I'm pretty new to hooking up home audio as far as receivers go. So any help would be much appreciated. I'm hooking up my parents Bose Lifestyle 38 and trying to do optical and the receiver itself has an in and out for optical it is going to the direct tv reciever my i'm not getting any sound via optical the tv does not have optical but anyway the guy i talked to said you can run one optical cable and one oher form of audio is that true and i am a bit confused. any input would be helpful. So my question is would optical not work in this situation because the receiver has and in and out optical and one would go to direct tv receiver but there is no destination for a second optical can i use one optical and pair of left right liek component or composite audio. Any help would be appreciated greatly.
P.S. it would be much easier if this receivers just had a bunch of optical inputs to go to other items like some of those standard Yamaha type receivers.
The optical would work only if your source is putting out a digital optical signal. Check the coumentaiton of your direct TV receiver and ensure that this is the case.
The direct TV receiver's digital audio output should connect to the Bose digital input.
If you want to hear the audio from the direct TV receiver out of the TV, you have to connect the L/R analog audio output of the direct TV receiver into the L/R audio input of the TV.
Again check the direct TV receiver manual or contact your provider.