Whoo got a surround sound home theater system for Xmas

BlochWave

Very kind of my parents. I've got the speakers set up and all that...

Now I'm trying to figure this out. Currently I have: Cable box sending signal to TV via HDMI cable (it's an HDTV)

I have the AV receiver that came with the home theater system. It has no HDMI inputs, and 1 HDMI output. How do I rig this up so I don't

A)Don't lose any picture quality
B)Can use surround sound while watching normal TV...AND I have a PS3, to throw a kink into things.

If I plug the receiver's HDMI out to the HDMI in of the TV, I have to connect the cable box's output to the AV receiver with the digital component cables, right? Am I going to lose any picture quality or whatever or does the HDMI going into the TV from the AV receiver take care of that? I'm confused, I suck at all this input/output stuff.

Iceman.USAF

What kind of receiver is it?

Could you send the audio from the cable box to the receiver, and the video to the tv?

BlochWave

okok I think I got this sorted...

Stop me when I'm wrong: HDMI carries both audio and video, that's its main advantage. If I have digital component cables for the audio and video, same effect. When I got my HD cable box they gave me a bag with 5 components, 2 dark red, green, blue, white.

Is that what I need? I dunno why there are 2 red ones. Separately connect the digital audio out and digital video out to the av receiver, then run that to the TV with the HDMI out?

EDIT: wait wait the extra red one is an audio cable, I've got a red and white audio one, which is analog, isn't it? So do I need to buy a digital audio cable?

And sorry I didn't see your post, it came with the Philips HTS3372D home theater system.

Mom2Kat

The way we run it is the 360, Wii/PS2 (on a switch), DVD and HDPVR are all going through the TV inputs. From the TV We run an optical audio cable to our A/V unit since it does not have an HDMI input.

This does mean I have to Switch on the TV and not on the A/V unit but oh well I keep the digital sound by doing it this way. I bet you could do the smae ting with HDMI going into your tv and then HDMI going to the Receiver.

RUNN1NGMAN

Mom2Kat wrote: »

The way we run it is the 360, Wii/PS2 (on a switch), DVD and HDPVR are all going through the TV inputs. From the TV We run an optical audio cable to our A/V unit since it does not have an HDMI input.

This does mean I have to Switch on the TV and not on the A/V unit but oh well I keep the digital sound by doing it this way. I bet you could do the smae ting with HDMI going into your tv and then HDMI going to the Receiver.

Not saying this is the case for your TV, but most TVs don't pass-through 5.1 with the optical out--it only sends 5.1 when you are using the antenna. For most people what you are doing won't work.

What I would do is run optical directly from all your sources to an optical switch, and then run the out from the switch to the receiver. Optical switches are pretty cheap if you get a manual one.

Also, OP, a little nitpick--component isn't digital, it's analog. It's not lesser quality than HDMI, it's just a different format. If you run your cable to the receiver with component video, and then HDMI from the receiver to the TV, you'll probably lose a little something because of the analog-to-digital conversion. I doubt it would really matter though because cable HD feeds are already pretty crappy, relatively speaking.

Improvolone

BlochWave wrote: »

okok I think I got this sorted...

Stop me when I'm wrong: HDMI carries both audio and video, that's its main advantage. If I have digital component cables for the audio and video, same effect. When I got my HD cable box they gave me a bag with 5 components, 2 dark red, green, blue, white.

Is that what I need? I dunno why there are 2 red ones. Separately connect the digital audio out and digital video out to the av receiver, then run that to the TV with the HDMI out?

EDIT: wait wait the extra red one is an audio cable, I've got a red and white audio one, which is analog, isn't it? So do I need to buy a digital audio cable?

And sorry I didn't see your post, it came with the Philips HTS3372D home theater system.

Okay, slow down. You're going to confuse yourself and us. I... I don't think there are such things as digital component cables.

Please tell us the inputs and outputs your TV and receiver have. Be sure to get the terminology right; component, composite, VGA, DVI, HDMI...
Also tell us everything you want hooked up to the system and what inputs and outputs they have. I promise we can build you a map.

kitch

If it's a home theater in the box setup, then it MIGHT have digital coax or optical/TOSLINK inputs. Unfortunately, these won't carry Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD over them (in a BluRay setup [this is irrelevant if the HTiB is already a BluRay player and only applicable if you're throwing a PS3 in the mix]). HD audio can only be sent over HDMI or possibly analog if your source decodes it.

It'll still do regular Dolby Digital, so worst case scenario, you're looking at this set up:

HDMI from cable box to TV.
Optical audio from cable box to receiver.

Same thing with PS3. You might have to enable "Dual Audio" or whatever because it defaults to only wanting to send audio over HDMI.

Scrublet

No, component is definitely less quality than HDMI.

TK-42-1

if your av receiver doesnt have HDMI inputs youll have to just put the outputs into the TV and mute the TV speaker. Then run component cables to the receiver to run sound through that. its the simplest way to do it and component cables are cheap. if your cable box/receiver has optical ports use those.

Rubix42

Looking at the specs on Philips website for your model, best I can tell is your best bet is to HDMI out from PS3 and cable box to the HDTV.

Look up your TV specs. Will it
(a) keep the audio from the HDMI digital and optical it out to the receiver that way
or
(b) will it switch to analog and then back to digital

If a--Run optical from the TV to the receiver.

If b--Run optical from PS3/Cable to the receiver.

The specs make it sound like you have few options for receiving the sound, either component or optical, so your going to want to go optical for the best quality.

BlochWave

Sorry, I ran off. For the record, I believe I have these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_component_video but I didn't use them for video ultimately so it's moot.

Here's what I had on hand (courtesy of my friend lending me some of his leftovers): 1 optical audio cable, 1 digital audio coax cable, and my own HDMI cables.

Right now I have the cable box with the HDMI output connected to the TV. I then have the audio coax connected from the cable box to the AV device, where the speakers are connected. I get sound from the speakers and the TV (which makes perfect sense to me) so I turn down the TV volume to nothing, voila.

I then have the optical cable going from the PS3's optical out to the receiver, and an HDMI connecting the PS3 to the TV. I futzed with the PS3 settings to choose the right output and all that, and watched a Blu-Ray with success.

I believe I (all on my lonesome and with a digital coax just because of availability) followed these instructions:

HDMI from cable box to TV.
Optical audio from cable box to receiver.

Same thing with PS3. You might have to enable "Dual Audio" or whatever because it defaults to only wanting to send audio over HDMI.

right? Did I do good? Technical question, I do have a degree in physics and understand exactly what is meant by digital, so why can't a digital audio cable pass exactly the same information an HDMI cable passes?