[pulseaudio-discuss] Playing audion on TV through HDMI cable with mplayer

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

2013/12/11 James Board <jpboard2 at yahoo.com>:
> I'm on a Linux PC and I'm playing a video file to my LCD TV through
> the HDMI cable.  I can get the sound to play on the PC speakers, but
> I would like to play sound on the TV speakers (thru HDMI cable).  Does
> anyone know how I can do that?  I think this is an appropriate question for
> this mailing-list since all audio goes through pulseaudio, but if not, let
> me know.

That's actually very easy. Just follow the steps below.

1. Ensure that you have an audio mixer that can change device
profiles. GNOME's default volume control application is good. KDE's
default mixer (KMix) does not allow changing the audio device profile
and thus is bad, but there is also KDE's control center where you can
configure sound. The xfce4-mixer application is just bad. So, if you
have KDE or XFCE, please install pavucontrol (it is GTK-based, but
does not pull any GNOME stuff) and use it instead of whatever comes by
default. It doesn't hurt on GNOME, too. So, below, I assume that you
have it.

2. Determine which sound card provides the HDMI audio output. To do
so, run pavucontrol and go to the Configuration tab. You will see one
or more audio cards there, with combo boxes that allow changing
profiles of each card. On some hardware, HDMI audio is a separate
device (this is the case for Haswell and for any discrete graphics
card), and in some cases it shares the same device with analog
outputs. I think that, by looking at available profiles for each card,
you will quickly find the one that offers the HDMI output.

3. Select the profile that has HDMI outputs. In some cases (e.g. more
than one HDMI output), there are several such profiles, and you will
have to guess which one to use. Take a note of its name and the name
of the device it belongs to.

4. Go to the Output tab and find the sink that mentions the correct
device and profile in its name. Select the correct port if this is not
already done. Press the green "set as fallback" button.

5. Should be done, but, if the player still plays on analog output, go
to the Playback tab of pavucontrol and select the correct sink for the
playsr's stream.

Here is what it looks like on hardware where HDMI is a separate
device: http://imgur.com/a/6u73B

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov