MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch

Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by kefabean on Monday October 18, 2021 @05:11PM (#28911807)

I’m still slightly bemused as to why they dropped optical out from the Apple TV too. It’s not like it’s supposed to be a media hub at the centre of your house or they run a music streaming service or anything!

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by reubenmorais on Monday October 18, 2021 @06:55PM (#28912862)

I assume because modern HDMI supersedes it. Sucks if you have an old receiver/amp tho.

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by bombcar on Monday October 18, 2021 @07:13PM (#28913014)

I specifically got a device to split audio out of the HDMI stream (technically it just copies it out) to RCA so I can pipe it back into the stereo in zone 2. Annoyingly complex but it works.

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by onecommentman on Monday October 18, 2021 @07:36PM (#28913222)

Optical out was a real blessing back when electrical connections (iMacs to amps) were noticeably noisy.

To go from optical back to electrical just seemed wrong from a tech evolution standpoint. Not hearing a lot of call to rip out multimode fiber in backbone networks and replace it with a shinier coax. But HDMI seems to be meeting the need, and there is always the aftermarket for fully annealed 99.999% oxygen-free HDMI cables to consider.

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by relaxing on Monday October 18, 2021 @07:56PM (#28913350)

All the home audio stuff supports audio over hdmi now. One less fragile cable to worry about, it’s great.

For legacy equipment you can get a box that takes hdmi in and spits out spdif.

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by astrange on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @06:39AM (#28916695)

SPDIF has less bandwidth than HDMI and doesn't support formats like lossless surround or Atmos.

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