How to correctly set yp home theater? (1 Viewer)

[NYRFaninBoston]

Hi I am not entirely tech illiterate, but I want to make sure I am doing this 100% correct. I just bought a brand new 47" LG LED TV (47LM6200), a new LG smart 3D BluRay player (BP325W), and a new Onkyo home theater receiver/speaker set (HT-S3500). I also have a HD DVR clable box from Comcast. They are all equipped with HDMI outputs, and the receiver and TV both have multiple HDMI inputs. Is the correct way to set this up to have everything go through the receiver? In other words, would I connect cable to the receiver, and the receiver to the TV? If I connect cable and bluray to the receiver, and the receiver to the TV, is any picture/video quality compromised by not going straight from the source (cable or blu-ray) directly to the tv?
Any help is greatly appreciated!!

 

[Jason Charlton]

Hi Ben, welcome to the forum!

Most of us here prefer to connect all our sources to the receiver, then run a single HDMI from the receiver's monitor output to an input on the TV.

As long as all of your sources are HD (which yours are) and you're using HDMI to connect everything, then the video signal should remain unaltered as it passes through the receiver. You won't notice any sort of degradation. Even if you were connecting, say, some analog components and your receiver upconverted the analog signal to HDMI, the processing found on most name-brand AVRs is of a high enough quality that chances are good you'd be hard pressed to notice any sort of artifacting in the resulting picture.

There are several benefits to this sort of connection approach:

• 
  You ensure that the highest quality audio format is available for processing by the receiver. Most TVs will downmix any digital surround sound format to 2.0 stereo before it's output (even if you're using the "digital" optical connection on the TV).
• 
  You only need to switch inputs on one device (the receiver) since audio and video are both routed through the AVR
• 
  Since all you really do with the TV is turn it on and off, it's very simple to elminate the TVs remote control from your coffee table by only programming the power function to whatever remote you wish to use.
• 
  It's the easiest way to enjoy quality sound from your nicer speakers for all sources all the time. The built-in speakers on TVs are just atrocious these days - clarity and fidelity are much better even from budget standalone speakers.

Good luck with the new system!

 

[NYRFaninBoston]

Thanks so much, I appreciate your quick and seemingly useful reply!!