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How do I route my audio and video signals?
There are many different ways to connect all your HT gear together. I'll discuss two of the most common here.
Method 1 - route all audio and video to the receiver
Take a look on the back of any modern HT receiver and you'll see a ton of inputs/outputs. A large number of those rca jacks will be red, white and yellow. The red and white plugs carry the audio portion, while the yellow jack is reserved for the video portion. You'll also notice some of the jacks are labeled 'input', while others are called 'output'. As you can see, the receiver has a lot of flexibility in how it will route these signals.
By routing all the audio and video through the receiver, you'll essentially turn your receiver into a "switching station". You'll run one single video signal (via the 'mon output' on the back of the receiver) to your tv. Now, when you want to watch tv, you can simply press video-1 on the front of your receiver...to play your Nintendo, you simply press video-2...to watch your DVD, you press the button labeled 'dvd', etc.
What's the main advantage of this type of connection? Without a doubt, it's simplicity. This setup works well when you don't feel like pressing two or more buttons to change what you're watching or when your children or ht-challenged spouses get into the picture. Some receivers even let you mix audio/video sources "inside". Imagine making your own party-mix vhs tape using any video source you want, but music from your cd collection.
Method 2 - route the video to the tv
Many will comment that a disadvantage of the first method is that the video signal becomes degraded when it goes through the receiver first. By routing the video signal directly to the TV, you bypass the receivers electronics, thereby providing the TV with the "purest" signal possible.
It is up to you to decide if you see a difference. I recommend you run the video signal both ways and see if you notice any signal degredation. That will help you decide which setup works better for you.
The disadvantage of running the video to the tv is that you now have to select more than one input to see and hear what you'd like. Imagine if you're watching your dvd player on the tv's video-1 input. The sound is coming out of your receiver on video-1. If you decide to watch your vcr, now you have to change both the tv and receiver to the video-2 input. As you can see, this could get confusing for someone who is not familiar with your setup, plus it adds an extra step into the selection process.
Note: several of today's modern remotes are programmable. You can actually program the remote to do all this switching with a single button...but that's another article.
Again, I've only listed the two of the most common setup configurations. I'm sure there are lots of variation on this, but these two methods will get you started.
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