[Brian Fantana]

I currently own a 32 inch HDTV, which came with this:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...&category_oid=

A home cinema dvd setup. Now, for some reason, there's only one scart into the back of the home cinema dvd. So i can only really get either the dvd and the sky on surround sound, or the dvd and Xbox360 on surround sound. Is there any other way around this, so i can get all 3 connected up? I've bought a scart splitter for 99p from ebay, would this work? Just so i could have it all hooked up without having to pull the back out, rearrange cables etc.

[chrisjr]

You won't get surround via SCART anyway. All that carries is Stereo. if you want true surround then you will need a Digital Audio input of some description which the Sony does not have.

But if all you have is SCART then get a manual switch. The automatic ones tend not to work very well.

[broadz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisjr

You won't get surround via SCART anyway. All that carries is Stereo. if you want true surround then you will need a Digital Audio input of some description which the Sony does not have.

But if all you have is SCART then get a manual switch. The automatic ones tend not to work very well.

What Chris means is you won't get Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS surround sound. You will get (at best) Dolby Pro-Logic, where a stereo signal is interpreted as surround sound, so you will get audio from your centre speaker and your surround speakers, but the sound will not be discrete six channel audio like you can get from DVDs played on your home cinema.

[chrisjr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by broadz

What Chris means is you won't get Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS surround sound. You will get (at best) Dolby Pro-Logic, where a stereo signal is interpreted as surround sound, so you will get audio from your centre speaker and your surround speakers, but the sound will not be discrete six channel audio like you can get from DVDs played on your home cinema.

Actually technically I was wrong.

SCART is an analogue two channel audio delivery system. Which could be Stereo, or it could be mono. Or it could be a Surround Sound signal in the form of a ProLogic encoded source.

ProLogic can both extract a surround sound effect from an ordinary Stereo source or it can be used to encode a multichannel source into two channels for transmisssion. A normal stereo system just sees it as stereo. A ProLogic system however can extract the encoded surround information to recreate the original multichannel source (fairly accurately).

But even so it won't be 5.1 surround as you would get with Doby Digital or DTS from a DVD, but better than processed stereo.

But it is unlikely, though not impossible, that your various bits of kit will output a ProLogic signal. The Sky box may if the TV programme you are watching has a ProLogic sound track. but the XBOX probably won't.