I've spent the last few days in one shop after another looking at amps, TV's DVD recorders, etc. and I'm getting a bit mesmerised!

I really wanted to buy the Onkyo but I just can't find a suitable stand that will accommodate it with the other equipment. The setup needs to go in the corner of my room flanked by a radiator and window on one side and the fireplace and hearth on the other so width is a problem. I can't put the centre speaker in front of the telly as the TV stand is too shallow so, unless anyone can suggest a different method, it needs to go on one of the shelves in the stand.

I looked at the slimline AV receivers, the Pioneer VSX-S300 and the Marantz NR1403. I found reviews on both that put me off a bit.

A question I do have is what is 'Multi-channel Input' and do I need it? The spec on Richer Sounds for both says they don't have this even though they do Dolby HD and DTS HD.

I saw a review for the Marantz whereby someone said...

"I must say it was a bit confusing with the Audio Return Channel and the Standby Pass through features.
Standby pass through in this unit is too complicated you can either

1.pick the last input you used
2.specific input all the time

So if you want to just watch TV/play a game w/o surround sound and the receiver is set to a different input you have to

1.turn on the receiver
2.then select the input
3.then you can turn off the receiver.

If you don't do this no image will come on.

Adversely

If Passthrough is set to specific input then that's all it will passthrough and you have to turn the receiver on for all other inputs."

and another one wrote...

"The drawback is that I had hoped the "pass through" feature would allow me to watch TV with the receiver off when I wanted to. Unfortunately the receiver forgets that it is supposed to do pass through from the cable box to the TV. I get "no signal" when the receiver is turned off. And when I turn it on, it switches to "TV sourced" signal. The interactions (no doubt HDMI control driven) are extremely annoying and there are no settings available to make it behave."

This sounds like something that would annoy me too. Are they all like this?

Some people say the Pioneer's sound isn't too good, echo-like I think is the problem.

Any avice/suggestions would be useful.

My centre speaker (Q-Acoustics 2000CS) is big and strong enough to take a 60in TV if I had such a beast. It barely notices my 32in LG Mind you not all centre speakers are that big, or even have a flat top, to enable them to be used as a speaker stand. And of course it only really works if the TV is still at a sensible viewing height.

One option might be to wall mount the telly. Virtually all flat screen TVs come with mounting holes on a standard grid that matches a wide range of mounts. You can get ones that mount flat to the wall or (as you are in a corner) on an arm standing off the wall - often with swivel mounts so you can twist and turn the telly to point any direction you like. Something like that could be used to raise the TV above the speaker on your stand unit.

You can also get shelf units with a raised TV mount such as this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/1home-Cantil...dp/B00B73JE4W/

Just one of several variations on the theme.

Multi-Channel audio means the Blu-Ray player decodes the surround sound audio track and throws it up the HDMI lead as 6 or 8 discrete audio channels. Only really useful if the amp doers not understand the raw format of the audio track. However most modern amps can handle all the formats a Blu-Ray disk is likely to use so perhaps not such a problem if the amp can't handle multi channel audio inputs.

How likely are you to not use the amp for sound? I suspect once you have heard just how crap modern TV speakers are you won't want to go back after listening to a proper sound system. At least if you value sound quality at all. So the issue of HDMI passthrough might not be that big a deal breaker.

Mind you I haven't listened to my home TV via the built in speakers for 30 years or so! Or at least not for any length of time so the issues about passthrough never bother me (not entirely sure my Onkyo does it anyway )

HDMI control can drive you to drink I have turned off all vestiges of HDMI control on my kit so I stay in control. If I turn it on it is impossible to play an audio CD on my Blu-Ray player without having the telly on. If I put an audio CD in the player it says "ohh a disk, he must want the telly on". So it sends a wake up call to the TV which obligingly turns itself on. But I don't want the telly on, it's an audio CD after all, no pictures. So I turn the TV off. The TV thinks, "ohh he doesn't want to watch this disk so I'll turn the player off". And so the TV sends an OFF command to the player which then turns off. So I turn it back on to listen to the CD, well you can guess what happens next

Sometimes the technology tries to be too clever for it's own good and fails miserably. In that case hitting it with a big hammer and taking control yourself whether it likes it or not is the only way to restore sanity.

