Motherboards that can transmit audio over video cables

[Stephen Tashi]

TL;DR

Are there motherboards for desktop computers that can transmit audio over a cable to a TV when the TV is used as the computer's display?

Are there motherboards for desktop computers that can transmit audio over DVI or HDMI cables to a TV when the TV is used as the computer's display? If so, what terminology is used in the specifications for such a motherboard to indicate this capability?

For example, the manual for a Samsung TV (model UN28H4000AF) says that the TV will not play audio from a computer when connected via a DVI cable. With the motherboards that I've used (Gigabyte GA-M790GP), this is true. However, it seems to me that this must be a limitation of the motherboard and not the TV itself. (Can the TV know whether the inputs on a cable are from a computer or a standalone DVD player? The TV produces sound when connected to a standalone DVD player).

 

[nsaspook]

Maybe.
https://www.bluecinetech.co.uk/does-dvi-carry-sound/

 

[FactChecker]

TL;DR Summary: Are there motherboards for desktop computers that can transmit audio over a cable to a TV when the TV is used as the computer's display?

Are there motherboards for desktop computers that can transmit audio over DVI or HDMI cables to a TV when the TV is used as the computer's display? If so, what terminology is used in the specifications for such a motherboard to indicate this capability?

When I use a TV's HDMI input connected to a PC HDMI output, it plays both the audio and video.
"While DVI connectors can only transmit video, HDMI connectors transmit both audio and video. In terms of picture quality, DVI and HDMI use the same encoding scheme for digital video signals and offer the same image quality."

 

[Vanadium 50]

Some very early motherboards did not put sound over HDMI. I would be shocked if that were true for anything modern. I'm doing that now, in fact. HDMI is practically guaranteed to work.

 

[dlgoff]

Are there motherboards for desktop computers that can transmit audio over DVI or HDMI cables to a TV when the TV is used as the computer's display?

I've done that with my outdated windows 7 operating system.

 

[phinds]

Some very early motherboards did not put sound over HDMI. I would be shocked if that were true for anything modern. I'm doing that now, in fact., HDMI is practically guaranteed to work.

My 6 year old Asus motherboard with windows 10 and in i7 CPU puts out sound over the HDMI cable.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Older than that, Like Athlon XP old. Or maybe an abacus.

Motherboard video was rare, and the way the earliest HDMI signals were generated was to start with VGA & DVI and convert. They were rare even then, as it was pretty much a marketing kludge.

(Bit of history - there was a brief time when some motherboards had their own video onboard. The CPUs didn't have IGUs on them; the motherboards had their own separate VGA, Weird things happened in those days.

I would be shocked if anything modern didn't do audio. Museum pieces, I'm less sure of.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Maybe.
https://www.bluecinetech.co.uk/does-dvi-carry-sound/

The link notes that:

There’s one issue you need to be aware of though, computers with old graphics cards might not support this feature. Most modern GPUs should work though (at least, ones made in the last decade). For example, Geforce and Radeon’s modern cards support audio over DVI.

I suppose only motherboards with built-in graphics would have a specification about whether they transmit audio through a DVI or HDMI connector on the motherboard itself.

 

[phinds]

The link notes that:

I suppose only motherboards with built-in graphics would have a specification about whether they transmit audio through a DVI or HDMI connector on the motherboard itself.

Right. I have a good sound card but I can't play through it to my TV. To get to the TV w/ the HDMI cable, I have to set the audio output to be from the motherboard, not the sound card. It's decent but not as clean as the SoundBlaster.

 

[pbuk]

@Stephen Tashi what do you actually want to do? If you want to send sound and video from your PC to your TV then just connect them together with an HDMI cable and select the TV as your sound output device. This should work because audio is part of the HDMI specification. If you don't have an HDMI output on your PC and you are using a DVI to HDMI adaptor then it probably won't work because audio is not part of the DVI specification (but some hardware and software combinations do provide limited support).

The clues are in the names: High Definition Multimedia Interface is for multiple media channels, Digital Visual Interface is for the visual channel only.