I just got a surround sound set-up and had a few questions? 1) as of now sound only comes out of the surround sound system when playing dvds. Should I have it so that when watching regular cable tv the sound should come out of there too? is this possible? 2) If I want an xbox, dvd/receiver, vcr, & tv all hooked up together whats the best way to do this? I plan to connect the xbox with component cables to the tv, followed by another set of coponent cables from the tv to the dvd/receiver. then I'll just have to use some rca red,white and yellow cables to hook my vcr up to my dvd/receiver??? does this look right?
1) I like using my system for all audio, including regular TV. If you have a cable/satellite box, just connect the audio from the box to one of your receiver's inputs. If you just have straight cable (a coax cable), you'll probably want to connect your TV's audio out to one of your receiver's inputs.
2) You can connect the component cables directly from the xbox to the TV. If you really want to switch the component video through your reciever, you'll connect one component cable from your xbox to your receiver's "component in" and another component cable from your receiver's "component out" to your TV.
For your VCR, yes, just connect the composite cables (red, white, yellow) from your VCR to one of your receiver's inputs. Obviously, you'll need a video cable from your receiver's "video out" ("monitor out") to your TV (or run your cable coax through your VCR). Alternately, you can run the video (yellow) cable directly to the TV. It just depends whether you want your receiver or the TV to do the video switching for you.