I would be surprised if Pioneer sounds bad. They do have a pretty decent reputation. Though with a lot of this kit it's not the big lump of metal sitting on the shelf that's the problem it's the big lump with the remote in his paw And of course if you leave the TV speakers going as well as the surround system you can get all sorts of nastiness if you aren't careful.

I'm almost there, phew!

I think I may have got around the centre speaker placement problem. I've seen a perspex riser on the internet which means I can put the DVD recorder over the top of the Sky box and place the speaker on the top shelf. Still can't buy my preferred stand but at least it's now doable.

I'm pretty much sold on the Onkyo but for £50 more I can get the TXNR515.

As far as I can see the advantages to me are:

1) it has 4k upscaling so is future-proof. (I don't want to go through all this again in a hurry, next time just the TV, sky box and DVD recorder )

2) It has two HDMI outputs. I'm thinking that, in time, I could attach either a long HDMI cable or an HD sender unit to the second output to beam signals to the kitchen telly. At the moment, I think these HD commodities are a bit overpriced but may come down in time. I'm uncertain whether this would mean the same thing has to be watched on both TVs or whether they are independent of each other.

Of course, if I eventually update the portable CRT TV in the bedroom (which is currently receiving non-HD signals from a non-HD sender unit) I take it I'll need some sort of switch box coming out of the Sky box anyway. Or can the switch box be attached to the Onkyo's second output, thus leaving the main TV to it's own HDMI output?

When I was in Richer Sounds, I can't remember which unit the assistant was talking about at the time, but I think he said in addition to the HDMI cable from the Amp to the TV I'd need to use another cable (optical I think he said) between TV and Amp if I wanted to hear the freeview from the TV. I'm getting confused here because I thought this was what ARC did.

Don't know about plasma TV speakers but, to date, we've been in the habit of turning the surround sound off if one of us goes to bed so as not to disturb them so would still want the option of being able to listen to TV speakers alone. Obviously, this wouldn't be when we were watching a 5.1 action film so multichannel input wouldn't come in here.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for 4k source material. And your shiny new 4k telly will upscale anyway so I wouldn't be too bothered if any amp I bought didn't do 4k myself.

As far as I can tell the two HDMI outputs switch in tandem. I couldn't see anything in the manual to indicate you could separate them.

A bit of wire is still the best way to get the signal from A to B You can get 20 or 30m HDMI leads fairly cheaply. I put one of these in at work on a ceiling mount projector to run over the false ceiling and round the walls to the front of the room

http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/ps...ead/dp/AV15873

works fine.And a hell of a lot cheaper than a HD sender. And if that's too cheap then perhaps one of these is more to your liking?

http://www.futureshop.co.uk/index.ph...=3d&filter_id=



You would need an HDMI splitter not a switch to send the HDMI signal to two destinations at the same time. A switch could be used if you want to feed only one at a time. Where you fit it depends on what you want to do. If you want to send the Sky box elsewhere while watching a DVD say then you would split the Sky box output. If you want whatever is being viewed on the main TV replicated on the other TVs use the HDMI Sub output on the 515.

The guy in Richersounds either didn't know what he was talking about or was talking about something else. The 515 does ARC and as long as you buy a telly with ARC then a single HDMI 1.4 lead should be all you need to get sound out of the telly.

Most flat panel TV speakers are pretty crap frankly. The cases for the TVs simply are not big enough for any sort of decent speaker to be fitted. There is a reason HiFi speakers don't come in boxes as thin as a fag paper So you may find yourself using the amp more often than you may be anticipating.

My Onkyo has a Dynamic Volume feature, effectively an audio compressor. What it does is reduce the variation in volume between the quiet and loud bits. That way you can turn the wick down so the loud bits don't annoy the neighbours (or the other half in bed ) but you can still hear the quiet bits clearly. And of course it has a headphone socket which a lot of modern TVs lack.

I hadn't realized that the long HDMI leads were quite so cheap. The guy in Richer Sounds was talking about £180 for 10M so I didn't think any more about it.

Hubby is sold on the Dynamic Volume feature which is not on 414 so this has swung us on getting the 515.

Regarding the splitter, we want to be able to watch Sky on the kitchen TV, via a new long HDMI cable, and have the choice of either watching the same Sky channel in the lounge or watch Freeview either from TV or DVD/Freeview box in the lounge.

