How to hook up home theatre system for best sound on regular tv channels?

Question

I do hope someone here can help me.

I just won a 40" LCD HD TV with a Home Theatre system. Of course, by winning it, I have no warranty or installation available. I must have dome something wrong and every installation guide I can find Hasn't helped me.

I have amazing sound and picture when I play a DVD. I can download a tv show, burn on a DVD and play with wonderful results. But, to watch the tv show live, it's hohum. The same as if there was no sound at all. My cable hooks into a digital black cable box. I have a VCR as well. The cable box and vcr is joined to the theatre system with those red/white cables or red/yellow/white cables. I have HDMI cable connecting the theatre to the TV.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You are not doing wrong, your basic broadcast of TV  is only in two channel or 2.0 sound at best

Try changing your listening mode from Dolby Digital to Dolby Pro Logic 1 or 2. It will take the 2.0 sound and change it to 4.0 or 5.1 depending if you have 1 or 2.

Your other alternative is to have HDTV, it broadcasts in 5.1 and will sound like your DVDs.

Answer 2

One thing that could improve both the sound and the picture (depending on which channel you are watching), is to connect the cable directly to the TV.  If the channels aren't scrambled, that should give you the best picture, especially if the channels are digital, in which case you will see a dramatic improvement in sound and picture.  If they are analog, you should see a modest improvement in sound and picture.

If the channels you want to watch are scrambled (like HBO, etc.), you're probably stuck with using a cable box to tune them (unless your TV has a CableCARD slot).  If you can get a high definition cable box from the cable company, which has an HDMI output instead of composite video, you should get better video and sound as well.

See this website for a description of cableCARDs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

have any more information about it.. model....etc

instead of red, yellow, and white... use a red, blue, and greed video cable and maybe an optical audio cable if you can or you just might have to stick with the basic red and white cable

Answer 4

If you provide exact model numbers for what you have to hook up a best scenario hookup can be provided, until then it is all a guessing game.

Answer 5

From your description I am not completely sure of how you are routing the signals.  If you watch regular tv via the "digital black cable box" then you should hook up the audio ouput of the cable box to your home theatre system.  If you are doing that already with red and white RCA cables then you might want to check if the cable box supports digital audio output - either coax or optical and if your home theatre also supports digital audio input.  It will give you better sound.