How to wire Blu-ray home theater

AMG762

I have just purchased a panasonic blu-ray player home theater system. I have sky hd and a playstation 3 to connect.

The instructions on the home cinema system say to connect both the sky and ps3 via HDMI cable to it and then run one HDMI cable from the home cinema to the TV.

Please could somebody advise what the best option is for sound and picture quality.

I would normally connect the ps3 and sky on seperate HDMI leads straight to the TV. Then run digtial optical leads for the audio from both sky and ps3 into the home theatre (using an adaptor as only one digital optical input)

Thank you for any advise

Lum

All of your connections are digital so there is no quality loss involved in setting them up in any particular way*. Connecting it all via the new Panasonic system will result in less faffing around with inputs as you'll just leave the TV on HDMI1 with the sound muted and control everything via the Panasonic. It also stands a better chance of keeping the audio and video in sync this way.

The only possible reason I can think of to deviate from this would be if someone in your household is really hardcore about their PS3 gaming as going via the Panasonic may introduce a delay of a few milliseconds before the picture from the PS3 makes it to the TV, and some people complain about this.


* With one exception. DTS HD Master Audio can not be sent over optical, only over HDMI, so if you were to play a bluray on your PS3 it would degrade the quality back to normal DTS if you used optical

AMG762

Thanks for your reply. Will connect it all through HDMI. If I get killed more playing black ops2 online then will try the other option

Toxteth_OGrady

Lum wrote: »

* With one exception. DTS HD Master Audio can not be sent over optical, only over HDMI, so if you were to play a bluray on your PS3 it would degrade the quality back to normal DTS if you used optical

There's another - Sky box is stereo only over HDMI. Need to use optical to get DD 5.1 (if the show you're watching has it, usu. movies).

AMG762

I've just read on another forum that the sky box will only output 2 channel stereo sound through HDMI. And will give 5.1 audio through the optical sound cable. Can anyone verify if this is correct?

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-HD-Picture-Sound/Sky-HD-no-5-1-unless-I-unplug-HDMI/td-p/350347

AMG762

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

There's another - Sky box is stereo only over HDMI. Need to use optical to get DD 5.1 (if the show you're watching has it, usu. movies).

Thanks, I just read that.

Now I'm confused. Don't know what's the best option

Lum

Doesn't mention that in the manual for my Sky box... nasty.

In that case, PS2 and Sky over HDMI to the Panasonic, but also add an optical cable between the sky and the Panasonic, if it supports doing that?

Toxteth_OGrady

I run HDMI and optical from my Sky to my AV amp. For normal TV viewing with the TV's speakers the amp does HDMI video/audio passthru in standby. If I want full 5.1 surround with the AV amp on I have it configured to take audio from the Sky's optical rather than HDMI. Does require careful configuration/switching but I have it all embedded as saved macros in a Harmony remote.

InsideInsurance

Lum wrote: »

Doesn't mention that in the manual for my Sky box... nasty.

Not only that but their staff dont tend to know about the "feature" as I spoke to them a few years ago when upgrading my AVR to one with HDMI switching and they were going to book an engineers visit when I googled it and found about still needing the optical to get DD


The PS3 will also depend on what variant you have and if you use it for bluray playback or not. I cannot remember the details off hand but there was a limitation on the original PS3 "fat" model over what could go over Optical and HDMI for audio but this was resolved in the later "slim" versions. I am sure a google would show it up if it is the oldest version you still have

AMG762

InsideInsurance wrote: »

The PS3 will also depend on what variant you have and if you use it for bluray playback or not. I cannot remember the details off hand but there was a limitation on the original PS3 "fat" model over what could go over Optical and HDMI for audio but this was resolved in the later "slim" versions. I am sure a google would show it up if it is the oldest version you still have

Thanks, I have the old type fat ps3. I think I will just connect it along with sky by optical for the sound. Then run separate hdmi leads to the tv.

Thanks for your help

Toxteth_OGrady

AMG762 wrote: »

Thanks, I have the old type fat ps3. I think I will just connect it along with sky by optical for the sound. Then run separate hdmi leads to the tv.

Thanks for your help

The fat ps3 has a limitation in that it won't bitstream HD audio formats (e.g. DTS Master Audio) over HDMI into, for example, an AV amp to let the amp do the audio decoding.

You have to set the fat ps3 HDMI output to 'linear pcm' and let the ps3 do the decoding. That will still be better than using the optical output as you will get HD audio from, for example, blurays played on the ps3 over HDMI.

Optical cannot handle the bandwidth for HD audio so the PS3 will downsample the HD audio to Dolby Digital 5.1 which isn't as good - but you may not notice the difference.