Home Theatre System Connection

oHUTCHYo

oHUTCHYo

oHUTCHYo

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Joined
7 Jun 2005
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Forgive the naive question guys...

My current setup is a Panasonic 50" G20 plasma and a Bose 321 2.1 system.

The Bose is of course an over priced piece of kit, but the 2.1 form factor won my missus over. It is now approaching 4-5 years old. Now, my current setup is:

TV -> Phono -> Bose
HTPC -> Optical SPDIF -> Bose
Games Console -> Coax -> Bose

Effectively as well as all of the above sources having HDMI going to the TV for picture, the sound is routed to the Bose using as many as the available connections I have on the rear of the Bose.

What confuses me is if I were to buy a modern home theatre speaker package and ditch the Bose, how do they connect nowadays with HDMI?

Do all sources go in to the TV with their respective HDMI cable, the what, just one HDMI going out from the TV to the speaker system which would carry all audio from all sources? Would this provide DTS/Dobly surround etc?
 
How you connect depends ultimately on the audio kit you buy and partly on the capabilities of the TV.

As far as TVs go, they make a poor switching hub. Stereo audio out on your existing TV will limit audio to either plain stereo or (at best) Dolby ProLogic (DPL) surround if the source has it encoded. DPL is a step down from what you've been used to with Dolby Digital.

New TVs that use HDMI either use Optical out or a bi-directional HDMI connection called Audio Return Channel; ARC for short. Optical is easy to deal with. ARC requires an AV receiver/sound kit with the ARC feature too. However, whether the connection is Optical or HDMI (ARC) there's generally one major problem with using the TV as a switching hub. The issue is that the TVs HDMI inputs probably only pass stereo audio. So that means no DD, no DTS and no HD Audio either.

The best way to work is to buy an AV receiver (AVR) with a speaker package and a separate player for DVDs and Blu-rays. The AVR should be one with a couple of key features. The first is HDMI Standby Pass Thru. What this does is that it allows the signal from one source to pass through the AV receiver to the TV even when the AVR is in standby. This way the TV speakers can be used, for example in casual viewing or catching up with the news in the morning.

The other useful AVR feature is ARC. When you change the TV the new one will most likely have a HDMI ARC socket. It may or may not have optical still. ARC allows the TV sound to be sent to the AVR from the TVs internal tuner and its USB, it's network streamer and any sources connected via HDMI. These get to the AVR via the same cable that carries picture to the TV from the AVR. The internal tuner, the USB and the streaming source will all pass DD5.1 to the AVR via ARC. The HDMI sources might be restricted to plain stereo.

Connecting everything to the AVR first means you'll get the benefit of DD, DTS, and the HD audio formats from Blu-ray.
 
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