Am I right in thinking that the splitter would go in between the Sky box and the Amp, then if we wanted to we'd be able to switch the input on the amp to say, TV or DVD, and watch that in the lounge whilst watching Sky in the kitchen?

Also, if we ever upgrade the bedroom TV, running a cable upstairs isn't an option so if we got a splitter with three outputs, then could an HD sender unit be plugged into the third output?

Does splitting the signal make it lose any quality? We wouldn't want to end up with a worse picture on the lounge TV. Are there any things I need to look out for when buying a splitter?

Thanks so much for all the time you're putting to this for me Chris.

Digital cables can be a complete rip off. Witness the absurdly stupid prices charged by the website on my second link! Anyone who spends a grand a metre for a cable has more pound coins than brain cells frankly. The only requirement for a digital cable is that the data gets from source to destination without being mangled in any way. Provided what comes out of the cable is as near as possible identical to what goes in then the cost of the cable is irrelevant. Spending more cannot get any improvement at all in picture quality.

The reason why Richersounds and especially Currys and their ilk point you at the more expensive cables has sod all to do with picture quality. It's all to do with the profit they make. So basically if a 2 quid cable produces a flawless data stream out the end there is absolutely no point buying a 2 grand cable to do the same job. You won't be able to tell any difference and all your friends will just think you've lost your marbles

The Onkyo 414 does have dynamic volume, though it's called Late Night mode now.

If you want to be able to watch Sky separately anywhere then the splitter has to go on the Sky box output. If you need three splits then I would look at an active splitter with it's own power supply. More likely to work. And I have seen on various forums that Sky boxes can be a bit picky about what's hanging off the HDMI socket. This one appears to work OK with Sky HD boxes and is not jaw droppingly expensive either.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet%C2%AE-S...dp/B002EACW82/

If you want a HDMI sender then you are looking at 100 quid plus for anything half decent if you want wireless. Much cheaper units need a cable connection between send and receive ends. But they can use ordinary CAT5 network cable and go further than a direct HDMI lead usually. CAT5 cable is cheap and can often be run easier than HDMI. NB although it uses what looks like the same leads and sockets as you use on your router you cannot plug them into a router or use those Homeplug devices that send network data over the mains.

I you decide to split the HDMI from Sky to the Kitchen and your Sky box has the latest update (HDMI enabled for 5.1), it might be a good idea to check the TV in the kitchen accepts a DD5.1 signal, some TV's do, some don't.

If it does all the better, if it does not there's a way around it, though it has it's drawbacks. You will need to reselect "Normal" in Sky's audio settings to get audio to the second TV, the downside is it will disable 5.1 on the main TV, to get around this you could use Sky's optical output for the main TV - not ideal but solves the problem.

Thanks guys. The TV and Blueray recorder/freeview box were ordered yesterday and TV stand is now bought and awaiting building by hubby tonight.

I've ordered the splitter that you linked to on Amazon, Chris, and we're going into Richer Sounds later to buy the Onkyo 414 and Tannoy TFX 5.1 speakers. I will also be buying a 10m HDMI cable from CPC.

I rang Sky today and have ordered the 2Tb box for £49 and will be self-installing it (that should be fun) as we have the correct cable already.

Sky couldn't give me an answer about whether the box will be able to send a 5.1 signal through the HDMI lead and the online manual and spec make no mention of this either. How will I know if I have this facility on the Sky box when it comes? Does it say something in the Sky box settings?

My kitchen telly is the Panasonic TX-L19E3B but I'm not sure what I need to look for in the book to know whether it accepts the 5.1 signal.

If I need to go down the optical cable route, is there any particular spec for these cables or are they all the same? Would there be any pros/cons to plugging the HDMI cable from the Sky box through the splitter to the main TV and attaching the optical cable from the Sky box to the amp or is it the same if both are attached to the amp?

One last thing, Chris. The Onkyo 414's manual says...

"The Late Night function can be used only when the input source is Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, or Dolby TrueHD."

Does this cover most TV broadcasts as that's what we'd probably be watching at that time of night?

The Panasonic TX-L19E3B manual indicates the HDMI can only handle PCM Stereo audio. It appears it can pass Dolby Digital trough to the Optical out to feed an external amplifier.

As for the Sky box, it may be worth having a stroll through the Satellite forum on DS. I have seen a few discussions on DD via HDMI on there so you might be able to find a few pointers there. And of course the Onkyo will indicate what format the audio is in anyway.

