TOSLINK (Optical) going away

J

JOhnH

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I have a bluetooth streamer attached to my ROKU via Toslink Optical. The streamer streams audio to my hearing aids. It works great.

But my ROKU device is a little long in the tooth and I want to upgrade to a newer box. But the new ROKU doesn't have the optical port. I checked out Apple TV, and they dropped the optical port too, so I have to keep my old ROKU, or possibly buy an adpater.

I can get an HDMI to Optical converter for less than $30, but I'm not sure how well these would work in this case I'll call Starkey tomorrow, but in the meantime does anyone have any comments on these converters?

Here is one I am considering:
https://www.amazon.com/LinkS-Extrac...efix=optical+to+hdmi,instant-video,192&sr=8-5
 
Do you not have a bluetooth direct link with the Starkeys (the new ones do, I think). My Resounds can do that with the phoneclip (or routing through the hearing aid protocol on the iPhone or Android).
 
flyingron said:
Do you not have a bluetooth direct link with the Starkeys (the new ones do, I think). My Resounds can do that with the phoneclip (or routing through the hearing aid protocol on the iPhone or Android).
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No. There seems to be a special bluetooth protocol for Starkey that uses special software on the Iphone, or other enabled phones.
The Starkey solution for listening to television is to use their SurfLink TV streamer, but that requires a TOSLINK connection from the TV or other device (AppleTV, ROKU etc).
 
I’ve given up trying to hear tv and just keep cc on all the time now. Even with HAs and even with connecting them via Bluetooth I can’t hear dialogue because of the music they seem to insist on playing all the time. My hearing loss is pretty profound. I’ll probably end up getting cochlear implants. On the bright side, being skilled in reading cc now means I can enjoy foreign shows with subtitles without any additional effort.
 
Rushie said:
I’ve given up trying to hear tv and just keep cc on all the time now. Even with HAs and even with connecting them via Bluetooth I can’t hear dialogue because of the music they seem to insist on playing all the time. My hearing loss is pretty profound. I’ll probably end up getting cochlear implants. On the bright side, being skilled in reading cc now means I can enjoy foreign shows with subtitles without any additional effort.
Click to expand...
I'm at about the same place, but I do find that streaming audio directly to my hearing aids makes it easier to read the CC and follow the action.

masloki said:
The Surf link 2 speaks RCA, SPDIF and Toslink. So you should be able to go Roku to TV to Surflink via RCA. https://www.starkey.com/-/media/Int...anuals/SurfLink_Media_2_Operations_Manual.pdf
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That's true, but one reason I was considering upgrading my ROKU was to improve the quality of the broadcast. I may be wrong, but I feel that using RCA is going the wrong direction. Rather than switch from TOSLINK to RCA, I would just keep my old ROKU and put up with it's delays.
But if it turns out I'm wrong, I'll reconsider.
 
Bluetooth is your weakest link for audio quality by a country mile.
 
masloki said:
Bluetooth is your weakest link for audio quality by a country mile.
Click to expand...
Uh, yep. Good point. I didn't think about that.
But the new ROKU Ultra only has HDMI. Even my old ROKU only has TOSLINK and HDMI.
 
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