How do i connect my music system to the tv?

Connect 5.1 home theater to FULL HD 42 TV?

• I`m trying to connect a 5.1 Home theater speakers with an active sub woofer with RCA cables to my DVD and from my DVD with an HDMI cable to my TV. The problem is it does not work. I`m connecting all the cables the way instructed and when i try to listen to music on my TV or watch a DVD on it, it still uses the TV speakers instead of the 5.1 home theater speakers. - The 5.1 speaker system has the standard input and and additional plug labeled 5.1 channel input. - The DVD has the standard plugs plus HDMI and Optical - The TV has the standard plugs plus HDMI How can we make this work? I will be getting a ps3 slim in about 2 weeks so i was planing to hook up my 5.1 speakers to my DVD with RCA cables, my DVD will be connected with optical cable to my PS3 and my PS3 will be connected with HDMI to my TV. Will this setup work?

• Answer:

  What's happening is that your HDMI cable is sending video and audio to your TV. Since you didn't tell us what kind of receiver you have, which is extremely important information, I can't only guess at some potential solutions. The best way to connect a surround sound system is to connect all of your devices (DVD, PS3, etc.) to your surround sound receiver. Then use the video output of your receiver to send video to your TV. What this does is uses your TV like a monitor. The inputs will never have to be changed, nor the volume or channel. Unfortunately, if you bought a cheap HTiB (home theater in a box) system, you will not have this option since those things rarely have more than one input and almost never have any outputs. If this is the case, you will need to connect all of your components to your TV and then use the audio output of your TV to send sound to your receiver. If your TV doesn't have an audio output and your receiver doesn't have multiple inputs for your devices, then I hate to be the one to tell you, but your system isn't compatible.