What Home Cinema System to purchase?

Help connecting home cinema system?

• hi hoping someone could help me here im not great with technology and just got a home cinema system, ps3 and sky hd (television provider if your in the us like cable) but im having a problem connecting my ps3 and the sky hd to the home cinema so i can get 5.1 surround sound.i have connected the ps3 to the tv via hdmi the sky box to the tv via hdmi and the home cinema via hdmi now this is the bit i dont understand how do i connect the ps3 and sky to the hc system to get the surround there is an optical slot or whatever its called on the ps3 and the sky box is it just a case of connecting the opticals up? im really banging my head against the wall here if you guys could help me out then id be most grateful cheers!!!!!!!!:-{)

• Answer:

  With some newer 5.1 systems it's possible to connect the HDMI from the Sky/PS3 directly to the surround system itself, then to the TV from the system, so the video signal AND the audio signal are routed through the surround system before heading to the TV. If you do not have this capability then your initial assumption is correct, simply get two optical SPDIF cables then plug them in. Please note that on some systems you may have to switch the optical output on (I have to do this on my PC and laptop). If you look at the port and it is lit up red then it is likely it is already switched on. Some devices are set to output audio primarily from the analogue jack port, with the digital output secondary as not everyone utilises it. Therefore some manufacturers have it switched off by default. The PS3 can be configured from your settings menu on the cross media bar. A PC would be configured from your soundcard settings dialogue. Not sure about Sky boxes though, I dare it will be easy enough to find the setting in the menus. I use optical SPDIF on my surround system, both from my PC and my PS3.