Home theatre speakers not working.?

Question

I have a durabrand dvd home theatre. It was temporarily disconnected for moving. I didnt hook it up before so Im lost. I have hooked everything back up, however only two front speakers are working. Not the other 4. I see in other answers to change the reciever from stereo to dolby . Where do you change that at approx. I have the dvd player, dish network box, JVC Projection TV. Is it on one of these 2 boxes or the dish remote, or dvd remote? Or why are the other 4 speakers not working.

Answer 1

The DVD player and Dish network box should be plugged into the A/V receiver and then the receiver connected to the TV. The 6 speakers should be hooked up to the appropriate terminals on the A/V receiver.

I assume you have done that.

Now you need to "tell" the receiver how to process sound. That means that you select the source (DVD, satellite) via the source selector switch on the A/V receiver and that sends the video signal from the DVD player (for example) to the TV and the audio to the speakers.

BUT you want surround sound so you have to also tell the receiver to process the sound correctly. There are several possibilities for you only getting stereo.

1) the surround speakers are not connected correctly (unlikely since you got the stereo pair right ... but confirm anyway)

2) The DVD player may be delivering the stereo track from the DVD. In this case either select the 5.1 track via the DVD menu (sometimes called language settings or setup), or use the "audio" button on the DVD player remote to select the next audio track (it should cycle through available tracks as you push the button).

3) The DVD player (or Dish network) is sending the 5.1 sound, but the A/V receiver is processing it as stereo. This is where the setting of the A/V receiver needs to be checked. They are all a bit different, but there should be a control or button on the front of the receiver (and also a button on the remote) that selects whether surround is on or not (For example a JVC receiver I have has a button "Dolby/DTS surround on/off"). On most receivers the display will show whether you are processing stereo or surround by a light or lights that say so.

4) It's possible you don't have the right type of connections. The red/white RCA audio cables will only deliver stereo sound (although this can be converted to matrix surround by selecting the Dolby ProLogic setting). To get "real" surround you need to connect via optical, digital coaxial or HDMI.

Ok ... difficult to be more precise without model numbers and details of how you have things wired. But that should give you some hints for what to look for.

Good luck.