So I have a Mi Box 4k, Samsung UN40J5350 TV, and Sony DAV-DZ870W 5.1 home theatre.
The Mi Box has HDMI and 3.5/SPDIF audio out. The TV has HDMI ins and optical audio out, and the home theatre only has analogue and optical audio in (I know, it’s old, but it’s the only one I have).
Which is the correct way of connecting it all, Mi Box > HDMI to TV and TV > optical audio to home theatre?
I have everrything connected to my Marantz AVR. That means MiBox (HDMI input), Xbox360 (HDMI input) and TV (HDMI output).
It all works great. In MiBox i have audio passthrough enabled so AVR decodes everything.
All I can say is good luck.
SPDIF on the Mi Box has known audio issues with an App like Netflix due to very poor Dolby Audio support. Xiaomi are falsely advertising proper DTS and Dolby Audio support on their devices. It's all a bit of a Con !
You will only get 5.1 Audio from any copy protected video streaming Apps like Netflix if your HDMI audio receiver (AVR / TV) is Dolby Digital Plus capable (DD+) - otherwise expect 2.0 audio only.
Anything might happen once your TV tries to passthrough audio from HDMI > SPDIF > Home Theatre.
Often there will be audio delays because there is no Lip Sync support when using SPDIF vs using HDMI 2.0
It's all a bit of a lottery.
Correct way, I'm not 100% sure that my way is the correct way but it makes for the most convenient way and it still sounds great.
I do pretty much what you said, I connect all devices via HDMI to the TV then have my TV send via optical audio. That way I don't have to worry about switching more then one input. It sucks to have to switch the input on both your TV and your surround sound.
I just looked it up though and this is some of the things I found
It really depends on what your home theater system can handle then, so lets see, yours handles
Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital, DTS. So it looks like optical from TV should be just fine for you. After looking in to this for the few minutes I did, it showed me to fully understand all the differences, it would take me a while. So just using the bit of knowledge I gained without spending more time, I would say your best bet is to use DTS for the higher bitrate.
Good luck