Surround sound receiver/amp question

elderlemon

Ok I'm new to this home theatre/surround sound stuff and need a little guidance. I'm an looking at buying a 5.1 amp and speakers for my existing DVD (optical out). My question is are 5.1 amps capable of switching the video as well as the audio source? In other words DVD, Video and STB into the amp and one connection out to the TV and use the amp as a switcher?

Does this only apply to high end systems or is this feature available in any lower end models at well.

thanks

Fallschirmjager

eldermon,

yes you can but as always it depends on the amp. if you look at the back you might see things like s-video ports or a thing called monitor out. you will have to read your manual i am afraid.

i run my tv thro my amp to my projector and the playstation. it just re routes the signal for video.

you will also see the colour coding for the cables. to be honest i can never remember which colour is which. red white yellow but follow your manual and it will be a cinch once you get over the fear of playing with it. i think it might be yellow. it is always the same for every thing...your cd will have 2 plugs , your dvd has 3 (the third is video).

the good news is that it can cut down on the cost and volume of cables. i have 2 going onto my projector but have 3 things working

the cable box for tv, the playstation for games on one cable (i.e. projecotor to amp and amp to devices) and a seperate cables for the dvd.

remember you will have to tinker about a bit.

good luck

Yeah lower priced amps will have video inputs for whatever device you have connected.
For example this one here if you go to the yamaha website you can look at it's owners manual which on page 11 shows the rear connection panel diagram with the video inputs for each item you connect.

robbie1876

Elderlemon, a couple of considerations for you:

Firstly, budget to mid-range amp/receivers will only switch composite or S-Video, not RGB or Component. This is fine for your VCR and Playstation, and possibly your Digibox, but your DVD should really be running in RGB or Component video. This is particularly true if your display device is a plasma or projector. But even on a mid-range TV, you will notice the difference between 'normal' composite video and RGB (both are connected via scart, a TV usually has one or two RGB-enabled scart sockets).

So the way I set up high end systems (lets say a projector in this case) is to connect the DVD directly to the component video inputs to maintain the best DVD quality, and all other video sources are routed and switched through the amp, and usually fed to the projector in S-Video.

Another consideration is that nearly all amps are capable of video switching, but have no video processing ability. If you look at an amp's video inputs, there is usually a row of composite (yellow) inputs, and one monitor out. The same for S-Video. A source connected to the composite input will only be output on the yellow monitor out. Likewise for S-Video inputs, they only get fed to S-Video out.

Generally, amps don't convert the different video formats for you. This is significant, because you may want to hook up a VCR and a Digibox. The VCR can only give you composite, while the Digibox can give you composite and S-Video. So you end up running the Digibox in composite, which is the poorer format by a long way. Otherwise you end up connecting the digibox, DVD and the monitor output from the amp to your TV. But this sort of defeats the purpose of trying to switch video in the first place!

Only top end amps/receivers have facilities to convert between the various video formats.

Well, don't know if any of that was either relevant or useful, but there ya go!