Please help me sort out my TV

[mjr]

Personally I mostly listen to the wireless.

Have you flashed the update to enable DAB+ yet? Now that was annoying.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Why feed the picture channel through the Audio amp ?

Because the other input is the DVD player and by feeding it through the amp it switches input for me without having to plug and unplug the monitor cable.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Well, the idea is it's less not more. You route dvd, sat box, vhs, game console whatever all to the amp. Then the amp simply passes the video signal to the monitor and processes the audio, thus you only ever have the one video 'in' on the monitor (and far less video wiring).
Otherwise you have to route all the audio to the amp, and all the video to the monitor. Then switch the amp to 'satellite receiver' and also the monitor to 'satellite receiver' (or whichever).
FWIW I pretty much replaced all of those sources with a PC. so it's all moot from what it used to be in my case.
So much for my stfu...... also this probably isn't what YS has so I won't bang on off topic further.

Yes, that's why - the amp does all the switching and I only have one wire going to the monitor.

It seems to me that I'll have to buy whatever iPlayer/dig sat decoder I can afford and then plug that into a HDMI converter to get White/Yellow/Red for the amp. Will that work? Does such a black box convert from digital to analogue?

 

[raleighnut]

Because the other input is the DVD player and by feeding it through the amp it switches input for me without having to plug and unplug the monitor cable.

Fair enough.

 

[bruce1530]

By dropping both your sat and your DVD down to composite just to allow switching, you are making big sacrifices in quality.

 

[steve50]

Yes, that's why - the amp does all the switching and I only have one wire going to the monitor.

It seems to me that I'll have to buy whatever iPlayer/dig sat decoder I can afford and then plug that into a HDMI converter to get White/Yellow/Red for the amp. Will that work? Does such a black box convert from digital to analogue?

You could always bin your old amp and go all modern, A reasonably priced HDMI amp will give you all you have now with High definition picture quality, http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...2.A0.H0.Xhdmi+amp.TRS0&_nkw=hdmi+amp&_sacat=0
In fact this one does the lot for under £100, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-RX...789454?hash=item23737344ce:g:oJwAAOSw8w1X7mKw

 

[Globalti]

You know what you need to do YS? Get the local TV shop to come in and set it all up properly for digital.

We've been plagued for years by TV reception problems and the homehub dropping out so in the summer we took the plunge and paid to have special wiring installed throughout the house for the TV and various computers. It was done very well by running the cables behind the downpipes outside and we now have glitch-free reception for everything. When we come to sell the house I'm sure it will be a good selling point.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

You know what you need to do YS? Get the local TV shop to come in and set it all up properly for digital.

We've been plagued for years by TV reception problems and the homehub dropping out so in the summer we took the plunge and paid to have special wiring installed throughout the house for the TV and various computers. It was done very well by running the cables behind the downpipes outside and we now have glitch-free reception for everything. When we come to sell the house I'm sure it will be a good selling point.

Thanks but you've seen the place where we live. Ain't no "local TV shop" here, hence my online research before I hit the nearest bit city armed with information. I'm also trying to keep it simple. Some years ago I convinced myself that we need 5+1 and all that. Quite frankly, it was a con. I don't feel the need for all that dramatic sound. To the point where I now have the sub-, centre and back speakers in the attic. I feel that I miss nothing. The wiring is thus simple - two speaker wires coming out the amp going to the speakers (still oversized for the job) next to the monitor console.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

You could always bin your old amp and go all modern, A reasonably priced HDMI amp will give you all you have now with High definition picture quality, http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...2.A0.H0.Xhdmi+amp.TRS0&_nkw=hdmi+amp&_sacat=0
In fact this one does the lot for under £100, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-RX...789454?hash=item23737344ce:g:oJwAAOSw8w1X7mKw

I knew someone was going to say something sensible, like "bite the bullet" but I don't want to hear it...quite yet. The current amp is a nice NAD and selling it on will be a hassle and raise just a few pounds, I suspect.

Thanks for all your advice. I think what I'll do is get a new-fangled decoder thing and buy a HDMI-to-composite converter and see how it goes. If something else in the chain just as much as malfunction once, I'll bin the lot and get a proper TV set with everything built in - amp, speakers, DVD, the lot.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Thanks everyone. I think I've discovered how to sort this out in the short term.

 

[keithmac]

HDMI is the way forward, nice clean picture (even better in HD!).

I bearly turn our surround sound on, for what we watch the TV does fine for 90% of it..

I'm loath to binning stuff for the sake of it, can't you use a decent HDMI TV with it's Audio passed to your Amp?, that's what our surround does (but via HDMI).

Buying more composite gear in this day and age seems a bit like dead money to me?.

HDMI is one cable per device, very clean installation (I hate wires everywhere!).

 

[Yellow Saddle]

HDMI is the way forward, nice clean picture (even better in HD!).

I bearly turn our surround sound on, for what we watch the TV does fine for 90% of it..

I'm loath to binning stuff for the sake of it, can't you use a decent HDMI TV with it's Audio passed to your Amp?, that's what our surround does (but via HDMI).

Buying more composite gear in this day and age seems a bit like dead money to me?.

HDMI is one cable per device, very clean installation (I hate wires everywhere!).

Even better. I just tried this and it works! I now have HDMI going directly to the monitor but tapping the SCART's audio cables to go to the amp. Sound comes out the big speakers and image bypasses the amp. This is what Raleighnut suggested and I said that it kills the auto-switching from the DVD. However, the DVD is now sidelined. I'll figure out how to connect that with minimal fuss later.
I'm eyeing the optical connections on the Sat decoder and amp. Is optical sound-only?

 

[EnPassant]

Is optical sound-only?

Yes.

Edit to add: even more correctly - yes

 

[raleighnut]

Even better. I just tried this and it works! I now have HDMI going directly to the monitor but tapping the SCART's audio cables to go to the amp. Sound comes out the big speakers and image bypasses the amp. This is what Raleighnut suggested and I said that it kills the auto-switching from the DVD. However, the DVD is now sidelined. I'll figure out how to connect that with minimal fuss later.
I'm eyeing the optical connections on the Sat decoder and amp. Is optical sound-only?

Yep Optical is audio only, is the DVD a player or a player recorder, If the latter then feed the decoder in as a source and use the DVD as your switching unit, it will mean having the DVD switched on to watch TV but hey-ho.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Yep Optical is audio only, is the DVD a player or a player recorder, If the latter then feed the decoder in as a source and use the DVD as your switching unit, it will mean having the DVD switched on to watch TV but hey-ho.

The DVD is a player/recorder/time-delay recorder. It is intended as a pass-through device that lets you record as you watch live TV and then buffers it when you have to get up and get a beer. Once you are refreshed, you "un-pause" and watch the rest of the program.

As you can see, it only has an Aerial input. Before my iPlayer days it worked perfectly on a terrestrial antenna and analogue signal. Now I just use it to play DVDs but it would be nice to fit this into the system as well.

To summarise:
Signal arrives via digital satellilte and is decoded in a box that outputs HDMI directly to the monitor and sound via optical link to the amp. The satellite decoder also has a SCART output. iPlayer from broadband is now irrelevant because BBC no longer supports that particular Manhattan decoder for iPlayer.

How do I do that?

EDIT: Cancel all that. I have now found out that the current set-top boxes have USB out so that you can plug in an external hard drive and do PVR like that. Perfect. Problem solved. Thanks for all the advice.