New Panasonic Plasma advice

[gar19gj]

Hi, I need some advice please.
I have just bought a new Panasonic plasma TV to replace my old Pioneer plasma and need advice on how to connect it up to my Pioneer AVR and Panasonic HD recorder so it plays through my KEF 2005.1 speakers. I did not set up the original system and there seems to be a myriad of cables so I am a bit lost.

Items are as follows:
Panasonic plasma - TX P50X60B
Pioneer AVR - VSX D2011-S
Panasonic HD DVD - DMR-PWT635
KEF 2005.1 speakers

How do I connect it up to get best results and easy use.

Thanks for any advice

Gary

[belleair302]

Have you purchased a variety of decent HDMI cables first of all, and some decent speaker cables too?

[TEKNOPUG]

gar19gj said:

Hi, I need some advice please.
I have just bought a new Panasonic plasma TV to replace my old Pioneer plasma and need advice on how to connect it up to my Pioneer AVR and Panasonic HD recorder so it plays through my KEF 2005.1 speakers. I did not set up the original system and there seems to be a myriad of cables so I am a bit lost.

Items are as follows:
Panasonic plasma - TX P50X60B
Pioneer AVR - VSX D2011-S
Panasonic HD DVD - DMR-PWT635
KEF 2005.1 speakers

How do I connect it up to get best results and easy use.

Thanks for any advice

Gary

HDMI Out on AVR to HDMI 1 on TV.

That's the TV taken care of.

Plug HD Tuner into AVR. Use whatever HDMI out it has and connect that to HDMI 1 (or whichever you like) on AVR.

Plug in co-axial cable, satellite cable, whatever, into HD Tuner.

Positive/negative speaker wires from speaker to back of AVR - probably "Speaker A" or such - can't tell without looking at the back of it.

That's it.

Or is it a trick question?

[gar19gj]

Not a trick question. There are no HDMI connections on the AVR. Hence the question.

[TEKNOPUG]

gar19gj said:

Not a trick question. There are no HDMI connections on the AVR. Hence the question.

Hmmm....seems a bit pointless to have it if all you are doing is feeding it an analogue audio signal and then powering a pair of speakers. May as well just get a 2 channel hi-fi amp. Better still, an AVR with HDMI.

• Ignore that - just seen that they are 5.1 speakers!

No matter. I presume that the HD Tuner has HDMI? If so, connect that to the TV. There should then be at least a pair of RCA outs also. Connect them to the back of the AVR (to whichever channel you want - there is probably a "TV" one I'd imagine). Or you could connect the TV to the AVR using RCAs? I guess that you'd have to mute the TV if it isn't talking to the AVR though.

Then connect all the speakers to the corresponding connectors on the AVR.

Edited by TEKNOPUG on Thursday 16th January 13:20

[conkerman]

Or buy a new AV reciever

A mate of mine bought a Sony 1030 last year to ise with Kef Eggs and was very happy indeed compared to the marantz AV receiver he replaced.

Connedt your sources by HDMI, makes life a lot simpler.

[varsas]

Wouldn't you use a digital connection (either coax or optical SP/DIF) from the DVD player to the AVR? That's the only way you'll get proper surround sound while playing back DVD's. The fact that changing your TV has stopped this working would say to me that it was never set up like that, I dare say the sound was going into the TV then back out to the AVR, not the best way of doing things.

So.

DVD player connected digitally to the AVR with a single cable (toslink/co-axial/optical/sp-dif...however it's labelled, but there are two different types of connector). Connection on your AVR is labelled 'in 3 (DVD/LD)' and is co-ax type

DVD player connected to the TV using HDMI. If no HDMI is available use scart.

AVR connected to the speakers in the usual way.

TV connected back to the AVR using it's optical digital out. (labelled 'in 1 (TV/SAT)' on your AVR)

The only issue with this is when watching DVD's you have to switch the AVR to 'DVD' but when watching anything else it has to be on 'TV' but it's the only way to get proper digital audio from your DVD player, otherwise you'll be hearing the downmixed stereo output from the TV...unless that TV has DD or DTS pass-through which I doubt. If you are watching a DVD and the AVR does not say 'DD, Dolby Digital, DTS, 5.1' or similar it's not right.

• just checked, it should read 'DD Digital'

Edited by varsas on Thursday 16th January 18:00