Home Theater Advice?

Question

I have a 42" Pany Plasma with all the standard I/O including (1) HDMI. I have a Direct TV HD receiver. Now I want to add a home theater system. Nothing fancy, even one of the better "home theater in a box" will do for me. Question is, what connections do I need to make sure my home theater has? And what is the "flow" of the Direct TV signal? Is it HD box to Receiver to TV? If so aren't I losing the benefit of the HDMI from receiver to TV since the connection from HDTV box to Receiver is component? Any info would be great!

Answer 1

I always try to take everything video direct to the TV, and usually when you are running high end signals (HDTV, Gameing consoles with HD outputs, DVD players and so forth) there is a HDMI or composit video output AND either a coax digital audio out or a optical digital out. It pays to get a audio receiver with more optical and coax inputs now than a bunch of RCA red white inputs. The sound is much better if you can get it to your audio receiver in a digital format. Talk to your local home theater store sales staff for advice, but be careful, the guys at like Best Buy and Circuit City usually try to just push you to buy stuff you may or may not need.

Answer 2

Don't run the video through the receiver. Use the HDMI to the TV and connect the receiver to the digital output of the DirecTV receiver.

Answer 3

So you currently run the DTV receiver to the Tv, right?

The HTIB can have HDMI or DVI + audio, or you can skip the video connection and just connect an optical audio output from the DTV receiver to the HTIB. You need a digital connection from the DTV receiver to the HTIB to get Dolby Digital or DTS signals.

Personally I keep 2 connections from my Sat. receiver: one set of audio + video directly to the tv, so I can just use tv sound (DVI, Audio L + R), and one set to my preamp (digital audio) to use surround sound on movies.

So you can generally do both and have the best of both worlds, or just go DTV to Receiver to TV to make it very very simple.

Answer 4

I can't give you all the technical details but if you take the manual for your TV with you to the store when you go to buy the Home Theater, I'm sure the sales person will help you and advise you with everything you'll need.

Answer 5

Now that you've decided that sound is just as important as picture(It takes a educated ear to recognize good sound, versus what everyone thinks "Looks" good), don't scrimp on a system. Go to www.crutchfield.com for some great advise & equipment. Do yourself a favor, spend some $$. You won't be disappointed.