The only thing you need to avoid with optical cables are the really cheap ones. But as with HDMI if the cable allows the digital signal to pass unhindered then it mike no difference whatsoever what price you pay or what brand you buy. Avoid gimmicks like "gold plated" cables. Quite how gold plating an optical cable can improve it's ability to transfer light energy is beyond me.

If the Onkyo 414 is anything like my Onkyo you can do clever stuff like plug an HDMI and optical lead from the Sky box at the same time and configure the "SAT" button to pass pictures from the HDMI on to the telly and take the audio from the optical input rather than the HDMI. So you could connect the Sky box direct to the telly or go via the amp even though you are using optical for the audio in both instances. The advantage of going via the amp with both is you only have to press one button to get Sky picture s up on the telly and Sky noise from the speakers.

Late night function: Dolby Digital can be output by the HD channels. The SD channels tend to be stereo, as can the HD channels depending on the programme. However that may not be the disadvantage it first appears. The HD channels with Dolby Digital tend to have a wider dynamic range than SD channels. You can hear this flicking between the SD and HD versions of a channel, the SD version often sounds louder because it's dynamic range has been compressed to hell and back. So in effect the broadcasters are doing the job of the Late Night function for you.

Try it and see. The Late Night function just reduces the variation in volume between the loud and quiet bits so when you turn the volume down on the amp the quiet bits are still audible. As I said with the levels of dynamic range compression used these days you may not notice the difference on stereo sources.

Sorry to be so thick but does this mean I will have to do as Deacon1972 suggests and turn off the 5.1 in the Sky box settings and rig up an optical cable between the Sky box and the amp or does the pass through mean it's not needed?


You have me a bit concerned as I ordered this really cheap optical cable earlier today.

Btw, we got the amp and speakers today. It looks like Christmas in my front room and we have a bank balance to match! We haven't unwrapped the prezzies yet - not sure if we can do anything to test the Onkyo out and learn about it before the arrival of the new telly.

Pass through does exactly what it says on the tin. It takes a signal from an input and passes it through the device to an output without doing anything to it on the way. So you can fire a Dolby Digital surround signal at the telly and it can pass it on to the optical digital output but it cannot itself do anything internally with that signal.

So to get any noise from Sky in that instance you would need another amp and speaker set to decode the Dolby Digital signal on behalf of the telly. The TV itself doesn't know what to do with it bar chuck it out again for someone else to deal with

The TV can only handle plain vanilla stereo unaided. So you would ahve to set the Sky box HDMI to stereo. Good news is you can set the optical out to Dolby Surround independently of the HDMI so could have surround in the living room and stereo in the kitchen/bedroom at the same time.



Prosignal do some decent cables. I have bought various bits of RF and audio cabling off CPC made by them and not had any issues. The really cheap cables use poor quality optical fibres and tacky plastic plugs that get broken if you so much as look at them funny.

One thing to watch out for. A lot of sockets use little spring loaded dust caps that fold into the socket out of the way when you insert the plug. Be careful you don't snap the dust cap off. I have known that happen and the plug then won't stay in the socket, the dust cap acts like a retaining device with the spring pressing it against the plug to help secure the plug.


Have fun. Oh I hope you remembered to buy some speaker wire to go with the system (if not a bit of 6A mains cable will do the job, )

You can power up the amp and plug it all up to see if you get any sound out of it. And if it has the little mic to auto calibrate the system don't do it late at night! Your neighbours will not appreciate it. When I did mine the whoop noise it makes as it does it stuff is a bit loud!

And tell hubby he won't lose any man points if he reads the manual before setting it up. I know us blokes like to think manuals are for wimps, but even I had to refer to it a few times and I get paid to work with pro audio kit all day!

Your Sky box will either have current software on it when installed or the engineer will/should do an update during the instal.

The new software enables 5.1 over HDMI, of which your box is compatible with. From what I can make out you will need an optical from the Sky box to amp to deliver DD5.1 to the TV in the main room - the HDMI will deliver 2channel to the kitchen.

Once you have the cabling/spliter in place the Sky box settings should be.....

Sound Settings

Optical output > DolbyD

HDMI output > Normal

Thanks Chris and Deacon1972.

I will be the 'engineer' doing the Sky installation so I'll update the software and change the settings on the Sky box.

