Audio Out from TV. Dolby?

"T.T."

5.1 Dolby surround is a digital signal - normally provided via a optical ( Toslink) or single RCA jack via co-ax cable.

The DVD player will have one or both such on the back.

....... Phil

Thanks Phil A long time ago, having a couple of spare speakers and a goodish amp, I bought a Kenwood SS-3300 add-on surround sound processor. It took the Audio Out from the VCR, and drove a centre speaker and two surround speakers. The surround speakers were called left and right, but did not receive different signals. From the Line Out of the Kenwood, left and right cables connected to the Aux of the existing amplifier, which drove the normal left and right stereo speakers. This meant that any broadcast program, or any videocassette, which was Dolby encoded produced surround sound and it was spectacular. So evidently whatever came out of the Audio Out of the VCR (whether broadcast or from a videocassette) included whatever information was necessary to be decoded into a centre speaker and a surround signal for the two rear speakers. I was told that those same signals (still including whatever was needed for surround) were available at the Audio Out at the rear of the Sharp TV. It seems I was misled. What IS certain is that I will have to undo a day's work laying cables under the house. (Amongst the spiders and their multi-legged friends)

Here is my current understanding of the situation.

1. There is ONE Video Out socket at the back of the Yamaha, and that will connect to (say) AV1 on the TV.
2. The DVD player will connect to the Yamaha via an optical cable for the sound, and a video cable for the video.
3. The VCR will connect to the Yamaha via AV cables.
4. Broadcast programs will use the VCR tuner.
5. The sound from broadcast programs and videocassettes, where appropriate, will have surround sound.
6. DVD sound will, where appropriate, be in 5.1 surround.
7. The co-ax from the antenna will go to the VCR, but need not go from there to the TV.

I will be grateful for any comments. I am not going to get much help from the retailer.

No. You can only get surround from a 2 channel source if your processor has "Dolby Surround" and the source material is encoded as such. But Dolby Surround is NOT 5.1 Otherwise you will have to use Dolby ProLogic II to get "simulated" 5.1 surround. PLII does a pretty darn good job though.

You have to connect your DVD player directly to your surround amp via digital coax or optical cable. Connecting a DVD player via the normal stereo jacks would be silly as you'd lose all the nice Dolby Digital encoding which most DVD's have.

A usual surround setup will use the surround receiver as the input switching system and the TV as simply the "output" device. That way the receiver can choose the best decoding method from the source it has available. eg. you'd connect your STB, VCR, DVD, XBox/PS2 into the surround receiver inputs, and let the receiver do all the video and audio switching.

Dave :)

You were not misled, you are completely correct. That is called "Dolby Surround". It is a method of encoding 4 channel (2 front + centre + 1 surround) into a normal 2 channel stero signal. See

"Dolby Digital" is now the most widely used, especially for DVD's. This is a digital signal instead of the usual 2 ch analog used by Dolby Surround.

Only if your receiver can switch s-video. If it can only switch composite (RCA) then you are better off connecting the DVD stright to the s-video in of the TV.

Get yourself a favour and get yourself a digital TV STB. You'll get better sound and picture, and you can then switch all your video and audio through the surround receiver and never have to change input modes on the TV again.

Dave :)

Thank you all. I have set up the system as described in steps 1 to 7 above. It works impressively. There are probably improvements I can make, but I will be content for the time being.