HDMI sore

The cold-solder joints connecting the speaker relays to the PCB in my receiver are shot. This means that I can open up the receiver, play a movie and wiggle the relays with the end of a screwdriver, and I can magically turn on and off the sound coming from the surround speakers.  You can do this with the remote, too, I think, but who can ever figure those things out?

This got me thinking that I can simplify the cable carbonara that rests behind my entertainment center.  I thought I could probably just hook everything up to the TV via HDMI, and then connect the TV to the receiver with a single fiber cable.  So, I tried testing this before I got too far along with cable re-routing.  Wrong.  Wrong!

As it turns out, the TV will not send surround sound down the fiber cable.  There are magical creatures inside this TV that can turn sound into light, BUT they can only do it for 2 channels!  Why would a company go through the trouble of designing the system, manufacturing all the connectors and IC's and writing the manual entry for a completely useless feature.  I can't imagine that anyone has ever said, "I'd love to send 2 channel audio down a fiber optic cable.  That is a useful case for me."