[Audio_Empire[_2_]]

On Friday, December 14, 2012 12:29:54 PM UTC-8, Audio_Empire wrote:
On Friday, December 14, 2012 9:07:58 AM UTC-8, J.B. Wood wrote:
On 12/13/2012 10:43 PM, Audio_Empire wrote:

Before I can answer that, I need some clarification. Is this
optical output analog or digital? If it's digital, any number of
DACs on the market, in all price ranges are likely to have an
optical digital input and RCA analog left and right stereo out.
OTOH, if that TV optical output is analog, I don't know what to
tell you. There were some products in the late 80's that tried
to replace regular audio interconnects with fiber optical, but
it didn't take. I haven't seen any equipment with that
capability for decades and I've certainly seen no converter
boxes that would turn the optical stereo back into electrical
stereo.

Thanks for the quick reply, Empire. Clarification(?) from the
Panasonic TC32X5 manual:

When an ATSC channel is selected, the output from the DIGITAL
AUDIO OUT jack will be Dolby Digital. When an NTSC channel is
selected, the output will be PCM.
When playing a movie on SD Card Movie player, when the sound has
been recorded in Dolby Digital, the output from the DIGITAL
AUDIO OUT terminal will be Dolby Digital. When the sound is
recorded in other formats, the output will be PCM.

OK. You need to buy a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC). Here's a
link to one on E-Bay:

http://tinyurl.com/bs2g2jl

It is more than adequate for your purposes, has an Optical TosLink
input (which is what your Panasonic most likely is) and electronic
stereo audio out and, it's less that $22.

Do you also need a TosLink cable to go betwen the TV and your new
DAC?

Try these folks:

http://www.mycablemart.com/store/car...duct_list&c=11

Their Toslink Cables are excellent and cheap (I use 'em myself).
Just buy the length you need.

Good luck on your project.

I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that. Because of the
several different audio-for-video formats that the Panasonic will
handle, you need to understand that the DAC i pointed you to will only
decode PCM. It won't work for Dolby Digital, DTS, or other formats.
What you need to ensure that the DAC will handle any digital format
thrown at it, you would need an audio-for-video decoder. Now, most
ver-the air TV sound is PCM (and even analog Dolby pro-logic is
broadcast as PCM) so you should be fine, but I wanted to warn you that
if you do encounter broadcast (or cable/satellite) in one of the other
formats, this $22 DAC will not be able to parse them.