Chris, thanks for the heads up on the optical sockets - the Onkyo has this on the back. I hope we manage to work out which way the spring opens!

I haven't set up the Onkyo yet. I need to to update the software before anything else. They included a handy little USB stick with all the files on and the instructions look straightforward enough.

My hubby is worried about the air flow around the amp. When we were in Richer Sounds, we told them that the fixed shelf of the stand above the amp will only be about 1cm above the top of the amp. They said it would be OK but might shorten the life of the amp. Having started to fully read the manual last night, I see it says there should be a whopping 20cm above and beside the amp. Oh dear, we've got the perspex riser immediately to one side of it, the other side is open and the back may have a leg of the stand and possibly part of the cable tidy in the way. Here's the stand at Currys . We're really worried that the unit might catch fire. Do we need to rethink the stand or placement of the amp? I'd really appreciate your knowledge on this Chris as hubby is in a cold sweat.

My advice would be to have another look at how/where you are going to position the amp, 1cm is definitely not enough air gap. Is there a threat if fire, I'd say not, the amp should shut down automatically when it detects a problem like overheating/electrical short, but why run the risk.

I don't know how hot current Onkyo's run at, I recall older models running quite hot, my Denon gets very warm and that is in an open rack.

10cm should be ample on top providing it has good air gaps on the sides for air circulation.

The little doors on the optical sockets fold into the socket when you insert the plug. No need to worry about how they hinge, they usually get out of the way by themselves.

In my unit there is a gap above my Onkyo of about 5cm (2in in old money ) and about 1cm either side. It does run a bit warmer than room temperature but nowhere near hot. That is in an enclosed wooden unit with only the front open to the room. The stand you have linked to is open all round so there will be a much better air flow than in my unit. that may well compensate for the reduced gap above.

But if possible you should try and get a bigger gap. However there is no chance of it getting hot enough to cause any damage. Your neighbours are likely to be causing damage to your front door complaining about the noise before the amp gets too hot! And one would hope Onkyo have put in a thermal overload protection circuit that shuts it off before it gets so hot it damages itself. Catching fire is unlikely to happen if it is working properly.

You're going to think we're daft but we got in such a panic yesterday that we went back to the shop and swapped the amp and speakers for the Yamaha YHT298 package. It's 20cm shorter than the Onkyo.

When we were in the shop, we asked the chap to look in the safety instructions to see what clearnace we needed. Some confusion must have crept in somewhere along the line because we thought he said it needed 30mm above. When we got home and read it ourselves it said 30cm not mm so it's even worse than the Onkyo for clearance!

Because the unit is shorter, we now have 3cm above rather than the 1cm we had with the Onkyo so we think we will probably keep it. Do you think this is a safer bet because there's a tiny bit more room or should we look for another stand as well?

There is no chance at all of it bursting into flames simply due to a lack of ventilation. All that will happen is it will either shut down due to the thermal protection kicking in or the power transistors will fry and stop working.

The only way the amp could get hot enough for that to happen would be if you ran it flat out all the time. Which I doubt you will be doing

Just want to say a big thank you to everyone for your help and especially to Chris for his patience in answering what are probably elementary questions.

The TV is due to arrive on Thursday so I will post again and let you all know how I get on.

Cheers, Annie

I thought I'd check in and say how I've been getting on with the new system. Unfortunately, 'not very well' is the answer.

Once the TV arrived we tried the Yamaha amp and fiddled around with all the settings but just couldn't watch a DVD through without continually turning the volume up and then down again. So in the end we decided we had to take it back.

We then went to the Panasonic shop and in our haste bought the SC-BTT500 cinema surround system. Whilst the differential between the speakers is better, I'm having great trouble adapting to the new set up. I currently have a cold and I'm sure it's affecting my hearing but I've been having trouble deciphering the dialogue, especially when there are other sounds in the background. Not only that, but I find that quite a lot of the time pure dialogue, especially women, can still sound tinny or echo-y, if such a word exists. I've tried all the different sound settings and I'm driving hubby mad but I can't help it if I can't pick out the words.

I'd like to clarify something. I'm sure I asked in the shop if the SC-BTT500 output 5.1 surround sound from, not only a disc, but also from the TV or Sky if a program was being broadcast in 5.1 and I thought they said yes. I've been trying to figure out the instructions but I just don't get it. Can anyone tell me if this is the case or if the 5.1 sound will only come if playing a DVD?

