Bitstream via HDMI from nVidia or AMD GPUs

ChuckMountain

Whilst I would say go for it and people will have their own preferences there are some differences between a straight forward player (e.g. VLC) and others like Kodi, Plex etc are Media Libraries with builtin players so there is a difference depending on what you want.

You could waste a lot of time going backwards and forwards

miggyboys

To be fair, I'll review their functionality specs and screenshots - as it's working with JRiver, and don't really want to be installing/uninstalling five similar products, sound quality won't differ much.

Thanks!

ChuckMountain

If you are bitstreaming and the software isn't doing any processing then there will be no difference in sound between the products.

EndlessWaves

HDMI and DVI use the same video protocol, so swapping between them won't make any difference.

The resolution is slightly different between monitors and TVs. It shouldn't make a difference to picture quality alone but it may stop whatever's happening on the soundbar. I haven't had an nVidia card for years but there should be separate options for 1920x1080 and FullHD/1080p, although they may not be in the same place (and they have a habit of only offering the latter through HDMI).

If you can't persuade your soundbar not to muck about with the signal then the easiest way is to connect HDMI to your soundbar and another cable from your computer to your monitor (DVI will do) and then set the two outputs up in clone mode.

ChuckMountain

Are you connecting a cable between your soundbar and monitor when you are trying it ?

I am wondering if there is a handshake issue going on somewhere so have you tried your 3rd option

3) Nvidia 1060 6GB HDMI 1 ----> Yamaha YSP-2200   Nvidia 1060 6GB DisplayPort 1 ----> HP Monitor ZR22W DisplayPort.

But then added a cable from the YSP-2200 to a spare connector on your monitor.

It could be an EDID\HDCP issue that as the YSP-2200 doesn't have anything connected it doesn't like it?

miggyboys

Hi EndlessWaves

My preferred option for cabling is your last suggestion but clone mode - that's for more than one monitor? I only have one.

miggyboys

Hi ChuckMountain

I'm disconnecting the cable between soundbar and monitor when trying the three options I stated in post #24. Wouldn't adding the cable from YSP-2200 to a spare connector on the monitor give me what I have now, which is the slightly worse picture as video is passing through the soundbar?

Could be the EDID\HDCP - I'll have to recheck the manual and perhaps contact Yamaha about whether this is the case...

ChuckMountain

No you select the direct input as the monitor source and then you get the better picture.  You should be able to toggle them to see the difference.

EndlessWaves

The soundbar is the second one. It'll advertise video capabilities if it has passthrough so it'll get a video signal sent to that as well, and as far as I know there's no way to disable it.

Clone mode ensures you screen behaves like a single monitor, if you don't enable it you'll have a phantom screen attached to one side of your monitor that things can get lost onto.

miggyboys

I'll try it.