being stressed?

Anyone have experience, advice or other ideas on how I might proceed?

TIA

Just bumping this as I am getting nowhere trying to understand my options.

There were flaky solutions to my setup in the post above but it seems there may also be issues with my main system (HD621 to G68 and Pioneer Kuro 60")

Has anyone here actually installed Sky Stream?

I need to understand if it can be configured to output vanilla Dolby Digital which can then be extracted by the HD621 for surround sound.

My internet searches have come up with a variety of experiences but nothing unequivocal that applies to a setup like mine.

Hi
l had problems with the then new Sky Q box to the HD621. l use a G65 and Panasonic Plasma screen. What solved my problems was the CYP AU 11SA which seperated the sound and picture. It does have more than 1 audio output and “might” be what you’re looking for?
Best
relham

The HD621 can extract a Dolby Digital stream and pass it through, although cannot decode DD itself. The other thing to try is to set the Sky Stream to output LPCM which the HD621 handles directly - this may be stereo rather than multi-channel depending on the Sky Stream box capabilities.

The above may not be what you want but would at least allow you to get something working and to test. As you are outputting to a 1080p plasma, having the HD621 in the path will not limit the video resolution.

+1 since your TV isn’t 4K and it seems you have no surround sound need, this is exactly what I would do - set the Sky device to output stereo PCM and configure the HD621 for stereo.

[edit: when I ran an HD621 this way in the past, with a 2-channel setup, I found that you can config the HD621 with:

- Output Rate x2 (96k)
- MHR

Both set to Yes with no ill-effects. This would be a better way to feed your 7200s, as the HD621 then apodises and uses encryption between it and the DSPs which has the side benefit of reducing jitter. No idea why Meridian marks these to be set as No in their 2-channel config sheet…]

Thanks everyone for the input so far.

I popped into the local Comet and the very nice assistant allowed me to play with their demo instalation so now I know what audio settings are available. Both Dolby Digital and PCM stereo are there so both my setups (MC and 2C) should work.

Onto my two-channel set-up, I have been experimenting with the HD621. The link above was very useful and it has saved me from a rabbit-hole full of gotchas especially using D1 for the output instead of D2 which is what multichannel demanded when I tried it. I have discovered that the HD621 can be activated (by pressing the source buton) without lighting up the full system, even with comms connected, so that looks like a solution to allow domestic bliss to prevail.

I do have an obscure question, however. If I set the Audio output to Video/HDMI (needed to feed the telly when the system is off), will I still get audio on the D1 output for when the system is on?

TIA

Just a quick follow up to this.

Sky Stream set to output DD works fine as expected with the HD621 in the MC system.

It seems my old Pioneer Kuro does not like DD in on HDMI so the Sky Stream is set to PCM and the TV optical passes through into the speakers. This dicovery was important because it means that an HDMI splitter sending DD to the 2-channel system (*) would send DD to the TV so the "working with and without the AV system" use case would not work.

(*) I had intended to install an SSP to do the DD decoding, albeit it is a 2-channel system.


As an aside, for those of you considering the Sky Stream option, my initial observations are:
- make sure you have the latest type of router - Sky Stream seems to use unicast for the Sky channels and that does not play well with old(er) router/modems (guess how I know)
- picture quality is very good, an obvious step up from satellite (Sky+HD in my case), some content looks almost UHD-like
- the user interface/remote control needs work and familiarisation, especially moving from Sky+HD


Now need to consider a new TV and how to do ARC/e-ARC into a G68...

ARC won’t transport anything that the optical out doesn’t already transport, so not worth worrying about in my opinion.

eARC will transport lots of things, but most TVs either limit what they send out or just send out what they get in. It’s fine if you have universal in-player decoding that you can force AND a TV that can pass it back out, but you’re a bit at the mercy of the TV. I’ve not yet seen a TV that will decode a bitstream and send discrete LPCM out on eARC, but maybe they exist.I’d reconsider my aversion to eARC if they did….