[Archived] Surround setup

[Iceman]

I have Full HD TV, not a name brand like Samsung,Sony etc

However, I have a bluray player so will have my player hooked up to my TV.

due to cash constraints, I'm purchasing an amp WITHOUT an HDMI port, speakers and subwoofer.

my TV doesn't seem to have an optical port, and I've read that one could send the audio from the optical out, to the optical in on the amp or something like that. I would like a bit of surround sound, but not sure how to get around this having an amplifier without an HDMI port.

[dazmaz]

Does the blu-ray player have an optical out? That could be a way around it

[Iceman]

yes it does have one

[Biddy]

If your Amp is going to be a surround amp, just use the optical out on the blu-ray player to the optical in on the Amp. It's worked like that for years before HDMI came along and it's what I still use as I don't have a HD amp.

You will only get bog standard Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 5.1 through optical. You do need HDMI to get the DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD but I've quite happily lived with 5.1 for years now.

When you say:

"I'm purchasing an amp WITHOUT an HDMI port, speakers and subwoofer"

Are you saying you are not getting speakers and subwoofer either? If thats the case, I guess you are only attaching stereo speakers? If so, surround won't work properly. Even worse, if you output 5.1 sound from the blu-ray player, the amp will try and send speech down to the center speaker. If you don't have a center speaker then you will hear no speech and will have to set everything to stereo only. Kind of defeats the object.

Hope that makes sense.

[Iceman]

thanks for the help Biddy. I'm buying with sub and speakers, think my post just came out incorrectly.