HDMI cables question?

Question

I have a brand new HDTV and surround sound system for my living room. I have one HDMI cable that I bought yesterday. I get my cable feed straight from the wall, with no cable box. How can I, if posible, use the HDMI cables to watch my cable tv programming while getting my sound from the surround system. In a sense, what I am asking is, can I use the HDMI cable to pump the audio through the system, while not using the HDMI cable for video. I hope this question makes sense ...any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Rent or buy a cable box.

The only place to grab sound and picture from your cable co. is from your TV since you have no cable box. Your TV does not have an HDMI output, so the answer is no.

Your TV probably has an audio out, which you could use to send audio to your receiver, but not HDMI.

Answer 2

From the sound of it you should take back the HDMI cable and trade for an optical or digital coax cable.

All you need to do is run the optical or coax cable from the appropriate audio "out" of the HDTV to a suitable audio "in" (e.g. Sat, aux) on the surround amp/receiver. That will allow surround sound.

If you don't have optical or coax out, you can use the red/white RCA type outs to feed stereo, but this will limit you to matrix surround (e.g. Dolby ProLogic) rather than discrete (e.g. dolby digital). Also note that not all TV programs are in surround sound (although if stereo you can matrix decode).

Hope this helps.