I have a new home theater system composed of:

Panasonic 3D TV TC-P50GT30
Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Player DMP-BDT210
Harman Kardon SB 16 Soundbar+SubWoofer

I can't get the sound to work when input is from the TV.

The SB 16 is limited in inputs:
No HDMI. It has only digital optical input, digital coax input and red/white audio cable input.

The Player outputs are:
HDMI Out, Optical digital out and R/W audio cable + video out.

The HD AV connections on the Panasonic TV are:
HDMI in (digital or analog) (ARC), Component in (G/B/R+R/W). There is also a digital optical audio out.

TV sound to the Soundbar, through the digital optical audio out cable, works fine when the source is the Blu-ray Player (ie when passed through by the TV), but when I switch to ordinary TV (antenna input), there is a loud pop and then no more sound.

The manuals are not clear. Is that problem that audio output which originates from the TV tuner needs to be decoded/converted?