Attention all TV/home cinema buffs!

[NeilI]

MY dad is getting us a new TV as ours is farked.

Currently we have a 28" Toshiba widescreen, with seperate speakers for Pro-logic sound, which is nice. But at 7 years old, the CRT is farked.

We are looking at similiar things, 28" or 32", widescreen, gotta be 100Hz etc.
The thing is most of them now don't have surround speakers, or if they do, they are quite weak.
So we have considered just getting a Nicam TV and then a DVD/Cinema system with some nice chunky speakers.

The thing is, can you wire up the TV so that the TV sound plays through the seperate speakers?
On the TVs we have been looking at, most have 3 scarts, an RF and phono outs.
Does this mean that you can hook the sound up via the phonos?
Also, DVD's play their surround sound fine through our current set-up, so do some DVD players/TVs have digital outs? Is there some sort of quality loss by using a scart???

Cheers for any help!

[Kimo]

I will share some of my (limited) knowledge

Agree with getting the home cinema system as opposed to using the TV for sound. Even with the higher quality speakers it will never come close to a decent home cinema setup. With my kit you can wire the TV to the decoder to allow you to watch normal TV with better sound. Most DVD players these days will have a digital out and/or coaxial out which will hook up to your decoder for surround sound etc for DVD's. If you were to use scart to the TV and then connect your tv to your decoder through a phono out you wouldn't get half as good sound quality. It's best to get a DVD player with digital out, a decoder with digital in and do it like that.

[NeilI]

Okay, that all makes sense, except one thing.

It's best to get a DVD player with digital out, a decoder with digital in and do it like that.

We are looking at getting a budle from Comet or somewhere, hpoefully with a 100watt+ subwooffer
Anyhoo, the ones I have seen only have a DVD player unit. I assume the decoder is built in?

I think we also have some wires crossed.
I mean, how can I connect the TV to the speakers, for watching normal TV, not DVDs???

[fondie]

ok, as you said, you want the phono outs (red and white) of the tv going into your surround sound amplifier (or dvd/amplifier combo if you get one of those). easy

now, if you have a combination dvd player / surround amplifier (as in one of these - http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/182.html), then there is nothing more you need to do than to hook the scart out to the tv (for picture from dvd's) and the phono's in (for sound from tv broadcasts). sorted.

if you go for a separate dvd player and surround amplifier then i'd recommend you use the decoder from the amplifier in which case you will want a digital coaxial output from the dvd player, the still encoded sound is the passed to the amplifier where it is processed.

hope that explains things, fire away with more questions or if you didn't get my explanation. what kind of budget are you looking at?

[NeilI]

I don't think dad will spend more than £1000.
This is the package we have been looking at.

Your explanation is exactly what I needed to know. I assume this setup will enable us to do as above.

[fondie]

yes it will, phono outs from tv to dvd/amp and scart (i recommend - http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page...G&title=137545) from dvd/amp to tv, and you'll be good to go.

i believe the comet specs are wrong for the SCHT500 though, i don't think it has Dolby ProLogic 2.

My dad recently purchased a very similar package for his family room, had a lower spec version of the panny tv (not 100hz) bought off the net, and a multi-region SCHT500 from richer sounds (using a price-beat, though they managed to give us a non-muilti region one and it had one clapped out speaker :s so i hope he's sorted that now, richer sound's fault not the machine), set up (which i did) was a doddle.

I didn't really have much chance to play with it, but my first impressions were that it was quite handy, far too good for my sister who's the only one who'll use it at least. All looked good, though make sure you've got something to place the front speakers on and again for the rear speakers if you aren't going to wall mount them. If you're going to require stands i would recommend getting the next panasonic model up which has floorstanders, prologic2 and a 5-disc changer, along with a few other differences.

and the tv is £460inc here - http://www.robertsons-online.co.uk/g...s.asp?P=112651

and the 32" (bigger is definately better) version of the same model £662inc - http://www.robertsons-online.co.uk/g...s.asp?P=112665

and if you do decide on the SCHT900, i think the cheapest place is comet at £354inc.

rather long winded post, hope it's of help.

[Planetside]

here you go m8 all you nead and it will go nice with a new tv
http://www.richersounds.com/index.ph...l.php&p=300295

[5lab]

most home cinema amps have modes to 'upmix' a 2 channel source. this means that they will ttake the 2 channels the tv gives it and guess where to put the noise. its not perfect but its not bad. they can also do dolby prologic/prologic2/surround off a 2 channel source - this is basically all your tv was doing in the first place - so to answer your question - yes. tv shows are only broadcase over 2 channel audio (except some sky stuff which has dolby digital). make sure you get a telly with aux out thou, you dont want to have to feed the sound out thru the headphone socket at the front

finally - most aux outs on a telly are not controlled by the tv volume control - they have a constant volume, so make sure you get a surround amp with a volume control remote

i'd reccomend the creative inspire 5.1 5700s myself - cheap (£200ish), award winning and multi-format (everything except dolby prologic 2), lots of inputs - and they look quite nice too.

[NeilI]

Nice one guys, I have taken all information on board.

I shall let you know the outcome. I'm excited all ready!

[NeilI]

We recieved our TV today. Excellent. A local 'specialist' had it on a good price, which was nice.
But more importantly, dad is in agreement that a seperate AV reciever needs to be bought. Most Excellent.

For the living room hifi, he already has Kef Q 4 speakers, so it'll be the Kef Q 9c and 8s. I'm trying to push him to a Marantz reciever too.

I was curious about the connection of a subwoofer to such a reciever. Is it just the standard type connection?? As he is not sure about a sub, so doesn't want to get one just now. But I want to make sure it is an option, so I cah harass him some more!

Fondie?

[fondie]

NeilI

congrats on the TV

sub is connected via a mono coaxial cable terminated with an RCA phono plug at each end (so half of your standard one red one white plug audio cable), obviously you can get cable of varying quality some of which is claim to be 'optomized' for subwoofer use.

i need a new one actually, am using the one out the box at the moment, i think i'm going to get one of these, they look very nice :- http://www.avforums.com/forums/showt...hreadid=107778

edit :- adding the KEF Q9c centre and Q8s rears along with something like a marantz SR5400 to go along with your Q4's will sound great, definately a giant step up from the panny scht500. oh, and a rediculously large sub is essential

[NeilI]

Cheers for the advise again.

Another question: On reciever spces they list only the x. channels and never the .1 in the audio specs. I assume this is due to subs being active and having their own amp??

I thought 'panny' was most definitely an Aberdonian expression of naffness! Obviously not!

[fondie]

They should list that it is able to process x.1 channels (5.1/6.1/7.1) but no a/v amps/recievers that i know of offer amplification for subwoofers, as as you say almost all decent subs have their own amplifiers built in.

So they should list say 6.1 processing but then only 6 x 100W amplifications for example, i'll happily check out any individual reciever and subwoofer you're looking at if you're unsure though.

Yeh, sorry, i use panny as an abreviation of Panasonic which while their all in one systems are good for the money, they aren't going to compete with a proper set-up