In my attempts to try and hear the dialogue, I've been playing around with the connections. I feel the sound is slightly better (for my hearing) when I plug the Sky box and Blu-ray/Freeview Recorder (Panasonic DMR-BWT735) into the TV and rely upon the HDMI ARC function to send the sound to the Cinema Surround system. I know this isn't the way it was designed to be set up and it seems the TV (Panasonic TX-P42GT60B) won't pass through any Dolby Digital sound to the Cinema Surround system. However, if the answer to my question above is in actual fact 'No' then this won't make a difference, will it?

I'm surprised how much I have to put the volume up on both the Sky box and the DMR-BWT735 when they are plugged into the Cinema Surround system as opposed to the TV (about 50% although the DMR-BWT735 is a bit louder than the Sky box).

If I have the external equipment plugged into the Cinema Surround system, then I can't find a way to get the Lip sync problem sorted out on the TV speakers - if they're plugged into the TV then all three boxes have a lip sync control that I can play with although setting it on just the Cinema Surround system will do. Is there a way to sort this problem out as I'm finding with my hearing difficulties that sometimes I'd rather listen to the TV speakers. I'm regretting having thrown out our old Sony surround system.

The last thing I want to discuss (and this is driving me mad) is there are strange shapes which appear momentarily on some programs/DVDs. It seems to happen when a person moves on screen. It's as if the air around them has somehow been displaced and a little ripple-effect appears very briefly. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'm thinking this may have something to do with resolution or upscaling or something. I've tried altering different picture settings one-by-one on all devices, including the TV, but I don't really understand the instructions or the technical stuff and nothing I've tried seems to work although they have introduced other problems so I've switched them back. Please, please can someone advise me!! And before you say it Chris, I probably should have found a way to accommodate the Onkyo but that's all too late now.

Oh dear. There is no reason why the Yamaha system shouldn't have worked. So maybe it wasn't set up correctly. Not sure if the Yamaha has an auto calibration system to configure the speakers or not but if it had then running that should have been the first thing you did.

It is also vitally important that you get all the speakers connected correctly. All the +ve amp terminals must be connected to the speaker +ve terminals and similarly for the -ve. If you reverse +ve and -ve on one speaker, especially the centre that can wreck the sound.

Most of the dialogue usually comes out of the centre speaker so you need to make sure it is connected properly and the level of that speaker relative to the others is set correctly. On my system it blasts test tones out of each speaker in turn. A microphone picks up these tones and the receiver analyses the result and adjusts the speakers accordingly. It can also generate a test noise that can be switched to each speaker in turn so that you can make manual adjustments as necessary. So using these tools you can ensure that all speakers are balanced relative to each other. If the centre speaker is lower level than the others or the +ve and -ve leads reversed that could make dialogue harder to hear. I've only skimmed the manual for the Panasonic system so not sure if it has any similar tools to help set it up.

The other thing with DVDs is the audio has a far wider dynamic range than TV. That is the difference in loudness between the quiet bits and the loud bits. TV broadcasters use compressors to reduce this range, often very severely so it can come as a bit of a shock when you watch the DVD on a decent sound system and the effects blow you off your seat because you were not expecting them to be so loud!

Without reading the manual fully I can't say if the Panasonic has a way to adjust the volume of the centre speaker independently of the rest of the speakers. That is something I use to good effect watching movies. I boost the centre speaker volume to make the dialogue stand out more and run the system at a lower overall volume so the effects don't blow my ear drums out.

As for running everything via the TV. I would suspect you are only feeding stereo to the Panasonic surround system. I did notice in the manual that a troubleshooting entry did mention that if you get no sound via the Optical digital in that you should set the source to PCM Stereo. Which sort of implies to me that it can't handle surround from external sources. Though it does appear to have Dolby ProLogic which will generate a surround effect from stereo.

If you use the stereo feed available from the TV and Sky box then that is very likely to have more dynamic range compression applied than the surround sound feed. That means the loud bits are quieter and the quiet bit louder so the average volume is louder. Thus the dialogue is more prominent than if no compression was applied.

And for the TV picture settings. Go into the setup menu and if you see anything with the word "Dynamic" or "Enhanced" or similar turn it off. In my experience all these so called picture enhancement things do is knacker the picture quality. It was one of the first things I did on my telly and I have never had cause to regret it.