[Smint]

Bear with me, as H has chosen the equipment, but it'll be me on my hands and knees sticking things in sockets

Very shortly we shall be connecting together the following:

Pioneer Kudo PDP LX 5090 TV
Humax Foxsat Recorder
BT Vision box
Panasonic DMR EH80VEB (Hard drive/DVD/Video recorder)
Pioneer VSX 1016V-S Amp
Sony Blu-ray DVD player BDP S550

A couple of questions:

1. Is it correct to connect the TV via HDMI to the:
Humax Foxsat
BY Vision Box
Sony Blu-ray DVD player

AND

the TV to the Pioner Amp via the SR+ connection

AND

the TV to the Panasonic DVD/video via Optical/S-video?

2. Do we need to connect the individual components to the Amp, or will the connection to the TV run everything?

3. Does the Freesat dish have another box (dear God, I hope not!) or does it connect straight into the Humax Foxsat?

Many thanks

[niall campbell]

get an amp that can handle HDMI 1.3

and several HDMI inputs

these amps can allow you to connect everything up to them and 1 HDMI cable to telly

and does that amp handle sound via HDMI??

[Smint]

Thanks for replying, Niall

The amp does handle sound via HDMI (not sure whether it's 1.3, but we already have the amp so we're kind of stuck with this one), but as we're connecting a Pioneer amp to a Pioneer TV, the manual seems to imply that the SR+ cable gives extra features (eg. on screen displays from the amp onto the TV)

If we don't use this SR+ cable from the TV to the amp, then I think we'd need another HDMI connection into the TV and it only has 3

I did tell H not to buy a heap of junk, but would he listen?

The amp has 2 HDMI inputs and 1 output. So should the amp be acting as the "controller" rather than my set up of everything going to the TV? In which case it wouldn't have enough HDMI inputs

[niall campbell]

the amp as far as I know is HDMI 1.2, just I thought there was something it couldnt do sound over HDMI cable

anyway you will need to look at back of amp and tell us what connections it has

[Smint]

Well, I think we're almost there - collected the TV and Blu-ray DVD player this morning and set it up this afternoon - and it was worringly easier than I'd anticipated!

Just waiting for delivery of the SR+ cable to link the TV to the Amp (done a temp job with an optical link and red/white pairing of cables), but the rest of the things are connected - apart from the Humax Foxsat which is arriving shortly and will just HDMI into the TV, and the Freesat which we have to arrange fitting - hopefully that will just plug into the Humax Foxsat

Of course, we really needed ANOTHER two remote controls and a cardboard city, and I'm sure I'll get used to the monster TV eventually . . . just need a Blu-ray DVD to really test it all out, and a degree in electrical engineering to make sure everything's working as it should!

I may well be back with more questions!