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HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 converter?

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Hey all,

I recently purchased a 4K TV and UHD Blu-Ray player, and so far I’m very happy with them in terms of picture, but I’ve run into a bit of trouble on the sound end of things. Although my receiver allows 4k passthrough, it’s a couple years old and does not support HDCP 2.2. As a temporary workaround, I’m running the Blu-Ray player directly into the TV and outputting audio to the receiver via the ARC channel, but it’s a messy setup and it doesn’t allow for lossless audio. A cursory glance at Amazon makes it seem as though I can get a converter to solve this issue, but it also looks like some of them can’t handle HDR and none of the listings are very clear about whether or not they can. Can anyone with a little more knowledge and/or experience point me in the direction of a box I can use to make my UHD discs talk to my receiver?

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I think you’re mixing your hdmi standards with your hdcp standards.

Does your 4k Blu-ray player not have a separate hdmi output just for audio? My Panasonic does so I can feed hdr video direct to the display and audio only direct to my receiver.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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The player is a Samsung UBD-M8500. The receiver is a Yamaha RX-V379. The TV is a Samsung 55MU6300.

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OK, I’ve tried to use the same retailer’s website just for consistency of information:

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-baFGbkAOimX/p_305UBDM85K/Samsung-UBD-M8500.html
https://www.crutchfield.com/S-8fTYSqGti92/p_022RXV379/Yamaha-RX-V379.html
https://www.crutchfield.com/S-OBiWN7gEaS5/p_30555M6300/Samsung-UN55MU6300.html

As you said the player has a single HDMI 2.0a, supporting HDCP 2.2 as described in this link, while the reciever has 4 x HDMI 2.0 connectors, also supporting HDCP 2.2 according to this link. Even Yamaha’s Press Rlease says it does HDCP 2.2:

https://usa.yamaha.com/news_events/2015/20150428_yamaha_rx-v379_av_receiver_places_4k_us.html

TV has 3 x HDMI 2.0a, supporting HDCP 2.2, so from these specs your entire video chain is HDCP 2.2 compliant, and shouldn’t need to convert to HDCP 1.4??

A bit more digging brought up this article:

http://4k.com/news/how-hdmi-2-0-helped-4k-advance-8437/

IMO, it appears the issue is the reciever is only HDMI 2.0 not 2.0a and so it’s not an issue of HDCP which is the problem, but the HDMI specification. Hopefully someone will chip in if I’ve got this completely wrong. If it were HDCP ‘standards’ as an issue, I can see how a box like you suggested would work, as it legally decodes 2.2 protection, and then re-protects at 1.4 which is supported by more devices. I think your issue is that the signal coming out of your player is then having the additional commands in the 2.0a subset ‘stripped’ which are then required by the TV set.

If you’re still covered, I would look to exchange the Samsung 8500 for the 9500 which has the dual HDMI connectors.

HTH

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Many thanks. Is there some kind of splitter I could employ rather than getting a whole new player?

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joefavs said:

Many thanks. Is there some kind of splitter I could employ rather than getting a whole new player?

My gut tells me ‘no’, as you don’t want to duplicate the signal but rather send the audio component a different route - I assume this is somehow ‘split’ within the player as it decodes the signal.

BUT

It does look like this may do what you want:

https://www.hdfury.com/product/integral-4k60-444-600mhz/

AVSForum users discuss it briefly below, which sounds like your ‘use case’:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/2727865-hdmi-splitter-uhd-tv-audio-receiver.html

Had no experience, but perhaps someone else has.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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It looks like that wouldn’t be any cheaper than returning the player and getting the 9500. I’ll bring it to Best Buy after work tomorrow and see if they’ll take it back. I only bought it eight days ago, so it can’t be out of warranty. Thanks again for the help.