Hi, I just got the Toshiba 52 dlp and I love it, but I have a question regarding how I want to hook it up. I have a hd cable box, dvd player, reciever, and vcr. The toshiba has 2 component, and 3 s-vid connections, and audio outs. I have hooked up the cable box and the dvd player into the tv directly but to get surround sound out of the dvd player can I hook up the tv audio outs into the reciever? There is only a left and right output so will this give me surround sound if I connect these into my reciever which has seperate outputs for front and rear speakers? TIA
doclaw64: If your receiver decodes currant digital surround formats, such as Dolby Digital or DTS, then the answer is no, you cannot hear digital surround via your TV's analog audio outputs. If your receiver is an older Dolby "Pro Logic" unit, then yes you can hear some surround sound. Some audio sources will be better than others.
Find out what kind of connections you have on your sources, your DVD player and your HD cable Box. Look on the back, and look for connectioins labled;
Digital Coaxial (coaxial, or coaxial out) - This connection looks like an RCA plug, usually colored orange or black. You need to use this connection with a digital coaxial cable and connect it directly to your reciever from either your DVD player or HD cable Box.
Optical - This looks like a little plastic box with a red light in it, this is another connection you can use, prefrebly over digital coaxial. You need to purchas an optical cable to use this. Connect this directly to your Audio reciever from either your DVD player or HD Cable Box.
You only need to use one of these connections on each source. I use mine as follows.
DVD Player - Digital Coax HD Cable Box- Optical
These connect directly into my reciever and i recieve surround sound from both sources. Any other questions you can email me if this is still unclear to you.
On the back of the DVD player I have component and digital coaxial, s-video and rca. I am having the component out go directly into the back of the tv. I did it this way because I thought that component was the best connection. Unfortunately, my reciever does not have component so I had it go directly into the tv. What is the best to worst for connections? Is digital coax better then component, s-video or optical?
Component is a video connection, digital coaxial and optical are digital audio connections. Component has nothing to do with sound, and Digi coax has nothing to do with picture. I emailed you, connect it the way i instructed and you should love it.