Ranger

I am planning on getting a new TV and dvd player soon. I was wondering if it is possible to play music CDs on the dvd player while its audio cables are hooked to the TV? Can the TV's speakers do this? Or is this impossible and I would need an audio receiver.

Thanks!

stevevt

This absolutely will work.

2 downsides:

* you'll have to have the monitor on while you listen to music
* you'll be listening to music out of tv speakers, which probably won't sound very good

What about getting a dvd player with a headphone out jack? Then you could listen to music with headphones, or get an adapter and a small pair of powered speakers, either of which would probably sound better than the tv speakers.

Ranger

So you're saying the TV has to be on? I was wondering if it could be done if thru something like thru the TV's auxillary power.
The TV I want to get has MTS so I think it should sound pretty good.

Thanks!

Master J

I am not sure what you are referring to, when you say auxillary power, but you will have to have the TV turned on to receive sound. MTS has nothing to do with sound quality, all it means is the TV is capable of receiving stereo audio from broadcasts.

The quality of audio you will receive from your televison speakers will proabably be roughly around the lines of an alarm clock. There will be very little low frequency response, and not much high frequency response due to the lack of tweeter.

J

Ranger

I am not sure what I meant by auxillary power either.
It was just something I heard quite a while ago. I guess I was talk about if it could be on aux power like some TV will show a blank screen.

I though MTS meant that the speakers were capable of receiving a higher frequency, what about other TVs with different speakers and sound modes like um "trusounrround", I can't think of another one now. I know that the bass would definitely be weak.

I guess I'll get an audio receiver afterwards.

Edit: oh yeah, to watch TV in 5.1, I'd need to hook the audio receiver directly to the TV?

Johnny Zhivago

Eh... To get 5.1 you'll need a receiver that decodes DD/DTS, a player that passes the signal (pretty much any player), optical/coaxial cables, two fronts, a center, two rears and a sub. Teles have a left and right stereo channel, 2.0... Hooking up the receiver to the tele, via plain ole composite (red/white) cables will not pass the 5.1 signal.

Blade

I think by aux. power, you are referring to most new TV's being in standby mode, where they are drawing a very small amount of power so they are able to start up more quickly. But you won't be able to get any audio out of the speakers in this mode.

MTS mode stands for Multiple TV Channel Sound...or at least I think it does. In any case, all it means is that your TV will decode a stereo TV signal in stereo. Which, while better than mono, is not much compared to a system that can decode Dolby Prologic, or, (much) better yet, Dolby Digital or DTS.

Which is not to say that your DVDs or CDs will sound bad, just that they will sound like regular TV. The thing is that regular TV speakers are usually surpassed by most basic home theater speakers.

Other sound modes (like trusurround, or other virtual surround sound effects) use things like audio delays and audio reflections to give the impression of a home theater surround speaker like effect. Some DVD players come with this feature built in for use with analog systems like you'll be using with your TV's stereo speakers.

5.1 on TV....First, if you do mean TV (like HBO/MTV/NBC type TV) then you need to remember that to get 5.1, your audio source has to be outputting 5.1. If you have just regular broadcast or cable TV, it's unlikely that you are getting 5.1 audio. Usually you have to receive some kind of sattelite signal (like DirectTV) to be able to get 5.1 surround.

Now, how you hook up your TV audio to your receiver depends on how you get your TV signal. If it's from the air (ie. just using the antenna) then, you'll use the TV's audio outs to get TV sound to your receiver.

If you have a cable box, it depends on what kind of audio out options it has. If it only does mono out, you'll want to go from the cable box to the VCR (if you have one and want to record cable) to the TV, and then use the TV's audio outs to connect audio to the receiver. If the cable box has any other audio out (analog 2 channel stereo out; digital coax out) then go straight from the cable box to the receiver.

If you're using a satellite system (which I have no first hand experience with) there should be a digital audio out on there that you would connect to the receiver.

Hope I didn't confuse you, and feel free to ask for clarification if I used any jargon you didn't recognize.

Good luck.

-David

Ranger

Whoa... thanks for the great explanation, Blade.

I'd like to watch some of the HBO movies in 5.1 since they say they broadcast it in 5.1 where avl. I know the DVD player has DD and DTS output, and the audio receiver I am getting afterwards can do DTS and DD decoding.

I am getting HBO and other channels via a cable wire connected directly to my TV. I don't remember how many audio outputs the TV had, I think it had three or five.

Ahhhh........ I think for what I'm looking for I'd be better off getting a home theater in a box, since I've been watching DVDs on my computer with a rocking speaker system for so long.

Thanks for all the help!

Blade

Always glad to help when I can.

You might want to call your cable company and ask them about that "HBO in 5.1 where available" stuff. It might be HDTV (not really familiar with this stuff either...don't watch much TV anymore )...but regular cable doesn't do 5.1 as far as I know.

If it's HDTV, then your TV has to be HDTV ready and you have to have an HDTV decoder...but the company providing this stuff can hopefully explain it more fully.

Home Theater in a Box systems are great for beginners. Do a search in this forum on HTIB and you should get a good sampling of threads to start research on.

-David

asabase

I thought MTS was what allowed you to switch between different audio tracks on a show (say between English and Spanish). Basically nobody does this except PBS though.

Ranger

I think you're talking about SAP. Am I right?

I will ask my cable company about that, I don't think it is a HDTV issue, just if they broadcast it in 5.1, jsut before a HBO movie comes on, a message comes up, saying this movie is avl in 5.1.

Thanks for all the help.

asabase

Did a little searching and found this:

"Many modern stereo television sets have a feature in their audio equipment that allows the reception of sound other than the main audio for the program. This feature is called Multi-channel Television Sound (MTS). A TV set with MTS can receive mono sound, stereo sound, or Secondary Audio Programs (SAP)."

So it seems to me SAP is one of the choices that MTS gives you.