help with digital cable hook-up (1 Viewer)

[chiante]

i am a very new newbie. i have a scientific atlantic digital cable box with coax, and s-video. my tv has a s-video jack, and my receiver has s-video inputs with monitor out, and has a coax input. how do i hook my cable box, tv, and receiver up using these inputs properly. right now i have the cable coax going to the receiver, which gives me digital sound on the digital channels,but no sound through the receiver on the analog channels. i have the s-video from the cable box going to tv in on the receiver and the s-video monitor out going to the s-video on the tv, but i get no picture unless the receiver is turned on. what am i doing wrong? the receiver is a panasonic sa-he 100.

 

[Michael Reuben]

You're not doing anything "wrong". It really depends on how you want to configure your system. Let's divide it into audio and video:
VIDEO: Since you're passing the video signal through the receiver, the receiver has to be on for you to watch the signal. If you don't want that, you'll need to take the S-video signal directly from the cable box to the TV.
Note that there's an alternative. If your cable box is like most Scientific Atlanta models, it will have at least two (2) video outputs, one S-video and one composite (the composite takes an RCA plug). You could leave your current wiring in place and run an additional composite video cable from the box to your TV. This should work as long as your TV has separate inputs; be sure to select the correct mode on your TV (e.g., the S-video connection from the receiver might be to "Video 1" and the composite from the cable box might be "Video 2" -- it all depends on what options your TV offers).
AUDIO: From your description, you've connected the cable box's digital output to your receiver's digital input. That's why you're not getting sound on the analog channels. The box should also have a pair of analog audio connections marked left and right (and probably color-coded red and white). Run a separate pair of wires to your receiver from these outputs. Note that many receivers don't autoswitch between digital and analog inputs, so you'll have to experiment; you may have to assign the digital input to one source and the analog to another, then switch between them depending on what you're watching.
Note that you'll still need to have the receiver on to watch TV, because you won't get any sound without turning on the receiver.
M.

 

[chiante]

thank you. i appreciate it much and will experiment more when i get home today.

 

[chiante]

i'm running the sound from the tv from its' fixed/variable composite jacks to the receiver. would it be better to unhook the jack from the tv fixed variable and run it from the audio out composite jacks on the cable box to the tv audio jacks on the receiver.

 

[Michael Reuben]

would it be better to unhook the jack from the tv fixed variable and run it from the audio out composite jacks on the cable box to the tv audio jacks on the receiver.

I think that would be better, but you've raised an interesting additional question:

How is the sound getting to the TV in the first place? There must be another connection from the cable box to the TV that we haven't discussed yet.

M.

 

[chiante]

i have the audio out composites on the cable box going to the audio in on the tv.

 

[Michael Reuben]

OK. I assume you're getting analog sound from the TV, right?

If so, I'm not sure why you aren't getting the analog audio signal at your receiver. I've used the same route (cable box to the TV, then from the TV to the receiver), and it works. One likely culprit is some sort of override at the receiver. On my pre/pro, if you connect the same source with both analog and digital audio connections and set the decoder to "digital", it simply ignores the analog signal. Something similar might be happening here. One solution is to put the two audio signals on different inputs and select the appropriate one (I've used "TV" and "Tuner", which happens to be how my decoder labels the inputs). The downside is that it uses up two inputs.

M.

 

[chiante]

I'll try a few things this evening and will pm you with the results. thanks michael.