Helps on home cinema setup

[Ferengo]

Ok guys. Am having a little trouble figuring out how I shouls wire up my Home cinema i just bought on friday.

The devices I have are:

Samsung TV Model: LE40M88BDX/XEU Has 3 HDMI inputs and 1 optical out.

PS3 has 1 HDMI out and 1 optical out

Virgin V+ HD box. HAs HDMI out but cannot see and optical out although I have seen in forums people mention that it does.

XBOX 360 has HDMI out but not optical out.

LG HT805PH Home cinema has 1 HDMI out and 1 optical in.

Any ideas on how to best set it up? I have everything going in to the TV via HDMI and the optical out on the TV going into the Home cinema. Some forums say this isn't the way to do it but some say it is. Others say there are options to pick like HDMI override on the devices, but I have no idea where to look. Any help would be ace, cheers.

[Livi]

Grant,

I can certaintly come have a look if you like and see if i can wire it all up??

[cooperchris]

I have all my ps3,virgin box etc going into the back off my dvd amp then just 1 hdmi going to my tv.The amp is doing all the work, tv just shows the picture:thumbs up:

[Gismo]

As far as i can see you have 4 devices going out and only 3 inputs on your tv??
I'm not familiar with LG HT805PH, but, assume that it's a dvd player cinema type system and unless it supports multiple inputs you are gonna struggle to connect everything up.

Edit: Looked it up, it does not support HDMI input, so, you are limited to what you can achieve, you can connect this to the TV directly and play dvd's etc in cinema sound.
The others will have to connect direct to the tv and you will only achieve sound through the tv speakers, unless you connect the optical out on any device and use the LG to give you sound.
Even then you'll have to continually connect whatever device you want to see on the TV cause your limited to the amount of HDMI inputs

[Ferengo]

As far as i can see you have 4 devices going out and only 3 inputs on your tv??
I'm not familiar with LG HT805PH, but, assume that it's a dvd player cinema type system and unless it supports multiple inputs you are gonna struggle to connect everything up.

Edit: Looked it up, it does not support HDMI input, so, you are limited to what you can achieve, you can connect this to the TV directly and play dvd's etc in cinema sound.
The others will have to connect direct to the tv and you will only achieve sound through the tv speakers, unless you connect the optical out on any device and use the LG to give you sound.
Even then you'll have to continually connect whatever device you want to see on the TV cause your limited to the amount of HDMI inputs

Pretty much spot on.

I never intended to use the cinema LG DVD player so I don't have to plug that in HDMI. So the 3 HDMI inputs on my TV are perfect, either that or just swap the xbox and PS3 around as I need to.

So am I right that I can plug the PS3, V+ and xbox into my TV via HDMI. Then go from my TV via optical to the LG home cinema and achieve 5.1? It's just that I used the V+ box through it last night and every speak was outputting the same i.e. not surround sound. Does HDMI support 5.1?

David, I may take you up on this. I think I do have it setup right physically but the actually settings withing the devices aren't.

Would an optical splitter work? I seen devices that can take 3 optical inputs and output to 1 device. Would this solve my problem?

Also I found that the xbox does do optical out but it's contained on the component lead for some reason.

I'm a real noob when it comes to the whole home cinema thing. I tried it once about a year ago and just gave the system back to my mate as I gave me so much hassle.

Cheers for the help guys. :thumbs up:

[euan]

HDMI can do 5.1 sounds, but only if the source supports it and as far as I recall Virgin don't support that at the moment (even on Sky i think it's only the movies that do).

[Ferengo]

HDMI can do 5.1 sounds, but only if the source supports it and as far as I recall Virgin don't support that at the moment (even on Sky i think it's only the movies that do).

Cheers, Euan. Just checked. Some channels seem to support it. I watched Dr who on the catch up. It played the same audio from each speaker. BBC1 seems to only play from the center although it was the news that was on and channel 5 is giving me 5.1 surround. So it appears it is working.

Is it normal though on some channels to only get audio from the center speaker? I mean I would think you should get the same audio from each speaker right rather than just the center if it's not 5.1 surround?

Sorry for all the confusion guys, Makes sense now that only some channels are 5.1.

[Ferengo]

Right, Just watched something and the audio didn't look right. Popped the audio on from my TV along with the 5.1 and the was a delay that sounded like someone talking in a stadium (Echo).

[Gismo]

Shame you didn't ask before you bought, you could have bouth a relatively cheap amp and done everything through that.
Of course you would have spent more and needed a dvd player as well or just used the PS3.
HDMI can output at least 9 channels of sound, you're device has to be able to output it.

You may have settings on the LG that can change where the audio goes to, ie cinema, music etc

Sounds like your virgin box outputs sound differently on the channels

[Ferengo]

Shame you didn't ask before you bought, you could have bouth a relatively cheap amp and done everything through that.
Of course you would have spent more and needed a dvd player as well or just used the PS3.
HDMI can output at least 9 channels of sound, you're device has to be able to output it.

You may have settings on the LG that can change where the audio goes to, ie cinema, music etc

Sounds like your virgin box outputs sound differently on the channels

Funny you should say that Gismo. It's going back for a refund. As above the audio wasn;t right. So I did a test. Played a dvd via the home cinema. The audio was out of sync with the video. Popped on the audio from the TV and that was also out of sync but perfectly in time with the audio from the home cinema.

Put on a second DVD. The audio looked in sync but when I put on the sound from the TV it has that echo. So it was out of sync.

Filled in the forms on Amazons site and it's getting picked up tomorrow. Any advice if I do decide to go ahead with another system? I'm away next week for a week so I wouldn't be buying anything until I'm back but it gives me lots of time to look at the options. I've also had to by cables from comet (bit pricey from there) so don;t wanna waste em lol.

[Ferengo]

Oh I should also mention that I did find options for sound and cinema was one of them but none of these actually fixed the lag problem.