Buying a sound bar help

jlighthi

05-02-2016

Hi there.

I have a cheapish DVD Home Entertainment system. Just moved house and there are to many speakers and wires. Is there an option to use a sound bar instead so that all the Tv, Sky and DVD goes through the Sound Bar? My TV volume is rubbish otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Grateful for your thoughts.

Thank you

Nigel Goodwin

05-02-2016

Originally Posted by jlighthi:
“Hi there.

I have a cheapish DVD Home Entertainment system. Just moved house and there are to many speakers and wires. Is there an option to use a sound bar instead so that all the Tv, Sky and DVD goes through the Sound Bar? My TV volume is rubbish otherwise I wouldn't bother. ”

Yes, it's what sound bars are for - either connect it via optical out from the TV, or analogue audio out from the TV - whichever your TV (and sound bar) has.

You might also be able to connect it via HDMI if the TV has an ARC socket, and the sound bar has HDMI.

chrisjr

05-02-2016

Depending on your existing system it might be possible to just use the front left & right speakers only and ditch the rest. It depends if you can turn off all the surround sound decoding options and run it in plain stereo mode.

Chris Frost

05-02-2016

A soundbar will work okay. Presuming that your TV has optical out then get one with an optical audio input. That way the sound from your TV can be routed to the soundbar. This will cover the TV's HDMI and AV inputs plus sound from the TV tuner and any Smart features the TV has.

Your DVD surround system is unlikely to have a sound output for connecting DVD audio to anything else. The simple solution is to replace the DVD player/surround unit with either a basic DVD player or a Blu-ray player. A budget Blu-ray player will play your British DVDs as well as the newer format.

Smufter

06-02-2016

I've recently swapped out from a 5.1 system to a Sony soundbar and am reasonably happy with it.
The sound quality is not as good as the 5.1 system obviously but is perfectly adequate for our small(ish) living room, certainly a lot, lot better than the TV's built in speakers.
The plus points far outweigh the negatives.
No trailing wires, no speakers to continually pick up dust and fingerprints, and the whole package looks a lot neater.
We have it connected via HDMI, it has a wireless sub and everything works seamlessly through it.

Nigel Goodwin

06-02-2016

Originally Posted by Smufter:
“I've recently swapped out from a 5.1 system to a Sony soundbar and am reasonably happy with it.
The sound quality is not as good as the 5.1 system obviously but is perfectly adequate for our small(ish) living room, certainly a lot, lot better than the TV's built in speakers.
The plus points far outweigh the negatives.
No trailing wires, no speakers to continually pick up dust and fingerprints, and the whole package looks a lot neater.
We have it connected via HDMI, it has a wireless sub and everything works seamlessly through it.”

Watch out for the stupid 'night' button - if you press it by accident it essentially turns the sub-woofer off, and depending on the model there's no indication it's set.