I've got my surround sound set up with it connected to my dvd player yellow cable I think. That all works fine for watching a dvd.

What I want is to be able to have it connected to my tv. My tv has an optical input. So can get an optical cable and have that connected as well as to the dvd player? Are all optical cables the same? Will any I buy fit?

If you want to get sound OUT of the TV to use the surround sound speakers to listen to telly programmes then you need an OUTPUT on the TV not an INPUT and an input on the surround system.

So assuming you did mean the TV has an optical output and the surround system has an optical input then you should be able to hook the two together. There are two main types of optical connector. One is a small square shaped plug and the other resembles a stereo jack plug like you might have on the headphones of an mp3 player.

But provided the cable you buy has the right type of connector for TV and Surround system then it shouldn't matter what cable you get. Your TV and Surround system are more likely to have the square "Tos-Link" connector which is a standard format so you shouldn't find any cable that didn't fit.

But bear in mind that the TV output will be mainly stereo. You may get the odd programme with a Dolby ProLogic sound track but you will be very unlikely to get anything resembling true surround like the DVD player provides. Depending on how your surround system works this could mean sound out of only the front speakers or the same sound from front and rears. Better still would be being able to pass the sound through a Dolby ProLogic circuit which can generate a pretty decent surround effect.

If you're using the yellow phono connector to connect the DVD to the TV, then you'll be getting very poor picture quality compared to what it can actually achieve. It is better to connect a DVD player to a TV via an S-Video or RGB via SCART, because these offer improved picture quality.

Do TVs have optical/coax SPDIF OUTPUTS? Or even inputs for that matter.

Most TVs sound hopeless, it s far better to have a separate surround sound amp or receiver, with a carefully matched speaker set.

If you use an AV Surround Sound amp/receiver you can switch from input device to input device without using the TV remote. But for most people who have TVs with multiple inputs a surround sound audio amp/receiver is sufficient. You just need to change input channel on the amp when you change the input device on the TV.

A good quality learning remote can resolve that issue, as they have macro facilities - 1 touch, several device compatibility.

I was making the assumption the phono connection was SPDIF coax out from the DVD player to the Surround system. Though it is not exactly obvious.

Though it could be an all in one DVD/Surround system. In which case you could be right and the "yellow cable" is composite video. After all SPDIF sockets are usually orange, not too different.


I've seen several LG, Sony and Panasonic sets with digital outputs.


Agreed. I don't think I have listened to a TV at home via it's internal speaker for the thick end of 25 years! Or maybe longer, can't remember when I first plugged the TV into the HiFi amp.

I do however recall that it had a DIN socket behind a flap on the front of the TV as the audio out. I cut out a neat round hole in the flap so I could plug into the socket with it closed

Thanks for the advice. I have the dvd player conneceted with a scdart it's just connected to the surround sound system with a yell coaxial cable I think.

So basically it's not really worth connecting it to the tv then?

There may be some worth connecting the TV to the surround system. As we've discussed above TV speakers are generally crap, certainly likely to be worse than your surround system (and if they are better than your surround system then I would seriously advise getting a better surround system ).

So you will hear an improvement in sound. As I said you won't get true Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 surround sound as you would from your DVD. But if your surround system has Dolby ProLogic and can feed an external stereo signal through it then you will get a reasonable facsimile of surround sound.

As I said I haven't listened to TV sound via a TV speaker at home for very many years and believe me it is worth hooking up the telly to a decent sound system if you value good audio quality. Then again I was the village nerd who many moons ago as a teen spent more on the cartridge for my turntable than all my mates spent on their record players combined