Just purchased new TV & Blu-Ray, trouble setting up an older receiver (1 Viewer)

[CoolhandLocke]

First off hello! New to the forums and this is my first post. Up until black friday I was living in the dark ages as far as a setup goes with an old 55" TV that weighed 200 lbs and and old (but good) Philips Divx/dvd player. I upgraded to a Panasonic Viera TC-L37U3, and a ps3 for blu-ray's and gaming. Needless to say, after watching "The Watchmen" on Blu-Ray I was blown away with everything but the TV speakers which i expected. I remembered I actually had my dads old receiver which is a Pioneer vsx-d412, and while it worked on his Vizio Plasma, I can't get a lick of sound out of the thing. Actually, i get some hissing from a speaker so it still works lol, but that's all I can get. I have no manual for the receiver, and my tv's manual mainly talks about using Viera-link to hook up all your panasonic products. The TV has HDMI, optical, and the good old red/white/yellow plugs while the receiver has everything but HDMI. I mainly just wanted to see how it worked/sounded so I grabbed a set of component cables I had handy and hooked them from the receiver to the TV and got nothing but static. I've flipped through all the settings on the receiver and tv but still can't get anything to play through. As I haven't fooled with this kind of thing in about 10 years I'm a little behind the times and am sure it's something very simple I'm missing. I've included product links to show you guys what I have; any help would be appreciated as I'm thrilled with my tv, gaming and blu-rays, but the sound is lacking and after dropping a wad of cash I'd like to see if I can get the old receiver system working and buy a big, new shiny system next black Friday Thanks in advance, and I look forward to the getting back up to speed on the home theater game with the forum and site! Receiver - Sorry all I could find was an ebay link with the stats Panasonic TV

 

[Jason Charlton]

Hi Adam,


Here's a link to the online manual for that receiver.


It looks as though the receiver has one digital coaxial audio input, and one digital optical input. They are assignable, so I think you can have at most, two 5.1 sources connected.


On the video side of things, the receiver really shows its age - composite and S-Video is it. Nothing else. You'll probably want to skip making any video connections (except maybe one composite connection from receiver to TV so you can see the setup menus).


Your general approach should be to run the highest quality connection for video from any source directly to the TV.


Make secondary runs for audio from each source to the receiver.


The receiver manual notes that the default audio connection for the "DVD" input is the digital coaxial connection, but for your PS3 you're more likely to use an optical cable. So you'll need to manually assign the optical input to the DVD input in the receiver's setup menus. This is why you'll need to run a yellow composite video cable from the monitor out on the receiver to a composite input on the TV. Set the TV to this input so you can see the onscreen menus from the receiver.


Running video to TV and audio to Receiver means that you'll need to set the inputs on both devices to watch and listen to your various sources, but that will be a minor inconvenience until you can upgrade your receiver to an HDMI model which will simplify things immensely.


Hope this helps. Let me know if this works out, or if you need any clarification. Good luck.


Edit: In re-reading your post, I wonder if your dad's TV was connected using his TVs analog or digital coaxial audio output fed to the receiver. This method is easier to set up and operate, but you will lose all digital 5.1 audio using this method. Also, your TV only has an optical out (most likely - I didn't check your manual) and since the optical input is not the "default" digital input, that could explain why you got static. I still think you're better off running audio connections from source to receiver, but if this gives you problems, we can explore simpler, but less ideal, solutions.