I upgraded by Tivo to HD. On my new Tivo the digital audio is optical, whereas on my cable box I had the choice of optical or digital. My receiver has only one optical in and one coax in for digital audio (already being used for PS3), so I faced a problem.
I looked at buying new receiver with HDMI and a load a digital audio inputs, but I couldn't see anything worth buying for less that $800. Suddenly my Tivo upgrade was looking very expensive! I wondered if there might be a way of converting from optical digital to coax digital, and found this converter. I plugged it in and it works like a charm. I also bought an extra toslink cable, which I needed to connect from the Tivo to the converter. There are only two very minor down sides to the arrangement: 1. the converter requires its own power (another vampire converter sucking power 24x7) and 2. there is a very slight delay between the converter detecting the signal and converting it, meaning that when I fast-forward my Tivo through commercials then play, it takes a 1/2 a second to pick up the signal. To be fair, I should probably switch my inputs to that it's my PS3 that's using the converter, as that gets paused very infrequently. On the plus side, the sound quality is absolutely superb and it's really cheap. By the way, never buy any kind of cable (such as a toslink) from a store like BestBuy; they totally rip you off on those items. The toslink cable I bough with this converter cost me $0.60. The same cable in BestBuy costs $20.
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