Making the Sony HT-CT260 Sound Bar Work with Oceanic Cable

My pops wanted better sound to match his HDTV broadcasts from Oceanic Cable. But when The Wire Cutter says no to home theaters in a box and endorses Sony’s HT-CT260 sound bar then you heed their researched advice. Unfortunately, the CT260 was out of stock at Amazon.com. Fortunately, Best Buys in Hawaii just received their shipment, and the regular price is the same as Amazon’s. So there we have it, an instant Father’s Day gift.

Now the setup… The Wire Cutter is correct. Setting up the sound bar was easy since the subwoofer is wireless. Configuring the sound bar to work with the television and cable box was another ordeal. The Oceanic provided Scientific Atlanta cable box has a digital optical out that connects to the Sony sound bar, but sound is still sent to the other outputs as well. This causes problems with the television’s audio. With the sound bar in play, I don’t want sound coming through the tinny television speakers. The television’s volume needs to stay at 0 while volume control needs to go to the sound bar and not the television.

The solution is two-fold. Configure the cable remote to control the sound bar and change the channel volume lock. On the remote, I configured the AUD button to control the sound bar. I believe the Sony code for the CT260 is 1759. If you can power on/off the sound bar and control the volume from the cable remote then you got it right.

Next, remap the remote’s audio controls from the television to the sound bar. That’s the function of the channel volume lock. Follow the instructions for “Locking Volume Control to One Mode.” When you change the volume, the remote changes control to the AUD configured device. When changing channels, the remote switches back to TV (or CBL). And that’s what we want – audio exclusively through the sound bar and one remote to control it all (television, cable box, sound bar).