How to Connect TV to a Surround Sound System

Connecting your TV to your surround sound system can make watching your normal television show an exciting experience. Whether its a movie, a sporting event, or a concert it really enhances your viewing pleasure. Having trouble deciding how to hook it up, here's how!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• cables
• TV
• Surround Sound unit

1. 
    
   RCA Cables

   The first thing you need to do is to understand how audio is transmitted. There are four basic ways currently, 1)RCAs -(Red,White,and Yellow) Yellow not used for audio, this is your lowest quality option(analog), 2)Digital coax cable (usually orange in color as an indicator)(but can be any RCA type cable),3)Fiber optic (light transmitted), and 4) HDMI cable which transmits audio and video in one cable. The last three are all digital and most experts will tell you there is no difference in quality between the three types of digital audio cables.

2. 
    
   Fiber Optic Cable

   Now that you have the basic understanding of your cables, all you have to do is pick one that works best for you and run the cable from the audio out from the TV to one of the open channels on your surround sound unit. If your TV and SSU are equipped with the HDMI port, use an HDMI cable to connect the two. If you have the digital audio coax, use any single RCA type cable to connect (usually the two orange connectors) labeled digital audio. If you must use the analog cables, connect the red/white cables from the audio out on the TV, to the audio inputs on the SSU.

3. 
    
   Digital Coax

   Once your connections are made, tune in to the television show you want to watch and select the input on your SSU that you plugged into. I suggest muting or turning your television sound off, to prevent any echoing.

4. If you utilize a cable box, I prefer to run my audio straight to my SSU from the cable box in the same manner. There are truly so many setups and configurations you have to do what is best for your setup.

5. Additional image credits
   http://www.accellcables.com/press/productImages/DigitalAudio_Cable.jpg

Tips & Warnings

• Regardless of what your salesperson tells you, you do not need the $100.00 gold cables that they sell. You can get excellent quality with the cheaper versions.
• Jot down how you make your connections once you get it all working correctly. You will move things around eventually and forget what you did, ever forget to write down the firing order when you changed your spark plugs??

[starlet67]

on 2/27/2009 Good to know! Good use of photos!