Fairly basic hook-up question (1 Viewer)

I currently have an Infocus X1 projector and an electric screen installed. I'm unclear about how this would connect to a receiver and "tuner". I've pretty much decided on a receiver which is a Denon 3805. Where most of my confusion lies is how to connect my cable box, receiver, and projector together. I may use an analog cable box or I may go to digital cable. If someone could point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it.

Ron

Your reciever can act as a video switched if you have lots of sources, I'm assuming you probably have a DVD player too, for instance. If you have more sources than inputs, you can let your receiver switch things, or use your receiver for purposes of convenience, otherwise you can just run the video cabling directly to the projector.

This receiver has:
Rear Video Inputs: S-Video: 6, Component: 3, Composite: 6
Rear Video Outputs: S-Video: 3, Component: 1, Composite: 3
Rear Audio Inputs: Composite: 6, Optical: 2, Coaxial: 2
Rear Audio Outputs: Composite: 2, Optical: 4
Front Video Inputs: S-Video: 1, Composite: 1
Front Audio Inputs: Optical: 1, Composite: 1
You have enough ins & outs to run a movie theater.


Just remember, input to output, and you should be fine.
The ability to use this receiver as a switcher is one of its many benefits.
Vb

Thanks for the replies, I guess what I'm unclear about is what outputs will be off a digital cable box or an analog one and if it will conect to the receiver. From what I understand analog boxes only have a regular coax output, so if I elect to remain with standard analog cable it won't connect, right? I would guess a digital cable box would have more up to date outputs, like composite or better? Then I may also be looking into a Tivo unit which is a whole different ballgame.

Thanks

Ron

There really is no reason to use an analog box with this projector. The PQ would look rather bad.
The only box I'd suggest is a digital, and possibly an HD box.
Other than that, you set up is very easy.
Vb

Here are a couple of examples of what the connections might look like in your situation.

Analog Cable Box -> Receiver -> Projector & Speakers

The analog Cable box probobally has a "Composite Video" output for the video (if not then dont even consider using it : ) The composite video is a single RCA Type connector that would come out of your Cable Box into the back of the receiver to a "Video In" port. In this setup the Cable Box probobally also has a "Stereo Audio" out, which would be connected to the back of the receiver by a Two RCA Type cables. You could just use one combigned cable for this that has 3 put together. One yellow ended cable for video and a red and a white for right and left audio.

From there the audio will be sent to the speakers by the "Speaker Outputs" on the back of your receiver. The video likewise will then go out of the receiver into the back of the projector.

This is where you can make a couple of choices on how to connect the video outputs on the receiver to the projector. You can either use a Composit Video cable, Svideo cable, Component Video Cable, or all 3.

I would reccomend using just a Component Video cable which uses 3 separate wires to carry the video signal (Red Green and Blue simplified). It is the highest quality/bandwidth cable of the 3 I mentioned above. Even though you are only putting a Composite Video cable into the receiver it should still send the signal out of the Component Video jacks. Your receiver probobally has a function called "Component Video Upconversion". This is a fancy way to say that no matter what type of video signal that you put into the receiver, it will come out of the Component Video out port. The benefit of this is that if you have multiple components (DVD Player, VCR, XBOX, Cable...) you will only have to have one set of wires going from the receiver to the projector. VCR's and Analog Cable most likeley use composite video, whereas the XBOX or video camera probobally use svideo, and your DVD player or Digital Cable will probobally use Component Video. You can have all of these going into the back of the receiver and only one cable going to the projector for them all.
Note: this does not mean that the quality of the signal is increased just that the low quality Composite Video signal is now being sent out via Component Video.

Now if you plan on getting Digital Cable then this changes, but only sightly.

The first scenario: Digital Cable or Sattelite.

You will probobally have the option to use Component Video cables for the Video connection, and some type of Digital Audio cable for the Audio connection. These would still follow the same path Component -> Receiver ->Proje...
The cables you use for audio will just be different. The two possible digital audio connections would be Digital Coaxial (pretty close to a composite video cable in the way it looks and works), or a Optical Digital cable AKA TOSLink.

The second scenario: HDTV of some sort.

You could get this either through your Digital Cable company, or through a sattelite provider. Either way the connections used in this are just a little different from the previous scanario. You would now have the option to use a DVI cable for the Video. This is the absolute highest quality connection you can use for video. Since your receiver does not have an input for the DVI cable, you could connect that one directly to the projector. The Audio (some type of digital audio cable) would still get connected to the receiver and then go on to the speakers.

I hope i have not made this either too confusing, or too condescending (if you already knew all this), it just looked like you were looking for specifics on how all these components might get hooked up. Let me know if you still have questions.

Thanks Elijah that was pretty much what I was looking for. I'm new to the HT arena, I've been reading as much as possible on the forum and other areas and I'm on information overload

Ron