Help hooking up home theater (1 Viewer)

[Greg B]

I'm buying a Hitachi 46f500 in the next couple of days and I'm trying to figure out the best way to hook up my whole system to get the best picture and best sound from my home theater. Right now I have a surround sound system that is just hooked up with cheap rca cables that I want to replace so I need to know everything. The television is hd ready so I'm pretty sure I'll be using the dvi cable for my cable tv but the rest is still unknown. Here's my setup:
Hitachi 46f500 HD ready RPTV
Motorola DCT-5100 cable box
Onkyo HT-R500 Receiver
Onkyo DV-CP500 DVD Player
Onkyo Surround Speakers

I'm very confused as to which connections to use on what i.e. s-video or component etc...
Also, are there other cables besides monster that are just as good but cheaper or are they really the only ones??
Any help that you can give is appreciated.
Thanks Greg

 

[Nathan Stohler]

I would refer to the FAQ.

It has very good sections regarding what you need to connect your various speakers and components.

Basically, you want the best connection type (notice I didn't say "brand") that your hardware supports. For example, for video, dvi is better than component, component is a little better than s-video, and all are better than a regular RCA cable.

--Nathan

 

[Greg B]

That makes sense but I'm even more confused now that I have started to really get into it. I am going to hook up the dvi cable from my cable box to my television. Then I still need to run either component or s-video to my receiver correct?

 

[Nathan Stohler]

No. If you're running video directly to your TV, you don't need to run any video through your receiver. The only reason you would run video through you receiver is if you wanted your receiver to do video switching, and you would need an A/V receiver much nicer than mine to be able to run dvi through it.

Now the only thing you need to run to your receiver from your cable box is audio.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Greg: make sure your CATV box actually has the DVI connection active. Many of these box's have connectors that are there for future expansion, but not used.

In your case I would go:

DVI cable from CATV box to TV
Component Cable from DVD player to TV

The custom cable sites will build you a component cable for $50-$80 that will rival the high-end Monster ZX300 cable at $220. These are not 'exotic' cables - just production-studio quality parts with documentation that they can handle HD video signals. (It's what video engineers use).

Look at the top of this fourm for some links to the custom cable sites. Mention HomeTheaterFourm - they get a lot of business from our membership and always treat us well.

PS: I have had my eye on a Hitachi F500 series television ever since "The Perfect Vision" included it in their shoot-out last November. I think it's a great choice.

 

[Greg B]

Excellent. Thanks for all the help. I already checked with Comcast and according to them, the DVI is functioning. I'll check out some of the custom cables.

 

[Greg B]

Bob: I have one other question. After checking out the cables from the links above I found a component set from Blue Jeans for $35. Is it realistic to think that these are just as good or do you think they are of lower quality?
Thanks again.
Greg