Hacking TVs

I've been thinking about upgrading my entertainment audio setup to make some more space in the family room. Presently I have a receiver under the TV and the components are hooked up to that... It's big. The receiver, in turn, is hooked up via an HDMI to the TV and a slew of speaker wire to the speakers. All of this is sitting in (or in the case of the TV, under) the TV stand from the previous TV -- the rear-projection DLP that developed the hot pixel.Not very elegant.Upgrades from here include a couple things...

1. Mount the TV to the wall
2. Less speaker wire cluttering up the room
3. Nicer cabinet
4. A sound bar instead of a receiver

The TV wall mount is a pretty much a gimme. It's run of the mill.Things get interesting with the sound bar. This is where is things get to hacking. The typical input to a sound bar is an optical input. The optical out comes from the TV. This means that the TV needs to output good audio. Many TVs don't.Mine, out of the box, doesn't.I started look at hacking sites... it turns out there's a service menu. The problem is that it it requires custom IR to get into it.Oh, unless you can IP into it. ;-)I found python script that does the same thing.Using the service menu I can set the optical out to mirror the AC3 and PCM to the SPDIF optical. Sweet!I even managed to turn on dynamic LED backlighting!

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Well, at this point I think I'm saving up for another Sonos setup here in the family room. That coupled with a nice solid credenza (with maybe an RF remote so it doesn't have to be a glass-front job) I think things will start to look pretty frickin' good!