Can you send only audio - no video - over HDMI

[thane108]

I have two hdmi cables going to my entertainment center. HDMI 1 to the AVR, and a second HDMI 2 directly to the TV.

I'm sending audio over HDMI 1 to my AVR (which is connected to my TV via a third HDMI cable) and I'm sending video over HDMI 2 to the TV. I'm going this route so that audio will continue when the TV is turned off. I have mulit-channel hi-def audio which would have to be downsampled if I sent audio over optical.

I also use the TV as a monitor for the receiver when setting up Internet Radio (built into AVR) and watching Netflix/Amazon (that originate in the AVR).

All is good except that when the TV is set "listen" to the AVR source the computer's primary monitor isn't available. After trail and error I see the problem - the computer is sending video to the TV along two paths - directly to TV and through the AVR. So there are conflicts that end up disabling the primary monitor until I turn off the TV or change the source to HDMI 2.

I can work around this, but ideally I could just tell the computer to send audio without video through the HDMI to the AVR .

My guess is that this isn't possible because the audio is embedded in the video signal, but I thought I would ask.

 

[thane108]

I found that it isn't possible to just send audio over an HDMI.

In the end I decided to use the HDMI out to the TV and optical audio out to the receiver to avoid the conflicts that resulted when sending HDMI to TV and HDMI to AVR that is also attached to TV. It is much more solid and I can turn off the TV and still listen to music streamed from my HTPC, with the compromise that I can only send two channels of HiDef music (music that is recorded in surround down samples to two channels but AVR can translate it to surround).