Only stereo from HDMI?

I have a 2007 Xbox 360 with HDMI. The odd thing is when I plug in hdmi my reciever says it's only in stereo...i've treid going into the xbox settings and selecting 5.1. Still nothing. Restarted my Xbox, still nothing. My t.v outputs 5.1 just fine for my cable tv so it's not my t.v passthrough that is the problem. Is there a solution to this?

Have a go at this>

Switch it to "Stereo" on the XBox 360 Dashboard
then switch it back to "Dolby Digital"

do go, reciever still says 2/dd

do go, reciever still says 2/dd

Gamefreak1296

WHen I hook up with optical it's 2/3:1

Is this a common problem?

WHy would that be the case? The port works fine from tv to reciever, and xbox to reciever from optical out. It's only when I use hdmi to tv, optical from tv to reciever that it fails.

WHy would that be the case? The port works fine from tv to reciever, and xbox to reciever from optical out. It's only when I use hdmi to tv, optical from tv to reciever that it fails.

Gamefreak1296

There aren't and I tried three different hdmi cables. Also the tv is only two days old.

WHy would that be the case? The port works fine from tv to reciever, and xbox to reciever from optical out. It's only when I use hdmi to tv, optical from tv to reciever that it fails.

Gamefreak1296

Ah, well I don't think I can do that since my reciever is very basic. It only has three red and white component in ports and one optical in port.

They sell HDMI switches that have multiple ins and include an optical audio out as well. That would probably get the results you need, but you'd probably be looking at 50+ dollars for a decent one. It is a shame that many TVs decode the audio from their HDMI in and then only send stereo out over optical... a shame.

I mean does that defeat the purpose of HDMI? It was supposed to be for High Def video and audio in one cable..

Is there anyway to see in the manual if 5.1 goes from hdmi to optical?