what a rookie (1 Viewer)

[MichaelMetz]

man, after reading even your most basic stuff in the beginners area, I really feel like a pup.

bought my 1st system, a HTiB. it's not the best by far, but we think it sounds great on the couple movies we've watched so far.

anyway, here's the thing.

have a fairly new 27" TV and VCR (~2-3 yrs. old). both work well. we have cable (also works well). TV only has the input for the cable, composite video, and the red-black audio connectors.

so the only way I can figure to hook it up is:
cable into VCR, out to TV
audio cables in/out between VCR and DVD
composite video from DVD to VCR

so if I play a movie, all is peachy as long as I set TV menu to VCR/AUX. but if I'm just watching TV, I have to turn the channel on the tuned VCR to match the channel on the TV to get surround sound.

I want to be able to flip channels and ALWAYS get surround sound without messing with the VCR. what is the solution to this? a new TV with more (correct) inputs? take the VCR out of the loop (that doesn't seem correct).

Please help. Thanks.

 

[Allan Jayne]

If you have a HTiB you should be able to plug the VCR video out into the HTiB main unit (contains the DVD player?) video in and connect the video output from the HTiB main unit to the composite input of the TV. This will route the VCR sound to the HTiB speakers, but it won't be true surround sound because the VCR delivers only two sound channels.
If the HTiB main unit (which is an A/V receiver) is separate from the DVD player, it should have another input bank with composite video in jack for plugging in the DVD player.
With this setup all TV viewing is done with the VCR tuning in the channel. To watch one channel while recording another, add back the coax line from VCR antenna out to TV antenna in, you cannot use surround sound while watching one channel and recording another this way.
Another method can be used if the TV has audio out jacks. You would connect these to another input bank of the HTiB main unit (video jack left empty). Now you can connect the antenna line to the TV, tune in channels using the TV, and the TV sound can be controlled by the HTiB.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[MichaelMetz]

thanks for your help. I see a couple things I can try.