connecting tv and bluray to hifi
Tue, Aug 16 2011, 12:10PM
I've just bought a new tv and blu ray player. While the sound from the tv is better than I expected, obviously I can do much better by hooking the system up to my hifi and using the amp and speakers of that.
My question is, do I hjust connect the tv, or just the bluray, or both? Once connected, I presume that I just turn the volume on the tv to zero and select AV on the amp, but any further suggestions more than welcome for a techno-illiterate.
Thanks in advance,
Gordon
Tue, Aug 16 2011, 3:17PM
#2
RE: connecting tv and bluray to hifi
Thanks for the offer of help.
Sony Bravia 40EX503 tv
Sony BDP 5370 bluray
Cyrus 8XP amp
Having just read your piece in the latest Gramophone about manuals etc, you have my full support if you want to start a campaign against these monstrosities.
The TV had most of its instructions onscreen but didn't cover such things as how to set things up for playing blurays in 4:3 as opposed to 16:9 (or if it did, I couldn't find it anywhere). I just did not understand a word of the bluray manual. It might make the tea for all I know. I can get a disc in and press play and that's it. The Cyrus manuals are an abomination too.
The main problem is that they are written by people who know what they are doing and make huge assumptions in user knowledge, whereas they need to talk to idiots like me who haven't got a clue and need some real hand holding. It's no good telling me how to change something if you don't tell me why I might want to...
If I submitted articles like that to my editors, they would be thrown straight back at me with a re-write demanded. Perhaps we should set up in business together offering a manual-writing service, me asking the stupid questions that other newbies are likely to ask and you providing the expert advice <grin>
Cheers,
Gordon
Tue, Aug 16 2011, 4:25PM
#3
RE: connecting tv and bluray to hifi
The best way to connect up will be a standard stereo interconnect between the Blu-ray player and the Cyrus amp to carry audio from discs.
If you also want sound from the TV (ie from the internal tuner) run through the amplifier, things are complicated slightly by the lack of conventional analogue audio outputs from this set. You could try a cable from the headphone socket on the TV to the amp, but this probably won't give the best sound quality, and may be prone to interference.
To connect the digital audio out on the TV, you'll need to plug a digital to analogue converter between the TV and the amplifier. You can find these for as little as £30 on some computer/electronics websites: how much you want to spend is really up to how much import you put on the sound from the TV.
Tue, Aug 16 2011, 5:41PM
#4
RE: connecting tv and bluray to hifi
Thanks for that Andrew
Tue, Aug 16 2011, 5:44PM
#5
RE: connecting tv and bluray to hifi
The main problem is that they are written by people who know what they are doing and make huge assumptions in user knowledge, whereas they need to talk to idiots like me who haven't got a clue and need some real hand holding. It's no good telling me how to change something if you don't tell me why I might want to...
If I submitted articles like that to my editors, they would be thrown straight back at me with a re-write demanded. Perhaps we should set up in business together offering a manual-writing service, me asking the stupid questions that other newbies are likely to ask and you providing the expert advice <grin>
Cheers,
Gordon
Now here's something that's been burning me for years. It doesn't seem to be confined to a small number of manufacturers or one type of product. Instructions for my first home theatre amp, the NAD AV 716 range from unreadable to overly complex to uselessly scant. My Panasonic Blu-ray player has a manual written by computer geeks for computer geeks, people who haven't talked to anyone outside their field of interest since they left kindergarten. But my Denon AVR 989 takes the biscuit. I still, two years after buying it, I search in vain through the labyrinthian instructions for a way to get the thing to save the settings I so patiently input every time I listen to it.
Photographic equipment is the same. People in hi-fi and camera shops admit most folks just switch these things on and hope for the best. They've spawned a whole new area of employment, people who will come out to your home and hopefully rescue the befuddled user. I sometimes wonder if this is the main reason my wife stays with me. If I got hit by a bus she'd never be able to watch TV or listen to music again. I used to get phone calls at work, "All it's showing is a blank screen ................". Visions of millions of frustrated people across the world who've inadvertently hit the wrong button on their remotes and can't find their way back to where they were.
Wed, Sep 14 2011, 8:45PM
#6
RE:
Gordon, it's a while ago now, I realise, but I have the same TV as you, except mine is the 32inch screen version.
My Sony bluray is connected to the telly by HDMI, in the usual way. The telly has stereo 'audio out' sockets, using normal RCA phono connections, just like any hi-fi source, such as tuner or CD player. I ran a 2 metre phono to phono lead to a spare 'aux' input on my hi-fi amp. That works with both TV programmes and bluray discs. Of cource you miss out on surround sound, but that didn't seem to be what you were seeking.
I hope that helps.
How best to hook it up will depend on the specific models you have, so if you could tell me what the Blu-ray, amplifier and TV are, I should be able to advise more specifically.
Audio Editor, Gramophone