Sony apparently has a vendetta against s-video. Only their flagship 5300ES ( ) has any inputs. I can't explain it.

Honestly, I don't know jack about Onkyo speakers. I'd be reluctant to buy any speakers from an electronics maker and not a speaker specialist. That may be niave and uninformed, but that's my opinion. Don't worry about ohm rating, it has zero bearing on sound or quality.

It is most definitely best to buy matching speakers, whether that's one big 7.1 set, or a piecemeal 2 fronts, a center, a sub, etc. type of deal like Klipsch does. Sound characteristics and response can vary wildly, so it's best to match them as best as you can. As for speaker rating, I'd say you're probably fine with 100W speakers. As the discussion above showed, you probably won't be driving the speakers with more than a couple watts anyway. A 300W speaker would obviously be overkill (you would be underdriving it) and a 50W speaker wound sound horrible if you really cranked it, but within 10-20W rating either way and you're going to be fine.

This thread should really be renamed "Help nemein redo his a/v system".

At this point it's getting to be that way I think I'm done though. I dropped Athena a line to see if there's a way to get a single pair that matches my current setup. I was thinking about buying a whole new 7.1 set to go w/ the new receiver but at this point I think I'd rather just save my money for the 360 I plan on buying later in the year and just go for the new speaker set up sometime next year.

Thanks for the help/advice though

That's probably the best idea if you like the way the Athena's sound and want to save money.

Ahhh, the one time searching actually brought me to the very post containing all the info I was looking to have answered. Thanks

Ok, I just set-up my new Monoprice 5x1 switcher and it works perfect with everything, including my Harmony remote.

The only problem I have: the obnoxiously bright front-panel lights!

Other than getting some black electrical tape to cover everything (besides the IR), does anybody have any other suggestions?

Glad it worked for you. Sorry that I didn't mention "works perfect with my PS3 and harmony list but has obnoxiously bright lights"....

You are right, they are bright. And the odd thing is I use two HDMI to DVI converters on two of my compontents, and when they are not selected as a sourse, they have very brigh annoying RED lights.

I meant to write Monoprice to see what that was about...but never got around to it.

Electrical tape.

Well, the electrical tape works great, but I have a new switch problem.

I've watched a few hours of TiVo Series 3, works fine.
Watched a movie on the Toshiba A2, works fine.

But, I started watching a movie on my Oppo and about 40 minutes into it, the screen went out (not to black, more of an "interference") and there was no sound. Then pop back in. After a few minutes of the in and out, I switched to a different player.

Bad port and try a different one? An issue with the Oppo? Or is it just this switch in general?

Also, it seems the newer 4x1 switch is considered to work better overall?

Well I have to say I'm not too impressed w/ HDMI so far I finally got the time to hook up the new receiver (so in total the receiver, a 400DVD player, a Playstation3 and a region free player -- all Sony except for the region free which is an Oppo) and something just doesn't seem to be working right. I'm pretty sure I properly disabled the unused speakers (it was kind of odd though since it would let me disable the side surrounds on their own, I had to disable the back ones and the sides became the only surrounds) and the test tone built-in to the receiver works fine. However using the audio test from T2 in either the Playstation or the 400DVD players is giving me all sorts of funny results. The front left/center/right are ok (although the center is usually quieter [the level on the receiver's test tone seems ok]). The surrounds are all messed up though as there is no separation/distinction between the two, all the surround signals come out of all both speakers. Additionally there is no signal out of the sub-woofer. I've played around a little bit w/ trying the different settings on both the receiver and player/playstation but so far nothing has helped. Something else I noticed was the fact the multichannel indicator is not turning on for either of these. HDMI is supposed to pass multichannel sound right? I'm sure it's just something silly I'm doing. BTW the Oppo (connected w/ optical/digital) seems to work fine. Hopefully tomorrow I'll figure it out, I was just kind of hoping it would be easier than this

The receiver has to accept various formats over HDMI. And the players have to be able to send it. It isn't exactly the HDMI system that is the problem, it is the equipment makers that are inconsistent with features and compatibility. The HDMI system does have the capability to do what you want, but you need to make sure your specific machines can, also.

Most receivers tell you what they are receiving, Stereo/Dolby Digital/DTS/etc, is yours telling you anything when you do these tests? That may help diagnose.

Also, where is the typo in the following, I think there must be one:
"(it was kind of odd though since it would let me disable the side surrounds on their own, I had to disable the back ones and the sides became the only surrounds)"

Is that supposed to be a "wouldn't let me"? If so, side surrounds are the main surrounds, those that are used for a 5.1 setup. The back ones are the 'extras' for 7.1. So you probably can easily disable the back, but not the sides. Some receivers might allow you to change this, swap the back/sides, probably higher-end models usually, I would guess.

That's why I figured buying all Sony stuff would get around that. I'm going to try their CS# tomorrow (or maybe today but I doubt they are open).


I'll have to double check, but IIRC most of the time it just says PCM. When I play the DTS sound track I do hear something so some sort of signal is getting through. It just seems like all the channels are getting muddled together though.


Gotcha... that's just my lack of knowledge of the differences between 5.1 and 7.1 systems.

That means that the DVD player is doing the decoding instead of the receiver. Set the DVD player to pass through Dolby Digital and DTS and see if that helps your problem.

I had some more time to spend w/ it today and I finally figured everything out (I think, at least it seems ok so I'm going to run w/ it ). By default the PS3 doesn't do any multichannel audio over HDMI so you have to go into the sound settings and change that. For the 400 carousel after playing around w/ it for a bit I finally decided to drop it back to component/digital coax instead of HDMI and it's working as expected w/ that setup. It's a couple of years old at this point so I'm guessing the HDMI standards aren't talking to each other properly. I don't know enough about the details of the standards to know if this is true but that's my story and I'm sticking to it So the problems I thought I was having w/ the receiver really turned out to be problems w/ the sources.

Thanks for the help everyone.