PC > Home cinema system

Zephyrus

Zephyrus

Zephyrus

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12 Oct 2005
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Scotland
Wondering whether it is possible to connect my PC to my home cinema system. I have a very good sony DVD/home cinema system just sitting under the telly doing nothing so i'm wondering whether it would be worthwhile connecting it up to the PC if possible and what i would need to get if it is. I only have on board sound at the moment which has outputs for 5.1 via jack connections. Would i need to buy a sound card to be able to connect it up?

Cheers,
Zeph.
 
Just tried wiring the speakers from the home cinema kit straight into the mobo and as you can imagine the sounded carp with no amp :p Shame its not a case of a straight wire from the kit to the comp :(
 
Home Cinema System

Hmm, I'm not sure whether it's worth considering the Creative Decoder DDTS-100. I don't think home cinema systems are compatible with PC systems but I may be wrong.

I had a similair query to yours but I had a 7.1 PC speaker system that I wanted to use to listen to dvd's on a stand alone dvd player through my LCD TV. The answer to my query was the above decoder.

Now I have my dvd player, PC speakers, PC (via soundcard) and LCD TV all hooked up to the decoder so I can listen to the 7.1 speakers with all sources.

I'm not sure if you can connect a home cinema system to the decoder and in turn the PC sound card but worth investigation.
 
Had a google on that after reading your post, unfortunately i doubt it will do what i'm looking for.

An alternative i'm thinking about is my hi-fi, i seem to remember being in a friend of a friends house for a party one night (i may be wrong i was drunk :p) and they had their comp wired up to their stereo and enqueued all their tracks on winamp to play through it. Would a sound card enable this?

Cheers,
Zeph.
 
yup once youve selected the Digital Optical out option in the sound panel. Then select the home cinema to use the optical in as source...
should work anyhow.
 
It also means you can get digital sound (ie dolby digital and DTS) from you computer to play properly on your speaker system. Whereas just plugging wires in would give you generic 5 or 7.1
 
Amp34 said:
Have you not got an optical out on your mobo and DVD system? If so just stich an optical cable between the 2.
Click to expand...

Optical out? Is this common on mobos? If not, are there sound cards with opt out?

Cheers
 
I'm not 100% sure on this but I thought I should mention it nonetheless.

In my experience some onboard soundcards to not encode all 6 channels in the 5.1 digital out for sources other than DVDs.

Playing DVDs on your computer is usually fine as the digital stream is preencoded on the DVD and all it has to do is pass it on, but real-time encoding of a DTS or DD stream (which is what is required for games) is too much for some onboard solutions so the best you'll get is pro-logic, which sucks hairy balls.
 
Your optical output will only give stereo PCM sound, unless you use SPDIF pass through on DVDs to get DD/DTS sound. You will be able to upmix the stereo sound to pro logic, but it won't be much good for games.

Does your sound system have a multichannel analogue input? If it does, it would be best to use 3 x 3.5mm headphone type to phono RCA cables. That way the sound card does the decoding rather than the speakers.

If not, and you're an avid gamer, a new sound card that does DD live might be in order like the X-mystique. If you're just listening to music most of the time, your amp should have an option to do 5 channel stereo or something similar which should be ok. Pro Logic will be fine for any stereo video material.

Most sound cards have a digital output these days, whether it's coaxail or optical.
 
ok it would appear my mobo has 7.1 sound built in and not 5.1 as i thought. It has a line in jack (which doubles as the Digital Optical Out), a line out jack for 2 front speakers, line out for 2 side speakers, line out for 2 rear speakers and a another for Centre/Subwoofer. The DvD/home cinema has Video 1 with 2 sets each of left and right phono inputs, 1 video input and 1 video output, beside that there are the Video 2 inputs which has the Optical In, 1 set of left and right phono inputs and 1 video input. The system is a Sony DAV-SC5 here's a link to the sony page with the specs (if its against the rules i'll delete) CLICKY LINKY

This mobo doesnt seem to have a SPDIF output, says it does on the tech specs on the chaintech site, but i see nothing on the back of the comp. The other comp in the house i think has a SPDIF output (looks like a phono output?) but i'd much rather use this comp as this is the one i game on.
Also bear in mind that i've been using a set of generic mutimedia speakers that came with another comp i had for about 4 years so anything i get through the dvd system will be a huge improvement :p

Zeph.
 
well looking at the website its a Digital Coaxial output, not a Digital Optical. The optical will be a different socket and wont share its plug with anything else. The line in jack/ digital out will be where you plug a digital coaxial cable in and in the AC97 Sound drivers you will have to change the configuration so that this is outputting to coaxial and not being a line in.
Do you have digital coaxial in on your mobo?
 
Not entirely sure what you mean by digital coaxial in(never bothered finding out about sound before now). The Line In on the back of the mobo is a Jack input which when i look into it there is a red light glowing in it, and is described as a 'Line in port which also serves as a Digital Optical Output' in the mobo manual.

The connection on the back of the dvd system is different, it has a flap to protect it and isn't a Jack socket its wider and says Digital Optical In underneath it.

[Edit - having a look on the Argos site and it has an optical cable there with this description...
# Suitable for use with DVD players, surround sound systems and games consoles.

# Supplied with mini jack connector for use with MD players.

Would this do the trick? the connections on the end look like they are for the socket on the back of the dvd system, and the mini jack convertor for use with MD players sounds like it would do the job for connecting it to PC.]

Zeph.
 
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That cable is exactly what you need. Connecting in analogue will not give any advantage in this case as you don't have a 5.1 analogue input on the sound system. After you buy the cable, your next purchase should really be a DD live enabled card.
 
Cheers Tom.

Decent sound card will be next on the agenda when money is a little less tight, this seems to be a way to get a decent sound boost for little expense in the mean time :)
 
Quick update. The minute the Optical cable was connected to the dvd/home cinema system I got full 5.1 sound through it :) I'm chuffed to bits.

Cheers for all the help guys :)
Zeph.
 
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