Connection problem with home cinema amplifier and LCD TV
by ASJ
(UK)
I have an optical cable linking my home cinema amp to lcd tv. This gives sound through my speakers ONLY for dvd. When watching TV, I only hear a muffled static sound. How can I remedy this?
Hi
You don't provide enough information to be sure where your problem is - but I would guess you haven't wired your devices together correctly.
It would be useful to know the models of each device in your system.
With a home cinema amplifier, you should wire it something like this:

So your DVD goes into the amplifier, which plays the sound and passes the picture to the TV.
For the sound from TV programmes, it depends on how you are receiving them. If you have a cable/satellite TV box (or external freeview tuner), then you would connect in a similar way to the diagram above.
If you are using an internal tuner built-in to the TV for broadcast TV, then your TV needs to have an optical audio
OUTPUT, so you can send this audio to your amplifier.
If your TV doesn't have an audio output (many don't), then you can't send sound to your surround system and will have to rely on the TV speakers for this sound. You mention an optical connection, but we don't know if your TV has an optical audio output.
Once you are sure you have it connected correctly, then you can look into other reasons why you get no sound. First place, check the TV manual and see what it says about sending audio out to an external amplifier. There may be a menu option to enable this.
Hope that helps.
Paul (Site Editor)
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