I’m running OpenSUSE 13.2 with KDE and I have Dell Precision M6700 laptop with an AMD FirePro M6000 graphics card. When I connect to my TV via HDMI, I can see the graphics ok, but for sound I have to right click on the speaker icon in KDE for Kmix and enter audio setup. From there I have two audio devices, built-in analog stereo, which has the higher priority for all audio playback options and Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI audio [Radeon HD 7700/7800 Series] Digital Stereo (HDMI), which has the lower priority for all audio playback options. If I set the HDMI device to the higher priority for Music and Video, sound will then work over the HDMI connection and through my TV instead of my laptop. I then have to set the higher priority back to my built-in analog stereo when I want to disconnect HDMI and want sound to play out my laptop again otherwise I’ll have no sound for multimedia.
Is there an easier way to do this? For example, to play all sound out my laptop by default and automatically switch to HDMI when an HDMI cable is plugged in, like it does in Windows? Its a lot of fiddling round to switch the audio priorities to HDMI and back again in Kmix whenever I want to watch a movie on my TV or play music on my amplifier.
It seems that switching to and from HDMI is fiddly all round. Most TV’s arrive these days with an HDMI connection point, often at the rear so it’s physically fiddly to plug/unplug say a laptop by cable to the house TV. If there is already a set-top box (e.g. for satellite TV) connected to the HDMI, well that’s more fiddling around. Generally speaking, I suspect it is still relatively a minority sport, but not necessarily in your case.
I agree the switch on hot plugging HDMI in/out would be more convenient. However, for some reason even the basic auto-switching between laptop speakers and headphone socket is not there by default on the last few releases of openSUSE/KDE at start up. To enable it requires either a change in KDE’s audio set up or plugging in the headphones, after that it works. I use PulseAudio, so I don’t know if that is true for a system with P/A disabled i.e. using pure ALSA support.
Whilst I haven’t tried it myself (as I have no need) I would imagine there are two applications that may make it easier without completely automating it; there’s a plasma applet called HDMI Switcher and you might also be able to use VeroMix to make a plasma widget on your KDE desktop that would allow easy switching between your normal audio output and HDMI output.
You can install them via right click desktop -> add widget -> get new widgets in the bottom right corner. Veromix at least should allow one click changing of audio outputs.