Long time reader, first time writer. I'm planning my home theatre system for my new place now, and before making any purchases wanted to see if any of you had any advice for me. I currently have a PC hooked up to a Dell 24" LCD via DVI. I plan to maintain that setup in my room, however ues the 2nd DVI output to run to my TV in the living room. I assume I will need to use a DVI to HDMI converter to hook it into the Plasma or LCD (whichever route I choose)...but my real question comes with respect to the Receiver.
I'm planning on getting a decent receiver and speaker package, and I would want the PC sound to go to the receiver. Would the HDMI from the PC go into the receiver? If so, what sound connection should I use? Are their receivers that have a 'PC' mode so I could set this all up smoothly and change the sound source easily from a remote?
Ok if I understand, you want to hook a pc up to your surround system then to your tv. Yes, it can be done.
You would need a pc that has HDMI on it, or one with DVI and a DVI->hdmi convertor ( I dont think any surround receivers have DVI inputs). Then you would need a surround receiver that has HDMI inputs. Then your tv would need hdmi inputs - simple so far.
Audio - if your pc sends the audio through the hdmi cable, you are set. If not, and if you have an optical or digital audio out on your sound card, then just run the cable from the computer to the surround system, and make sure you have the sound set to play from that connection when you have it for the computer screen.
If you dont have any of those - I would suggest getting a sound card that does ( some motherboard even have built in optical connectors now a days ), as you would have to find a way to run all the 5.1 cables from the computer into the receiver, which I have no idea how to do.
Mike
It is simple - I just suck at explaining things :( I hope you can understand the above, or ask for further details :)
from what I understand, sound does travel via HDMI, but not via DVI. So the DVI to HDMI cable that you are referring to would only transfer the video, you would then need to connect the sound to your receiver via the optical digital audio out on your computer (like the above user is suggesting). Shouldn't be a problem, good luck!
