Accutronman Posted Tuesday at 02:32 PM Posted Tuesday at 02:32 PM Finding that the volume control on the remote and/or the box has a bug. In some cases the volume works fine and Classic AI displays the 0-25 slider. In other cases, it displays a dialog box indicating that CEC needs to be active which it is. I want to be able to use the big volume buttons on the remote instead of the small ones at the top of the remote that I’ve mapped my TV against. In other words, use the top buttons to set the max volume level I want and then use the big buttons to vary the volume between 0-25 on a consistent basis. Quote
Emporium Posted Tuesday at 03:23 PM Posted Tuesday at 03:23 PM Do you have any receiver setup for surround sound on your setup ? Or just basic box connected to TV with basic speakers/simple sound bar ? Sounds to me like some channels have surround sound encoding and the box is trying to pass-through to external device (as such, the device can no longer control the volume - since it is pass-through). If that is the case, then Go to Settings->Device Preferences->Display and Sound->Advanced format & processing. Turn off all the the 4 listed formats, and then select "Advanced sound settings", "select formats" and select "None: Never use surround sound". Try that and see if that helps. PS: Is there any reason you have CEC enabled ? I disable all CEC, and just turn TV and box on separately. After that I only need to control the box. 2 Quote
Accutronman Posted Tuesday at 06:35 PM Author Posted Tuesday at 06:35 PM 3 hours ago, Emporium said: Do you have any receiver setup for surround sound on your setup ? Or just basic box connected to TV with basic speakers/simple sound bar ? Sounds to me like some channels have surround sound encoding and the box is trying to pass-through to external device (as such, the device can no longer control the volume - since it is pass-through). If that is the case, then Go to Settings->Device Preferences->Display and Sound->Advanced format & processing. Turn off all the the 4 listed formats, and then select "Advanced sound settings", "select formats" and select "None: Never use surround sound". Try that and see if that helps. PS: Is there any reason you have CEC enabled ? I disable all CEC, and just turn TV and box on separately. After that I only need to control the box. I have box connected to Samsung TV via HDMI with optical out from TV to Sonos Playbar and Sonos speakers for home theater and surround sound. As such, Advanced Sound Settings on the box have to be set to either Automatic or Manual with supported formats selected. What I’ve found is that with CEC on or off, the large volume buttons on the BT-250 remote will control sound from the box for channels in Stereo PCM. If the sound is DD 5.1, the large buttons on the remote will not do anything with volume. The mute button on the remote works regardless of PCM or DD 5.1. I have CEC turned on as it’s much easier to just press the off button on the remote and the TV and box turn off as well as on. Quote
Emporium Posted Tuesday at 09:44 PM Posted Tuesday at 09:44 PM Under the HDMI-CEC settings, you have one switch on top, and then 4 additional switches under it. One is namely the "Volume Control" option. Is that enabled or disabled ? In your situation, since you are using digital out for surround also, you should be using MAX Volume set to on. Then assuming you have Volume option enabled above and your TV/System supports it (check TV for CEC settings options), the volume buttons on the remote would control the volume level of the TV via CEC. This way EVERYTHING would be passed along to the TV/Home theater for processing and volume control. However as you already know, there is a bug where the "Never use surround" option is forced to on everytime you turn the box on. And as Buzz already mentioned to you that it will be fixed in their next update ( https://buzztvhelp.com/topic/14958-defaults-to-no-surround-sound/#findComment-41943 ). Quote
Accutronman Posted Tuesday at 10:51 PM Author Posted Tuesday at 10:51 PM 1 hour ago, Emporium said: Under the HDMI-CEC settings, you have one switch on top, and then 4 additional switches under it. One is namely the "Volume Control" option. Is that enabled or disabled ? In your situation, since you are using digital out for surround also, you should be using MAX Volume set to on. Then assuming you have Volume option enabled above and your TV/System supports it (check TV for CEC settings options), the volume buttons on the remote would control the volume level of the TV via CEC. This way EVERYTHING would be passed along to the TV/Home theater for processing and volume control. However as you already know, there is a bug where the "Never use surround" option