2016-09-19, 12:29
Ah I understand 
Yeah about D/A conversion between processor and speakers, but if you add even more A/D conversions in this chain, this cannot be good. An AVR with HDMI would be the best solution indeed (corrects lipsync automatically), but you could simply search google for "HDMI to spdif" and there you see devices like HDMI audio extractor or audio splitter. This would be the cheapest solution and also would be compatible with every device that has HDMI. If you'd buy the hardkernel USB SPDIF I could imagine that this would always depend on proper usb support and so on. But a HDMI splitter/extractor would work on every device out of the box (RPi, Odroid, Bluray Player etc). Perhaups that is worth a consideration.
Edit
As for lipsync issues: With using S/P-DIF the devices do not have any handshake which could correct sync differences caused by image processing of TV. You will always have to set the offset for sync manually (at least for the first time). You can always do that either in your TV's settings somewhere (LCD/LED/OLED tv's usually have this), or in your processor (if it has such a setting) or in kodi itself, where you set it while watching a movie and then apply this for every movie automatically.
The tricky thing with those flatscreens is that sometimes the delay caused by image processing is not constant... some image profiles (24p output) do have a higher delay than others. My Philips has e.g. a movie profile (24p, motion compensation processing, high delay via S/P-DIF, automatically corrected delay via HDMI) and a video game profile (no noticeable delay, but no motion compensation, thus a bit unsmooth movements). But all this depends on your TV brand. I guess philips is not very good at this... I actually dislike the Philips TV's software so much...
Yeah about D/A conversion between processor and speakers, but if you add even more A/D conversions in this chain, this cannot be good. An AVR with HDMI would be the best solution indeed (corrects lipsync automatically), but you could simply search google for "HDMI to spdif" and there you see devices like HDMI audio extractor or audio splitter. This would be the cheapest solution and also would be compatible with every device that has HDMI. If you'd buy the hardkernel USB SPDIF I could imagine that this would always depend on proper usb support and so on. But a HDMI splitter/extractor would work on every device out of the box (RPi, Odroid, Bluray Player etc). Perhaups that is worth a consideration.
Edit
As for lipsync issues: With using S/P-DIF the devices do not have any handshake which could correct sync differences caused by image processing of TV. You will always have to set the offset for sync manually (at least for the first time). You can always do that either in your TV's settings somewhere (LCD/LED/OLED tv's usually have this), or in your processor (if it has such a setting) or in kodi itself, where you set it while watching a movie and then apply this for every movie automatically.
The tricky thing with those flatscreens is that sometimes the delay caused by image processing is not constant... some image profiles (24p output) do have a higher delay than others. My Philips has e.g. a movie profile (24p, motion compensation processing, high delay via S/P-DIF, automatically corrected delay via HDMI) and a video game profile (no noticeable delay, but no motion compensation, thus a bit unsmooth movements). But all this depends on your TV brand. I guess philips is not very good at this... I actually dislike the Philips TV's software so much...
