3 types of cable, a TV, and a home cinema - what goes where?!!

by Isobel
(Birmingham, UK)

I've just bought a Samsung HDTV, a Samsung home cinema system (5.1). I also have a Sky+ HD box for my tv channels. I have the following cables: 1 x regular high quality HDMI, 1 x high speed high quality HDMI, 1 x optical lead.

I don't have it right yet. No matter which speaker (TV or external) that I choose I don't think the tv is even seeing the home cinema so no sound comes out when I play a DVD.

Not only do I want cinema sound when I play a DVD, I also want to have it when I'm watching TV through the Sky box. Sky TV is working fine with good sound and picture, thru the TV speakers.

Can you tell me, which cable do I put in which device to achieve this? Losing the will to live here!!

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Hi

You want to aiming for something like this (although not exactly):



However, you have a built-in DVD/Blu-ray player in your Samsung system? Therefore you don't have the external DVD box as in the picture. You will also use the optical cable to send the audio from the Sky Box as it doesn't transmit 5.1 surround sound over HDMI.

You don't say which Samsung home cinema system you have, so it's hard to say for sure because we don't know the connections it has.

However, with a guess:

Sky+ HDMI OUT to HDMI IN on the Samsung home cinema (for the picture).

Sky+ Optical OUT to Optical IN on the Samsung home cinema (for the sound).

Samsung home cinema HDMI OUT to HDMI input on back of TV (for the picture).

Alternatively, you could connect the Sky box direct to the TV via HDMI (for the picture) - but it really depends on your Samsung home cinema system and connections it has.

It's all good fun really, you just haven't noticed yet!

Hope that helps.

Paul (Site Editor)

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