do I have too many video connections? (1 Viewer)

[gil*c]

I have an RCA modem RT2280 home theatre system and a RCA tv and Sanyo DVD player and I seem to be swimming in video connections.
1. Right now I have the TV connected to the receiver with an Svideo conx and standard video/AudioL/AudioR connections. Can I plug the Svideo directly into the DVD player and bypass the receiver without losing my sound?
2. The DVD player is hooked to the receiver with Svideo, digital/optical cable, and video/AudioL/Audio$ connections. That's three video connections! What is the best setup for this to get the most from my DVD player?
The RCA instructions are pretty difficult to understand for a person who's never owned a receiver before and, although the pictures seem to show things hooked up the way I have done it, it seems like video connection overkill. And try and get any tech support for Canada. Things have been working fine for a while now but it just seems like too many connections. I'd appreciate any opinions on this.
Thanks

 

[Carl Johnson]

You have one too many connections there. S-video from DVD to TV will handle your picture and optical from DVD to receiver will handle sound. The third set of cables is unnecessary, that's for systems that don't use the optical connection.

 

[Cees Alons]

If I understand your post correctly, you have two video signal sources: your TV and the DVD-player. You're watching everything on the TV set. Right?

If this is true, you don't have to bring the TV picture to the TV-set: it's already there. So all you need (picture-wise) is to bring the DVD image to the TV. You can use 1 cable for that: the S-Video cable, from the DVD to your TV set. It will have a channel of it's own on your TV.
No need to route it through the receiver.

Now about the sound. The sound will have to go through your receiver, or else you cannot use the superior sound system. So you need to bring both, the DVD sound and the TV sound to the receiver. For the DVD you can either use a Toslink (=optical) cable or an RCA coax cable. Both have their own, typical, connection on the DVD-player and on the receiver. You wouldn't want to use the stereo signal of your DVD-player, because DD is much better.
From your TV, the sound will probably only come as a stereo pair, so you have to hook the stereo-out of your TV to the stereo-in of your receiver.

All you have to do now is make sure you choose the proper sound source (the TV's if your watching TV, the DVDs if you're watching a DVD). That's not too difficult.

Hope this helps.

Good luck,

Cees

 

[gil*c]

Thank you for your help. I decided to change my receiver setup. Now I have a small stack of removed cords. The DVD works just fine with the TV when connected directly with the Svideo. I kept the digital optical connection from the receiver to the DVD player because there is a noticeable improvement in sound. I took the second vcr out of the mix and got rid of my splitter and switch and that improved the TV signal. It turns out when I removed my Cable connection from the surge protector and put it in the wall jack directly my picture improved again.

My CD carousel also has a digital optical conx but since I only have one digital port on the receiver I'm out of luck there. I can switch the cables back and forth - when I pay a stunning $35 for the cable. Yikes!

I should have posted here months ago. Thanks again