How to Hook up a Plasma TV

A plasma TV can make the perfect addition to your home theater system, as well as a focal point in any room in which it is placed. With the many connections available on most plasma televisions, you should carefully plan how you will hook up your monitor. Rather than haphazardly connecting your video devices to your plasma TV, you can strategically hook up your screen so it will be much easier to operate in the future.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Plasma TV mount
• Plasma TV
• Surge protector
• Video cables

Prepare Your Plasma TV for Viewing

1. Mount your plasma TV. You can use the desktop mount included with your plasma TV or purchase a wall mount to hang your plasma TV. If you use wall-mount hardware, make sure you mount the brackets to the studs in the wall. Your television will immediately fall if you don't screw the mounts into the studs.

2. Connect the necessary video cables to your plasma TV to hook the TV up to each of your audio and video sources. Many of these sources offer multiple types of connections. Choose the option that will allow you to simultaneously connect as many of your video sources as possible.

3. Hook the video cables up to your video sources. This will ensure that the video sources and plasma TV are close enough for the cables to reach.

4. Plug in the surge protector to connect your video sources and plasma TV to the electrical outlet. In addition to providing you with additional electrical outlets, a surge protector can shield your video sources and plasma TV in the event of an electrical spike.

5. Turn on the power for your plasma TV to test your video connections. You should cycle through all of the video connections to ensure that each device is hooked up correctly.

Tips & Warnings

• Work with at least one other person when installing your plasma TV on your mount.
• If you are not comfortable installing your plasma TV on a mount, you can purchase installation services from most stores that sell plasma TVs.
• If you are mounting your plasma TV on a wall, you may want to have the video cables and power cord installed behind your walls to hide the cables.
• Instead of connecting video sources to your plasma TV individually, you can hook them all up to an audio video receiver. You then just need to hook your receiver up to your plasma TV.
• Do not overload your surge protector with too many electric devices. You should not use adapters to connect more devices than there are outlets available in your surge protector.

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