Help with home theatre setup please!!?

Question

So I have a Toshiba DLP HDTV, newer marantz receiver, two Ascend bookshelves and a powered HSU sub, HD cable box, and a DVD player. I am having trouble hooking this all up. My TV, DVD player, and receiver all have HDMI. What is the best picture and sound I can get with all this and what are the cables I should use. Right now I have RGB cables from cable box to tv, analog cables from dvd player to receiver, and optical digital cable from cable box to receiver. There has to be a better way. What should I do and how? Thanks much

Answer 1

Depending on your reciever you might run out of HDMI Connections.  All of the HD stuff should use HDMI.  If you end up using component cables, you should use opticals for the audio and digital coaxial for the sub

Answer 2

My advice is this:

- Run HDMI straight from DVD and cable box to the TV

- Run optical or coaxial-digital from DVD and cable box to inputs on the Marantz receiver.

You use the TV speakers for casual TV and DVD watching.

For more serious movies, turn down the TV speakers and fire up the Marantz recevier for ..... Stereo sound.

(sigh)

You have a good sub, but you need 3 more Ascend bookshelve speakers to give you a nice tone-matched movie system.

MonoPrice and BlueJeans are both great places for cables.

Answer 3

The best way to go w/ HD is to use HDMI cables. You'll need 2 HDMI cables, 1 from TV in to AVR out and 1 from DVD out to AVR in. You'll now configure your DVD, AVR and TV to use the HDMI ports.