Connecting Home Theatre, LCD TV and Laptop (1 Viewer)

[ishanparinda]

Hi All,

Please help me to find the correct solution to my problem.

I have three items to be connected each other. Those are Sony Bravia LCD TV (KLV-32V400A/B), Sony Home Theatre System (DAV-DZ870KW) and a Laptop (HP Pavilion dv6800). Basically my intention is to view HD movies (stored in the laptop) from the LCD TV and get 5.1Ch sound out from the Home Theatre System. I have to get the laptop involved for this as the Home Theatre System does not support high definition movies.

TV has following ports
Digital Media Port 1
HDMI / Audio In 3/1
Component / Audio In 2
Composite / Audio In 3
HD15 PC Input / Audio 1
Composite Monitor Out / Audio Out 1
Audio Out 2
Headphone Out 1

Home Theatre System has following ports
Audio Line IN/OUT (Analogue) 2 / –
Audio Input (Front, mini) 1
DIGITAL MEDIA PORT 1
Audio Line IN/OUT (Optical) 1 / –
Audio Line IN/OUT (Coaxial) 1 / –
Video Signal IN/OUT (Composite) – / 1
Video Signal IN/OUT (Component) – / 1
Video Signal OUT HDMI 1

My laptop has 1 headphones out and 1 HDMI out.

I've checked but the closest I could find to have digital audio and video is to connect laptop to TV using HDMI and take sound out from TV to Home Theatre. But TV doesn’t have optical or coaxial to take digital sound out. And not sure that it would give pure 5.1Ch sound to Home Theatre.

What is the best solution to play laptop stored HD movies on LCD TV and 5.1Ch sounds from Home Theatre? Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Ishan

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Even if your TV had digital audio out, you'd only get 2.0 PCM from anything except an internal HD tuner. TV's do not support digital audio pass-thru from HDMI in to optical/coax out. So, in order to accomplish what you want to do, you have to have an audio system that has HDMI audio/video. Then you could go Laptop->A/V receiver->TV all via HDMI.

 

[ishanparinda]

Thanks Jeff for your valuable thought.

I came up with another solution. I’ll have a Creative External sound card (USB) connected to my laptop. It has a coaxial SPDIF sound out to Home Theater Systems. So I could have video from TV via HDMI (laptop to TV) and audio via coaxial (sound card to Home Theatre). But again I have few questions.

1)When the TV is connected to laptop via HDMI, will I be still able to get the sound from sound card connected to laptop.
2)Does the coaxial gives the 5.1Ch sound to Home Theatre System
3)Creative specifies its coaxial port as “SPDIF” and Home Theatre specifies its IN as just digital coaxial. Are these two compatible each other?

Thanks in advance
Ishan

 

[Jeff Gatie]

1) You should, but I suppose this depends on implementation and configuration of the particular sound card.
2) Once again, it should. That is the standard for 5.1 audio.
3) SPDIF is Sony-Philips Digital Interface Format, which is carried by digital coaxial or optical connections. So you can say they are the same.

 

[pat00139]

2) Yes, it should, but that depends on whether the HD movie is encoded with 5.1 sound or not. If it is, there's no problem at all.