is forced to on everytime you turn the box on. And as Buzz already mentioned to you that it will be fixed in their next update ( https://buzztvhelp.com/topic/14958-defaults-to-no-surround-sound/#findComment-41943 ). If I enable Volume Control as well as Max Volume, I lose the ability to control volume from the buzz box using the large volume buttons on the remote. I can still control the volume from the TV to the home theater using the small volume buttons at the top of the remote which I have mapped to the TV remote. What should happen, IMO, is regardless of a channel being in PCM or DD 5.1, I should be able to raise or lower the volume coming from the buzz box from 0-25. As you’ve mentioned in another thread, I could then use the remote’s top volume buttons to set the volume top level and then the remote’s large volume buttons to “fine tune” the volume. Quote
Emporium Posted Tuesday at 11:13 PM Posted Tuesday at 11:13 PM 12 minutes ago, Accutronman said: If I enable Volume Control as well as Max Volume, I lose the ability to control volume from the buzz box using the large volume buttons on the remote. I can still control the volume from the TV to the home theater using the small volume buttons at the top of the remote which I have mapped to the TV remote. What should happen, IMO, is regardless of a channel being in PCM or DD 5.1, I should be able to raise or lower the volume coming from the buzz box from 0-25. As you’ve mentioned in another thread, I could then use the remote’s top volume buttons to set the volume top level and then the remote’s large volume buttons to “fine tune” the volume. The fact that the box does NOT process the audio and passes it through, it does not have control of the volume level. So that is unfortunately NOT an option. IF CEC is enabled for Volume control and TV supports it, the big-buttons for volume control on the remote should be able to control the volume on your TV through CEC. Assuming it has variable volume and it is NOT passing control via CEC to your home theater system. This is exactly how some of the firesticks would do it since they have NO internal variable volume control of their own. I suspect it may be a case of too many embedded CEC controls. As a test try unplugging your playbar from the TV and see if the CEC controls can control your TV volume. Does your TV have anything in the menu options to enable/disable CEC volume control ? Quote
Accutronman Posted yesterday at 12:49 AM Author Posted yesterday at 12:49 AM 1 hour ago, Emporium said: The fact that the box does NOT process the audio and passes it through, it does not have control of the volume level. So that is unfortunately NOT an option. IF CEC is enabled for Volume control and TV supports it, the big-buttons for volume control on the remote should be able to control the volume on your TV through CEC. Assuming it has variable volume and it is NOT passing control via CEC to your home theater system. This is exactly how some of the firesticks would do it since they have NO internal variable volume control of their own. I suspect it may be a case of too many embedded CEC controls. As a test try unplugging your playbar from the TV and see if the CEC controls can control your TV volume. Does your TV have anything in the menu options to enable/disable CEC volume control ? With Volume Control enabled on the buzz box and Playbar disconnected, the remote does nothing in regard to changing volume. The TV doesn’t have any menu options dealing with CEC volume. It would be nice if you could remap the large volume buttons on the BT-250 remote similar to what can be done with the small volume buttons. With all that said, I appreciate your time and input on the matter. I can work around things with the remote now that I understand what’s going on. Thanks again! 1 Quote
Emporium Posted yesterday at 12:57 AM Posted yesterday at 12:57 AM Too bad the old harmony remotes are no longer They used to be great for combining all the stuff and the device databases were huge. Quote
dishuser Posted yesterday at 01:37 AM Posted yesterday at 01:37 AM 46 minutes ago, Accutronman said: With Volume Control enabled on the buzz box and Playbar disconnected, the remote does nothing in regard to changing volume. The TV doesn’t have any menu options dealing with CEC volume. It would be nice if you could remap the large volume buttons on the BT-250 remote similar to what can be done with the small volume buttons. With all that said, I appreciate your time and input on the matter. I can work around things with the remote now that I understand what’s going on. Thanks again! it's a bt 350 https://buzztv.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/BT-350_Manual.pdf Quote
Recommended Posts