Home Theater Connection Guide

In the last month and a half, we did quite a few AV receivers, plus there are some new ones from Onkyo and Denon. TVs have started featuring 4 HDMI slots and we have so any choices like BigTV and Tata Sky PLus that increase our list of Digital connections besides the regular PS3 and DVD player. Then there are multi-room setups, the list goes on... The AV receiver is the hub of all Home Theater systems; take one look at the back panel and you will realize the numerous possibilities of connecting and routing things to it. In this simple guide, we will outline a few explanations of the connections and names of different slots and jacks that are used in the AV receiver.

Think of the AV receivers as the central terminus of signals, and most importantly one must realize that signals pass both ways, that is both audio and video signals can come in and out of the receiver. Sometimes the signals are decoded/amplified or sometimes they just pass through unprocessed. Both situations will be encountered, and in our AV test lab, we have a Harman Kardon AVR, which I will be referring to throughout. Please refer to pics to make things simpler.

The main connections used these days are HDMI, component video, optical, coaxial for digital audio, and of course we have old school analog connections for video and audio, in the form of single, double or triple RCA plugs.

Flatscreen TV, Projector
This one is the easiest, and generally should be done first. One point I would like to make here is that it is always recommended to connect your TV also to the AV receiver. Many people directly connect the DVD/Blu ray player to the TV, which is fine but sometimes the AV receiver’s upscaling/processing  can be a boon (only if it's high end), plus it makes the rest of the Home theater connection much simpler and organized. It's good to have a central hub, thus switching/controlling devices will need the use of only one remote. So, first things first. Plug your AV receiver’s HDMI out to one of the HDMI ins in the TV. The lowest price of an HDMI cable is about Rs. 350.

Even the sound output from your TV should be routed into your AV receiver, so if your TV has a Coaxial Digital audio out (it will look like any normal RCA plug) then use a nice quality RCA cable and put it into one of the 'Coax' ins on your receiver. If the TV has no digital audio out, it’s fine. As of now in India we don't really get anything cool like 5.1 sound etc. on our cable TV. Even so, take the regular 2 pin RCA wire and plug it into any of the numerous analog audio ins on the receivers, like TV in, DVD in, CD in etc.